The magazine-libro Mexico culinary beastgather some testimonies of the conquerors about the food they found when they arrived in Tenochtitlan, their experience when eating meati meat, snakes, mice, insects etc. In this review you will find a little of his testimony about these culinary delicacies.
By Alberto Álvarez Alejo
Mexico City, May 4 (SinEmbargo) .- Open the magazine-book Mexico culinary beast From the Editorial Arts de México, it is to look without shame to a feast where the gourmet meets the grotesque. On the one hand, its pages display an elegant design, a visual game that alternates the color: white, black and beige, and on the other hand, they are not afraid of the culinary abyss of the 16th century, where the Spanish friars contemplated with horror and fascination with creatures, for them unknown, but for the inhabitants it was the daily food and was part of the gastronomic culture.
The editorial introduction, by Margarita Orellana, functions as a gateway to this curious world, pointing out how colonial interpretations – especially those around ritual cannibalism – left indigenous cuisine stained with misunderstandings. Under the magnifying glass of the author Trueba Lara, each animal served in this strange feast is also a mirror of the fantasies and anxieties of those Spaniards who had to eat, or avoid these exotic dishes.
The reader is not only found with preparations that in an urban/modern environment would be unthinkable, for example: roasted rats to the intestines, but also delusional chronicles of astonished friars before iguanas that looked like dragons, charales that creaked in the mouth and guajolotes whose reddish crest was a miraculous remedy.
What is eaten: insects, ajolotes and other specialties
If we ever wanted to imagine what flavor Mexico would have, this bestiary offers a broad and forceful response: toasted salt with salt; crushed flies after being boiled; coal snakes served with Pinole; and the techniquesa small animal similar to a dog, raised to be eaten by the native peoples and devoured until the extinction by the Spaniards, who did not hesitate to eat them. Here what fascinates is not only the strange of the menu, but the bewilderment expressed by Spanish monks between medical notes and demential superstitions.
What you imagine: recipes to mold reality
In the section Alebrije, supplement of Arts of Mexicothe author Trueba Lara abandons colonial perplexity and invites us to an even strange table: fiction. Authors such as Remedios Varo, Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel gather to cook dishes where food, magic and literature mix as ingredients.
From Remedios Varo we tried a dish to induce erotic dreams; A culinary ritual whose ingredients include movements, whispers and thoughts that should not be said aloud, Isabel Allende brings the extravagant aphrodisiac breakfast of the Empress Catalina de Russia, designed to perpetuate love beyond one night, and Laura Esquivel, returns us to Mexico with her “quail in pink petals” As chocolate water.
These writers suggest that there is not so much difference between following a recipe and making a spell: both require a ritual, faith and some affinity with the absurd.
The appetite as a trip
When closing the pages of this Mexico culinary beastthe reader is with the peculiar satisfaction that he produces to have tried, even with the imagination, impossible snacks. It is not only a catalog of gastronomic oddities or a collection of stories, but an encyclopedia of the astonishment that reveals that eating has never been only a biological act; It is a cultural, emotional and deep drive.
This volume draws a unique tour through a Mexico that existed in the dishes and minds of those who tested their flesh. A reminder that a country is hidden behind each cooked creature that can only be fully understood when it is savored, although, in this case, it is through words.
