Post by Okwes on May 23, 2007 10:42:18 GMT -5
Out of the Ash: The Prehistoric Chile Cuisine of Cerun
by Dave DeWitt
www.fiery-foods.com
On an August evening in A.D. 595, the Loma Caldera (in what is now
El Salvador) erupted, sending clouds of volcanic ash into the Mayan
agricultural village of Cerun, burying it twenty feet deep and
turning it into the New World equivalent of Pompeii. Miraculously,
all the villagers escaped, but what they left behind gives us a good
idea of the life they led, the food they ate, and the chile peppers
they grew.
The Ancient Ash
In 1976, while leveling ground for the erection of grain silos, a
Salvadoran bulldozer operator noticed that he had plowed into an
ancient building. He immediately notified the national museum, but a
museum archaeologist thought that the building was of recent vintage
and allowed the bulldozing to continue. Several buildings were
destroyed. Two years later, Payson Sheets, an anthropologist from
the University of Colorado, led a team of students on an
archaeological survey of the Zapotitan Valley. He was taken to the
site by local residents and quickly began a test excavation, and
radiocarbon dating of artifacts proved that they were very ancient.
He received permission from the government to do a complete
excavation of Cerun. The site was saved.
Dr. Sheets and his students returned for five field sessions at
Cerun, most recently in 1996. Their discoveries are detailed on
their web site ceren.colorado.edu . One of the most
interesting things they discovered was, in the words of Dr. Sheets,
"We had no idea that people in the region lived so well 14 centuries
ago."
The ash preserved the crops in the field, leaving impressions of the
plants. The plants then rotted away, leaving perfect cavities, or
molds. Using techniques that were developed at Pompeii, the
archaeologists poured liquid plaster into the cavities. By removing
the ash, the ancient fields were revealed and could be studied.
Interestingly, the Native Americans of Cerun used row and furrow
techniques similar to those still utilized today; corn was grown in
elevated rows, and beans and squash were grown in the furrows in
between. In a courtyard of a building, "We even found a series of
four mature chile plants with stem diameters over 5 centimeters (2
inches)," wrote Dr. Sheets. "They must have been many years old."
Chile peppers are rarely found in archaeological sites in
Mesoamerica, so imagine the surprise of the researchers when they
discovered painted ceramic storage vessels that contained large
quantities of chile seeds. "One vessel had cacao seeds in the
bottom, and chiles above, separated by a layer of cotton gauze," Dr.
Sheets revealed. "It is possible that they would have been prepared
into a kind of mole sauce." Also found were corn kernels, beans,
squash seeds, cotton seeds, and evidence of manioc plants and small
agave plants, which were used for their fiber to make rope rather
than being fermented for an alcoholic beverage, pulque, as was done
in Mexico.
I emailed Dr. Sheets, hoping to discover the shape and size of the
chiles and thus deduce the variety being grown. But no whole pods
were found, just the seeds and some pod fragments. The size of the
chile stem indicated that the plant had been grown as a perennial,
but all chile plants are perennial in tropical climates and can grow
to considerable size.
Dr. Sheets wrote me back about an article by Dr. David Lentz, the
botanist who had studied the plant remains, and I tracked it down in
the journal Latin American Antiquity that I found in the Zimmerman
Library at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Lentz wrote about the
seeds and the pod fragments, "It appears that many of these fell
from the rafters of buildings where they would have been hung for
drying or storage." He added that the chile seeds from the site were
the first in Central America found outside Mexico, and he speculated
that those seeds in vessels were probably being saved for future
planting.
The Taming of the Wild Chile
But what kind of chile was grown in Cerun? There was an intriguing
clue in the article: a photograph of a chile seed compared with a
bar indicating the length of one millimeter. The seed was 3.5
millimeters wide. Since the size of the seed is directly related to
the size of the pod (generally speaking, the larger the pod, the
larger the seed), perhaps it was possible to guess the size of the
pod by comparing that ancient seed to seeds I had stored in my
greenhouse.
Paleoethnobotanists, the scientists who study the plants used by
ancient civilizations, have theorized that chiles were first used as
"tolerated weeds." They were not cultivated but rather collected in
the wild when the fruits were ripe. The wild forms had small, erect
fruits which were deciduous, meaning that they separated easily from
the calyx and fell to the ground.
During the domestication process, whether consciously or
unconsciously, early Native American farmers selected seeds from
plants with larger, non-deciduous, and pendant fruits. The reasons
for these selection criteria are a greater yield from each plant and
protection of the pods from chile-hungry birds. The larger the pod,
the greater will be its tendency to become pendant rather than to
remain erect. Thus the pods became hidden amidst the leaves and did
not protrude above them as beacons for birds. The selection of
varieties with the tendency to be non-deciduous ensured that the
pods remained on the plant until fully ripe and thus were resistant
to dropping off as a result of wind or physical contact. The
domesticated chiles gradually lost their natural means of seed
dispersal by birds and became dependent upon human intervention for
their continued existence.
Because chiles cross-pollinate, hundreds of varieties of the five
domesticated chile species were developed by humans over thousands
of years in South and Central America. The color, size, and shape of
the pods of these domesticated forms varied enormously. Ripe fruits
could be red, orange, brown, yellow, or white. Their shapes could be
round, conic, elongate, oblate, or bell-like, and their size could
vary from the tiny fruits of chiltepins or tabascos to the large
pods of the anchos and pasillas. But very little archaeological
evidence existed to support these theories until the finds at Cerun.
An Educated Guess
It was exciting to think that perhaps we had a window into the
ancient chile domestication process. Because their seeds were
collected, and the plants were growing in a courtyard, the chile
plants at Cerun were obviously cultivated and were more than just
"tolerated weeds." It was time to break out my metric ruler and
start measuring seeds. I came up with the following table, ranked by
seed width:
Variety Pod Length Seed Width
Ancho 12 cm 6 mm
Serrano 7 cm 5 mm
Jalapeno 6.5 cm 5 mm
De arbol 4.5 cm 4.5 mm
Habanero 4.5 cm 4 mm
Piquin 1.3 cm 4 mm
Cerun Chiles ? 3.5 mm
Chiltepin 0.5 cm 3 mm
The first conclusion I reached was that the Cerun chiles were
small-podded. They certainly were not as large as anchos, whose
seeds are twice the width of those of the Cerun chiles. They could,
of course, have been chiltepins, because the seeds were only half a
millimeter wider than chiltepin seeds. But if they were somewhere
between the size of chiltepins and piquins, that would have made the
pods about 1 centimeter long, less than half an inch. And since
there is evidence that the chile pods had been hung up to dry with
agave twine, that process would not have been necessary for such
small-podded plants. Note that the habanero, which is nine times the
length of the chiltepin, has seeds only 1 millimeter wider. Also
note that the de arbol variety, which is also 4.5 cm long, but much
thinner, has seeds only 1 millimeter wider than the Cerun chiles. My
educated guess is that the Cerun chiles were about 3.5 centimeters
long, or about an inch and a half. I believe that the domestication
of chiles from chiltepins to serranos and anchos would not be
completed until the Aztec culture of nearly a millennium after A.D.
595. I repeat that this is my personal theory, and that I am not a
paleoethnobotanist, though sometimes I wish I had studied that
discipline.
The Cuisine of Cerun
In addition to the vegetable crops of corn, chiles, beans, manioc,
cacao, and squash, the archaeologists found evidence that the Cerun
villagers also harvested wild avocados, palm fruits and nuts, and
certain spices such as achiote, or annatto seeds. In fact, Dr.
Sheets observed, "The villagers ate better and had a greater variety
of foodstuff than their descendants. Traditional families today eat
mostly corn and beans, with some rice, squash, and chiles, but
rarely any meat. Cerun's residents ate deer and dog meat." They also
consumed peccary, mud turtle, duck, and rodents, but deer was their
primary meat. Fully fifty percent of the total bones found on the
site belonged to white-tailed deer, and many of those deer were
immature animals-giving rise to a very interesting theory.
Linda Brown, who wrote the 1996 Field Season Preliminary Report
entitled "Household and Village Animal Use," noted, "Cerun residents
may have practiced some form of deer management. One of the deer
procurement strategies the Cerun villagers may have utilized is
'garden hunting.' Garden hunting consists of allowing deer to browse
in cultivated fields and household gardens where they can be hunted.
While some vegetation is lost to browsing, the benefits include easy
access to deer when needed." Expanding upon that theory, she wrote,
"The ethnohistoric data make many references to the Maya partially
taming white-tailed deer. Specifically, historical sources note that
it was women who were responsible for taking in, semi-taming, and
raising deer. [Diego de] Landa mentioned that women raise other
domestic animals and let the deer suck their breasts, by which means
they raise them and make them so tame that they never will go into
the woods, although they take them and carry them through the woods
and raise them there. Apparently, during historic times, there was a
designated place in the woods where women would take deer to browse
until they needed them. Scholars have argued that pre-Columbian
women may have raised deer, dogs, peccary, and fowl much like
contemporary Maya women raise pigs and fowl for food, trade, and
special occasion feasts. Perhaps the Cerun women raised dog, fowl (a
duck was tethered inside the Household 1 bodega), and semi-tamed
deer as a contribution to the domestic and ceremonial economy."
It is always a challenge for archaeologists to reconstruct ancient
cuisines and cooking techniques. The Cerun villagers did not have
metal utensils, but they did have fired ceramics that could be used
to boil foods. They could grill over open flames, and perhaps fry
foods in ceramic pots using cotton seed oil or animal fat. They had
obsidian knives that could cut as cleanly as metal. They had metates
for grinding corn into flour and mocaljetes for grinding fruits,
vegetables, chiles, and spices together into sauces.
Based on the archaeological evidence, I have devised some recipes
that reflect the main ingredients used in the cooking of Cerun,
adapted, of course, for modern kitchens. One of my basic theories
about the history of cooking is that we should never underestimate
our predecessors' culinary sophistication, so I cannot presume that
14 centuries ago the Maya were preparing boring food. Especially
since we know that they had chiles.
Recipes
Royal Chocolate with Chile
Although this drink was served to royalty in the large Mayan cities,
the discovery of chile in conjunction with cacao in Cerun indicates
that even commoners knew how to make this concoction.
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup cocoa
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 teaspoon hot chile powder, such as piquin
1 vanilla bean pod
In a pan, heat the water to boiling. Add the remaining ingredients
and stir well. Serve immediately with the vanilla bean for garnish
in the drink. Yield: 1 serving Heat Scale: Medium
The Earliest Mole Sauce
Why wouldn't the cooks of Cerun have developed sauces to serve over
meats and vegetables? After all, there is evidence that curry
mixtures were in existence thousands of years ago in what is now
India, and we have to assume that Native Americans experimented with
all available ingredients. Perhaps this mole sauce was served over
stewed duck meat, as ducks were one of the domesticated meat sources
of the Cerun villagers.
4 tomatillos, husks removed
1 tomato, toasted in a skillet and peeled
1/2 teaspoon chile seeds
3 tablespoons pepitas (toasted pumpkin or squash seeds)
1 corn tortilla, torn into pieces
2 tablespoons medium-hot chile powder
1 teaspoon achiote (annatto seeds)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups chicken broth
1 ounce Mexican or bittersweet chocolate
In a blender, combine the tomatillos, tomato, chile seeds, pepitas,
tortilla, chile powder and achiote to make a paste. In a pan, heat
the vegetable oil and fry the paste until fragrant, about 4 minutes,
stirring constantly. Add the chicken broth and the chocolate and
stir over medium heat until thickened to desired consistency. Yield:
About 2 1/2 cups Heat Scale: Medium
Venison Steak with Juniper Berry and Fiery Red Chile Sauce
This recipe is by Lois Ellen Frank, from her book Foods of the
Southwest Indian Nations (Ten Speed Press, 2002). Both the venison
and the juniper berries are available from mail-order sources. Of
course, grape juice or wine would not have been available to the
Maya, but Lois has adapted this recipe for the modern kitchen.
The Sauce
1 tablespoon dried juniper berries
3 cups unsweetened dark grape juice or wine
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
2 shallots, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 cups beef stock
The Steaks
6 venison steaks, 8 to 10 ounces each
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
4 whole dried chiles de arbol, seeds and stems removed, crushed
To make the sauce, wrap the juniper berries in a clean kitchen towel
and crush them using a mallet. Remove them from the towel and place
them in a saucepan with the grape juice or wine, bay leaves, thyme
and shallots. Simmer over medium heat for 20 to 25 minutes, until
the liquid has been reduced to 1 cup. Add the stock, bring to a
boil, then decrease the heat to medium and cook for another 15
minutes until the sauce has been reduced to 1 1/2 cups. Strain the
sauce through a fine sieve and keep it warm.
Brush the steaks on both sides with the olive oil and sprinkle with
salt and pepper. Place the steaks on the grill and grill for 3
minutes, until they have charred marks. Rotate the steaks a half
turn and grill for another 3 minutes. Flip the steaks over and grill
for another 5 minutes until done as desired. Ladle the sauce onto
each plate, top with the steaks, pattern-side up, and sprinkle the
crushed chiles over them. Yield: 6 servings Heat Scale: Medium
Pepita-Grilled Venison Chops
Here is a tasty grilled dish featuring native New World game,
chiles, and tomatoes, plus pepitas-toasted pumpkin or squash seeds.
Garlic is not native to the New World, but is given here as a
substitute for wild onions, which the people of Cerun would have
known.
5 tablespoons pepitas
3 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon red chile powder
1/2 cup tomato paste
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons lemon juice or vinegar
4 thick-cut venison chops, or substitute thick lamb chops
Puree all the ingredients, except the venison, in a blender. Paint
the chops with this mixture and marinate at room temperature for an
hour. Grill the chops over a charcoal and pi�on wood fire until
done, basting with the remaining marinade. Yield: 4 servings Heat
Scale: Medium
Cerun Beans
Three varieties of beans were found beneath the ash in the village
kitchens of Cerun. Certainly they were boiled, and since they are
bland, they were undoubtedly combined with other ingredients,
including chiles and primitive tomatoes. The Cerun villagers would
have used peccary fat for the lard and bacon, and of course would
not have had cumin. But they probably would have used spices such as
Mexican oregano.
3 cups cooked pinto beans (either canned or simmered for hours until
tender)
1 onion, minced
2 tablespoons lard, or substitute vegetable oil
5 slices bacon, minced
3/4 cup chorizo sausage
1 pound tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
6 serrano chiles, stems removed, minced
1 teaspoon cumin (or substitute Mexican oregano)
Saute the beans and onion in the lard or oil for about five minutes,
stirring constantly. In another skillet, saute the bacon and chorizo
together. Drain. Combine the beans and onion with the drained bacon
and chorizo in a pot, add the other ingredients, and simmer for 30
minutes. Serves: 4 Heat Scale: Medium
Spicy Calabacitas
This recipe combines three Native American crops: squash, corn, and
chile. Although we don't know for sure, my theory is that the Cerun
villagers would have known how to use green chile. I have taken the
liberty of substituting New Mexican chiles for the small Cerunean
chiles, making a milder dish. The villagers, of course, would not
have used butter, milk, or cheese, but rather fat and water flavored
with palm fruits.
1/2 cup chopped green New Mexican chile, roasted, peeled, stems removed
3 zucchini squash, cubed
1/2 cup chopped onion
4 tablespoons butter or margarine
2 cups whole kernel corn
1 cup milk
1/2 cup grated Monterey Jack cheese
In a pan, saute the squash and onion in the butter until the squash
is tender. Add the chile, corn, and milk. Simmer the mixture for 15
to 20 minutes to blend the flavors. Add the cheese and heat until
the cheese is melted. Yield: 4 to 6 servings Heat Scale: Medium
by Dave DeWitt
www.fiery-foods.com
On an August evening in A.D. 595, the Loma Caldera (in what is now
El Salvador) erupted, sending clouds of volcanic ash into the Mayan
agricultural village of Cerun, burying it twenty feet deep and
turning it into the New World equivalent of Pompeii. Miraculously,
all the villagers escaped, but what they left behind gives us a good
idea of the life they led, the food they ate, and the chile peppers
they grew.
The Ancient Ash
In 1976, while leveling ground for the erection of grain silos, a
Salvadoran bulldozer operator noticed that he had plowed into an
ancient building. He immediately notified the national museum, but a
museum archaeologist thought that the building was of recent vintage
and allowed the bulldozing to continue. Several buildings were
destroyed. Two years later, Payson Sheets, an anthropologist from
the University of Colorado, led a team of students on an
archaeological survey of the Zapotitan Valley. He was taken to the
site by local residents and quickly began a test excavation, and
radiocarbon dating of artifacts proved that they were very ancient.
He received permission from the government to do a complete
excavation of Cerun. The site was saved.
Dr. Sheets and his students returned for five field sessions at
Cerun, most recently in 1996. Their discoveries are detailed on
their web site ceren.colorado.edu . One of the most
interesting things they discovered was, in the words of Dr. Sheets,
"We had no idea that people in the region lived so well 14 centuries
ago."
The ash preserved the crops in the field, leaving impressions of the
plants. The plants then rotted away, leaving perfect cavities, or
molds. Using techniques that were developed at Pompeii, the
archaeologists poured liquid plaster into the cavities. By removing
the ash, the ancient fields were revealed and could be studied.
Interestingly, the Native Americans of Cerun used row and furrow
techniques similar to those still utilized today; corn was grown in
elevated rows, and beans and squash were grown in the furrows in
between. In a courtyard of a building, "We even found a series of
four mature chile plants with stem diameters over 5 centimeters (2
inches)," wrote Dr. Sheets. "They must have been many years old."
Chile peppers are rarely found in archaeological sites in
Mesoamerica, so imagine the surprise of the researchers when they
discovered painted ceramic storage vessels that contained large
quantities of chile seeds. "One vessel had cacao seeds in the
bottom, and chiles above, separated by a layer of cotton gauze," Dr.
Sheets revealed. "It is possible that they would have been prepared
into a kind of mole sauce." Also found were corn kernels, beans,
squash seeds, cotton seeds, and evidence of manioc plants and small
agave plants, which were used for their fiber to make rope rather
than being fermented for an alcoholic beverage, pulque, as was done
in Mexico.
I emailed Dr. Sheets, hoping to discover the shape and size of the
chiles and thus deduce the variety being grown. But no whole pods
were found, just the seeds and some pod fragments. The size of the
chile stem indicated that the plant had been grown as a perennial,
but all chile plants are perennial in tropical climates and can grow
to considerable size.
Dr. Sheets wrote me back about an article by Dr. David Lentz, the
botanist who had studied the plant remains, and I tracked it down in
the journal Latin American Antiquity that I found in the Zimmerman
Library at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Lentz wrote about the
seeds and the pod fragments, "It appears that many of these fell
from the rafters of buildings where they would have been hung for
drying or storage." He added that the chile seeds from the site were
the first in Central America found outside Mexico, and he speculated
that those seeds in vessels were probably being saved for future
planting.
The Taming of the Wild Chile
But what kind of chile was grown in Cerun? There was an intriguing
clue in the article: a photograph of a chile seed compared with a
bar indicating the length of one millimeter. The seed was 3.5
millimeters wide. Since the size of the seed is directly related to
the size of the pod (generally speaking, the larger the pod, the
larger the seed), perhaps it was possible to guess the size of the
pod by comparing that ancient seed to seeds I had stored in my
greenhouse.
Paleoethnobotanists, the scientists who study the plants used by
ancient civilizations, have theorized that chiles were first used as
"tolerated weeds." They were not cultivated but rather collected in
the wild when the fruits were ripe. The wild forms had small, erect
fruits which were deciduous, meaning that they separated easily from
the calyx and fell to the ground.
During the domestication process, whether consciously or
unconsciously, early Native American farmers selected seeds from
plants with larger, non-deciduous, and pendant fruits. The reasons
for these selection criteria are a greater yield from each plant and
protection of the pods from chile-hungry birds. The larger the pod,
the greater will be its tendency to become pendant rather than to
remain erect. Thus the pods became hidden amidst the leaves and did
not protrude above them as beacons for birds. The selection of
varieties with the tendency to be non-deciduous ensured that the
pods remained on the plant until fully ripe and thus were resistant
to dropping off as a result of wind or physical contact. The
domesticated chiles gradually lost their natural means of seed
dispersal by birds and became dependent upon human intervention for
their continued existence.
Because chiles cross-pollinate, hundreds of varieties of the five
domesticated chile species were developed by humans over thousands
of years in South and Central America. The color, size, and shape of
the pods of these domesticated forms varied enormously. Ripe fruits
could be red, orange, brown, yellow, or white. Their shapes could be
round, conic, elongate, oblate, or bell-like, and their size could
vary from the tiny fruits of chiltepins or tabascos to the large
pods of the anchos and pasillas. But very little archaeological
evidence existed to support these theories until the finds at Cerun.
An Educated Guess
It was exciting to think that perhaps we had a window into the
ancient chile domestication process. Because their seeds were
collected, and the plants were growing in a courtyard, the chile
plants at Cerun were obviously cultivated and were more than just
"tolerated weeds." It was time to break out my metric ruler and
start measuring seeds. I came up with the following table, ranked by
seed width:
Variety Pod Length Seed Width
Ancho 12 cm 6 mm
Serrano 7 cm 5 mm
Jalapeno 6.5 cm 5 mm
De arbol 4.5 cm 4.5 mm
Habanero 4.5 cm 4 mm
Piquin 1.3 cm 4 mm
Cerun Chiles ? 3.5 mm
Chiltepin 0.5 cm 3 mm
The first conclusion I reached was that the Cerun chiles were
small-podded. They certainly were not as large as anchos, whose
seeds are twice the width of those of the Cerun chiles. They could,
of course, have been chiltepins, because the seeds were only half a
millimeter wider than chiltepin seeds. But if they were somewhere
between the size of chiltepins and piquins, that would have made the
pods about 1 centimeter long, less than half an inch. And since
there is evidence that the chile pods had been hung up to dry with
agave twine, that process would not have been necessary for such
small-podded plants. Note that the habanero, which is nine times the
length of the chiltepin, has seeds only 1 millimeter wider. Also
note that the de arbol variety, which is also 4.5 cm long, but much
thinner, has seeds only 1 millimeter wider than the Cerun chiles. My
educated guess is that the Cerun chiles were about 3.5 centimeters
long, or about an inch and a half. I believe that the domestication
of chiles from chiltepins to serranos and anchos would not be
completed until the Aztec culture of nearly a millennium after A.D.
595. I repeat that this is my personal theory, and that I am not a
paleoethnobotanist, though sometimes I wish I had studied that
discipline.
The Cuisine of Cerun
In addition to the vegetable crops of corn, chiles, beans, manioc,
cacao, and squash, the archaeologists found evidence that the Cerun
villagers also harvested wild avocados, palm fruits and nuts, and
certain spices such as achiote, or annatto seeds. In fact, Dr.
Sheets observed, "The villagers ate better and had a greater variety
of foodstuff than their descendants. Traditional families today eat
mostly corn and beans, with some rice, squash, and chiles, but
rarely any meat. Cerun's residents ate deer and dog meat." They also
consumed peccary, mud turtle, duck, and rodents, but deer was their
primary meat. Fully fifty percent of the total bones found on the
site belonged to white-tailed deer, and many of those deer were
immature animals-giving rise to a very interesting theory.
Linda Brown, who wrote the 1996 Field Season Preliminary Report
entitled "Household and Village Animal Use," noted, "Cerun residents
may have practiced some form of deer management. One of the deer
procurement strategies the Cerun villagers may have utilized is
'garden hunting.' Garden hunting consists of allowing deer to browse
in cultivated fields and household gardens where they can be hunted.
While some vegetation is lost to browsing, the benefits include easy
access to deer when needed." Expanding upon that theory, she wrote,
"The ethnohistoric data make many references to the Maya partially
taming white-tailed deer. Specifically, historical sources note that
it was women who were responsible for taking in, semi-taming, and
raising deer. [Diego de] Landa mentioned that women raise other
domestic animals and let the deer suck their breasts, by which means
they raise them and make them so tame that they never will go into
the woods, although they take them and carry them through the woods
and raise them there. Apparently, during historic times, there was a
designated place in the woods where women would take deer to browse
until they needed them. Scholars have argued that pre-Columbian
women may have raised deer, dogs, peccary, and fowl much like
contemporary Maya women raise pigs and fowl for food, trade, and
special occasion feasts. Perhaps the Cerun women raised dog, fowl (a
duck was tethered inside the Household 1 bodega), and semi-tamed
deer as a contribution to the domestic and ceremonial economy."
It is always a challenge for archaeologists to reconstruct ancient
cuisines and cooking techniques. The Cerun villagers did not have
metal utensils, but they did have fired ceramics that could be used
to boil foods. They could grill over open flames, and perhaps fry
foods in ceramic pots using cotton seed oil or animal fat. They had
obsidian knives that could cut as cleanly as metal. They had metates
for grinding corn into flour and mocaljetes for grinding fruits,
vegetables, chiles, and spices together into sauces.
Based on the archaeological evidence, I have devised some recipes
that reflect the main ingredients used in the cooking of Cerun,
adapted, of course, for modern kitchens. One of my basic theories
about the history of cooking is that we should never underestimate
our predecessors' culinary sophistication, so I cannot presume that
14 centuries ago the Maya were preparing boring food. Especially
since we know that they had chiles.
Recipes
Royal Chocolate with Chile
Although this drink was served to royalty in the large Mayan cities,
the discovery of chile in conjunction with cacao in Cerun indicates
that even commoners knew how to make this concoction.
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup cocoa
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 teaspoon hot chile powder, such as piquin
1 vanilla bean pod
In a pan, heat the water to boiling. Add the remaining ingredients
and stir well. Serve immediately with the vanilla bean for garnish
in the drink. Yield: 1 serving Heat Scale: Medium
The Earliest Mole Sauce
Why wouldn't the cooks of Cerun have developed sauces to serve over
meats and vegetables? After all, there is evidence that curry
mixtures were in existence thousands of years ago in what is now
India, and we have to assume that Native Americans experimented with
all available ingredients. Perhaps this mole sauce was served over
stewed duck meat, as ducks were one of the domesticated meat sources
of the Cerun villagers.
4 tomatillos, husks removed
1 tomato, toasted in a skillet and peeled
1/2 teaspoon chile seeds
3 tablespoons pepitas (toasted pumpkin or squash seeds)
1 corn tortilla, torn into pieces
2 tablespoons medium-hot chile powder
1 teaspoon achiote (annatto seeds)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups chicken broth
1 ounce Mexican or bittersweet chocolate
In a blender, combine the tomatillos, tomato, chile seeds, pepitas,
tortilla, chile powder and achiote to make a paste. In a pan, heat
the vegetable oil and fry the paste until fragrant, about 4 minutes,
stirring constantly. Add the chicken broth and the chocolate and
stir over medium heat until thickened to desired consistency. Yield:
About 2 1/2 cups Heat Scale: Medium
Venison Steak with Juniper Berry and Fiery Red Chile Sauce
This recipe is by Lois Ellen Frank, from her book Foods of the
Southwest Indian Nations (Ten Speed Press, 2002). Both the venison
and the juniper berries are available from mail-order sources. Of
course, grape juice or wine would not have been available to the
Maya, but Lois has adapted this recipe for the modern kitchen.
The Sauce
1 tablespoon dried juniper berries
3 cups unsweetened dark grape juice or wine
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
2 shallots, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 cups beef stock
The Steaks
6 venison steaks, 8 to 10 ounces each
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
4 whole dried chiles de arbol, seeds and stems removed, crushed
To make the sauce, wrap the juniper berries in a clean kitchen towel
and crush them using a mallet. Remove them from the towel and place
them in a saucepan with the grape juice or wine, bay leaves, thyme
and shallots. Simmer over medium heat for 20 to 25 minutes, until
the liquid has been reduced to 1 cup. Add the stock, bring to a
boil, then decrease the heat to medium and cook for another 15
minutes until the sauce has been reduced to 1 1/2 cups. Strain the
sauce through a fine sieve and keep it warm.
Brush the steaks on both sides with the olive oil and sprinkle with
salt and pepper. Place the steaks on the grill and grill for 3
minutes, until they have charred marks. Rotate the steaks a half
turn and grill for another 3 minutes. Flip the steaks over and grill
for another 5 minutes until done as desired. Ladle the sauce onto
each plate, top with the steaks, pattern-side up, and sprinkle the
crushed chiles over them. Yield: 6 servings Heat Scale: Medium
Pepita-Grilled Venison Chops
Here is a tasty grilled dish featuring native New World game,
chiles, and tomatoes, plus pepitas-toasted pumpkin or squash seeds.
Garlic is not native to the New World, but is given here as a
substitute for wild onions, which the people of Cerun would have
known.
5 tablespoons pepitas
3 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon red chile powder
1/2 cup tomato paste
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons lemon juice or vinegar
4 thick-cut venison chops, or substitute thick lamb chops
Puree all the ingredients, except the venison, in a blender. Paint
the chops with this mixture and marinate at room temperature for an
hour. Grill the chops over a charcoal and pi�on wood fire until
done, basting with the remaining marinade. Yield: 4 servings Heat
Scale: Medium
Cerun Beans
Three varieties of beans were found beneath the ash in the village
kitchens of Cerun. Certainly they were boiled, and since they are
bland, they were undoubtedly combined with other ingredients,
including chiles and primitive tomatoes. The Cerun villagers would
have used peccary fat for the lard and bacon, and of course would
not have had cumin. But they probably would have used spices such as
Mexican oregano.
3 cups cooked pinto beans (either canned or simmered for hours until
tender)
1 onion, minced
2 tablespoons lard, or substitute vegetable oil
5 slices bacon, minced
3/4 cup chorizo sausage
1 pound tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
6 serrano chiles, stems removed, minced
1 teaspoon cumin (or substitute Mexican oregano)
Saute the beans and onion in the lard or oil for about five minutes,
stirring constantly. In another skillet, saute the bacon and chorizo
together. Drain. Combine the beans and onion with the drained bacon
and chorizo in a pot, add the other ingredients, and simmer for 30
minutes. Serves: 4 Heat Scale: Medium
Spicy Calabacitas
This recipe combines three Native American crops: squash, corn, and
chile. Although we don't know for sure, my theory is that the Cerun
villagers would have known how to use green chile. I have taken the
liberty of substituting New Mexican chiles for the small Cerunean
chiles, making a milder dish. The villagers, of course, would not
have used butter, milk, or cheese, but rather fat and water flavored
with palm fruits.
1/2 cup chopped green New Mexican chile, roasted, peeled, stems removed
3 zucchini squash, cubed
1/2 cup chopped onion
4 tablespoons butter or margarine
2 cups whole kernel corn
1 cup milk
1/2 cup grated Monterey Jack cheese
In a pan, saute the squash and onion in the butter until the squash
is tender. Add the chile, corn, and milk. Simmer the mixture for 15
to 20 minutes to blend the flavors. Add the cheese and heat until
the cheese is melted. Yield: 4 to 6 servings Heat Scale: Medium