“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” – Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
WLBOTT, razor-focused on shareholder value, has decided to pursue a fashion line based on the headwear of our Olmec ancestors.
Again, our unpaid marketing interns were eager and started the advertising campaign before getting approval or even a budget, but they had some great ideas.
Bev, our HR director, insisted that we get signed releases from the Olmec Intellectual Property people before beginning our new product line, so we fired up the WLBOTT Time Machine.
Since everyone wanted to go on the time trip, we ran a lottery, and Sister Magdalena, Fred the Penitent Intern, and Perch Periwinkle (of the La Mesa Periwinkles) were the lucky winners.
Our eager trio headed back, way back, to 500 BCE, to an area close to what would become Veracruz, Mexico, and soon were introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Mayor of Olmec City.
But despite some initial legal confusion, Mrs. Mayor was a gracious host and invited our Traveling Trio for dinner. We were in the city of La Venta, a bustling coastal city surrounded by rich coastal swamps and rivers.
By the way, we learned Mrs. Mayor’s name was Poyah, meaning “Moon.” Her daughter, a delightful young lady who helped serve our meal, was named Nas, meaning “Earth / Soil.”
Prior to the meal, Poyah and Nas, along with their servants, prepared a delightful, though bitter and spicy beverage from ground cacao. They used roasted cacao beans ground on a stone metate, mixed with water and roasted peppers, and poured back and forth from a height to create a luxurious, thick foam.
We were excited to learn that our hosts had prepared a special dish, that they called roasted xoloitzcuintli. How exotic! Little did we know….
Perch: “This is extraordinary. What did you say it was called?” Nas: “Xoloitzcuintli.” Fred: “What does that mean?” Sister Magdalena: “Fred, eat what you’ve been given.” Fred: “It tastes kind of like…” Sister Magdalena: “FRED.”
Anyhow… We were treated to many other delicious dishes: sweet potatoes and cassava, something similar to tamales with masa balls wrapped in leaves and steamed, fresh greens that included tomatillos, and a stew made with hominy, delicious sea food, squash and beans. For desert, they presented us with a platter of avocados, palm nuts, wild papayas, and guavas.
But WLBOTT did not come empty handed! We brought some delightful gifts for our Olmec hosts. By the way, the bubble wrap was Fred’s idea.
Hominy
The Olmec had developed a way to preserve corn that survives to today. We call it hominy.
Hominy is a Mesoamerican food produced from dried maize (corn) kernels treated with an alkali, in a process called nixtamalization (nextamalli is the Nahuatl word for “hominy”). “Lye hominy” is hominy made with lye.
The Ladle & Lube recently made pozole verde (chicken and veggie options available!) and it was a big hit. The recipe is a Mexican stew with tomatillos, cilantro, onions, garlic, and hominy.
The chefs from the L&L weren’t sure how many cans of nixtamaliated corn to use, which led to them asking “How many hominy?” Try this yourself: say “How many hominy?” three times really fast. You will quickly get on your own nerves. Just ask Chef Boniface.
[ed. note and disclaimer: we are not insane, in the sense that it hasn’t been established in a court of law.]
Available on CD:
Tomatillos
Tomatillos would almost certainly have been a part of the Olmec diet.
They are native to Mexico and are one of the oldest cultivated foods in Mesoamerica, actually predating the domestication of the standard red tomato. Archaeological evidence shows that tomatillos were being consumed in central Mexico as early as 900 BCE.
The tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica and Physalis ixocarpa), also known as the Mexican husk tomato, is a plant of the nightshade family bearing small, spherical, and green or green-purple fruit. Tomatillos originated in Mexico and were cultivated in the pre-Columbian era. A staple of Mexican cuisine, they are eaten both raw and cooked in a variety of dishes, notably salsa verde. The tomatillo is a perennial plant, but is generally grown for agriculture each year as if it were an annual.
In 2017, scientists reported on their discovery and analysis of Physalis infinemundi, a fossil Physalis found in the Patagonian region of Argentina, dated to 52 million years BP.
Harvest and postharvest treatment Tomatillos are harvested when the fruits fill the calyx. This state is normally achieved 65 to 100 days after transplanting. Fruit production continues for 1 to 2 months or until the first frost. Harvesting occurs regularly, typically every day, and is done by hand. A plant produces 60 to 200 fruits within a single growing season, with an average yield of about 20 tonnes per hectare (9 short tons per acre).
The green peach aphid is a common pest in California, and since it readily transmits the turnip mosaic virus, this could be a threat to tomatillo production in California.
An alate (winged) green peach aphid (Myzus persicae), an important vector of plum pox virus.
Featured Vegetable this Week: Tomatillos / By Chef Caleb Crets When you cut one open, you’ll see that they have a dense flesh with a lot of tiny seeds which allows them to spread like a weed if the fruit drops off the plant and is left behind. They are a plant of the nightshade family and have many names such as husk tomato or green tomato.
