Guerrero (Mexico) Fare by Ruth Paget
Author Rachel Glueck offers an insider’s view of the Mexican state of Guerrero in her cookbook The Native Mexican Kitchen: A Journey into Cuisine, Culture and Mezcal. Glueck is married to an indigenous Mexican, who leads an Aztec dance troupe and runs a restaurant that serves Mezcal often made by members of his family.
Guerrero is most famous for its resort city of Acapulco on the Pacific Coast of Mexico that heads south towards Central America. In Glueck’s introductory remarks, she notes that there are 65 indigenous groups in Mexico, that corn is revered for providing sustenance, and that the indigenous milpa cropping system grows beans, squash, chiles, and/or tomatoes together with corn. The milpa crops are all native to Mexico.
The rest of Guerrero’s cuisine reflects the fusion of Spanish and indigenous foods. Pork and cheese, for instance, are of Spanish origin. The indigenous and Spanish ingredients come together in a dish of Oaxacan origin (Oaxaca is Guerrero’s neighboring state to the south) called a tlayuda, which people in Guerrero also eat.
The tlayuda resembles a large, crunch tostada, but features asientos de puerco as a spread. Asientos de puerco is the settled fat from frying lard with remaining crunchy bits. I might substitute a salsa verde (green sauce made from Mexican green tomatoes) in place of asiento de puerco as a spread. On top of the tlayuda spread, cooks place refried beans, a shredded meat, lettuce, tomato, avocado, cheese, and salsa. The tlayuda is a filling dish made of simple ingredients that is enhanced with great salsas.
Marge Poore, who wrote 1,000 Mexican Recipes, says that salsas are the distinguishing feature of Mexican cuisine. Glueck provides recipes for indigenous sauces that probably show up in Acapulco since they go well with fish or pork. Glueck’s sauce recipes are easy to follow and usually follow the pattern of sautéing vegetables, blending the cooked vegetables, putting the vegetables back in a pan to warm them, and stirring in the final ingredients like chunks of mango or pineapple.
Glueck’s commentary on life in Guerrero often makes you overlook her recipes, but they are excellent and give an introduction to what indigenous food in Mexico is like.
The following recipes might interest first-time cooks trying Mexican food:
-peanut salsa made with peanuts, chiles, onions, tomatoes, and garlic cloves
-salsa de piña made with pineapples for fish and pork
-salsa de mango made with mangos and a favorite for fish or pork in Acapulco
-tortilla soup made with chiles, garlic, onion, tomatoes, water or chicken stock, cream, cotija cheese, and avocado with garnishes like cabbage, avocado slices, and tortilla chips
-pozole rojo soup from Jalisco (a state north of Guerrero) made with chicken breasts or pork leg, white hominy, corn, tomatillos, and chiles
-esquites – Mexican street corn served with cream, cheese, chile powder, and lime
-carnitas – Mexican pork belly braised with orange juice.
-liver and onions tacos
The Native American Kitchen by Rachel Glueck has well-written recipes and is a good introduction for cooks who would like to make their first forays into Mexican indigenous cooking.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
