SpiceLines

I am in Veracruz, and ever since I landed in this sultry port city of 500,000, I have been peeling off my clothes. Veracruz lies in the embrace of Mexico’s Gulf Coast curve, just above the crook of the elbow, backed by the flat palm tree-dotted coastal plain, lapped by opaque grey green waves rolling in from Cuba and maybe Spain. It is hot and sticky, I am down to a filmy dress and very little underwear, and I badly want an ice cold horchata.

Luckily we are at El Bayo, a sunny, palm-thatched seafood palace, and horchata—a sweet rice drink flavored with delicate Mexican cinnamon--is the first beverage our slightly harried waitress offers us. We are four: Susana Trilling, the vivacious owner of Seasons of My Heart, a Oaxaca cooking school (and author of a cookbook by the same name) has plotted an alluring culinary expedition, which will take us from the lively seafood markets of Veracruz to the vanilla plantations of Gutierrez Zamora and Papantla, and then to the cities of Xalapa, Coatepec and Xico,to sample molcajetes, organic coffee and a dark, sweet mole enriched with almonds. On the Spring Equinox we'll greet the sun at the ancient ruins of El Tajin and with incense and prayers receive limpias, or cleansings, with from the curanderos or healers who gather at the base of the pyramids.

Mysteriously only two of us have joined the expedition—Deborah, a retired banker from Houston, and myself. But Susana’s trips are always high energy and already the atmosphere around our table at El Bayo is frenetic. This popular restaurant started small, but now encompasses two open-air dining rooms on facing street corners. Our local guide is Silvia Lagunes Troncoso, a pretty Veracruz native and recent CIA graduate who at this moment is introducing us to the city’s bounteous seafood. “What do you like?” she asks. “Octopus? Conch? Sopa de mariscos?” “Bring it on,” we say. And they do.

First up are crispy tostados, quartered corn tortillas fried in manteca or lard and served with a thick, searingly hot, yellow habanero salsa. OK, let’s get the lard business out of the way: Lots of dishes in this part of Mexico, from black beans and thinly sliced plantains to tamales wrapped in banana leaves, are enriched by a hearty spoonfuls of soft, caramel-colored pork lard, which makes already great food into seductively delicious fare. If you go home and try to duplicate these dishes with canola oil or some other heart-healthy substance, you find that you are missing most of the sabor, or flavor. Unless you plan to render your own pork fat, you'll just have to enjoy it here.

Oh, yes--and the tortillas are nothing like the mass-produced flour ones that clog our supermarket shelves. All over Veracruz, we devour earthy tasting tortillas made of masa or cornmeal, stone ground, patted out by hand and cooked until blackened in spots on a blistering hot comal. They are so irresistible that even the most determined non-carb dieter will succumb to their rich, toasty flavor, especially if they are fried in a little of that lard….

Of course there is a price to pay. I glance at two fleshy senoras at the table next to us, heavy ropes of pearls around their necks, hefty arms and ample bosoms bursting from frilly blouses. They are picking daintily at plates of gigantic stuffed camarones (shrimp), but picking is clearly not their normal modus operandi. Is it worth the extra heft? Hmm, let's think about it while eating a few more of those tostados...

Fortunately our own orders begin to arrive. There is ensalada de caracol, a luscious salad of conch, sweet and tender, simply tossed with chopped tomato, onion, serrano peppers, and lime juice. But there is a secret ingredient, a sea-sweet, slightly musky flavor that we can’t identify until our waitress tips us: It is the juice of cooked sea urchins. This in one master stroke tells us a lot about the Veracruz approach to seafood: Take the freshest fish and shellfish, season with aromatic vegetables, chiles and herbs, but never excessively, cook just enough to bring out the flavor, then stir up a little mystery with a local ingredient—an herb such as the hoja santa leaf, or in this case the sea urchin juice--that transforms your dish into something extraordinary,

The ensalada is superb, and we all exclaim over the tenderness of the caracol. “It is simmered for over one hour, until it becomes soft,” explains Sylvia. Pulpo, or octopus, also cooked until tender, then chopped and simply sautéed with yellow onions, has a rich, almost nutty flavor. An aromatic cazuela de mariscos, seafood stew served in a clay pot, combines succulent crab, shrimp and and chunks of fish, in a lightly spicy tomato-infused broth enriched with a touch of cream and melting cheese.

There is more, so much more on the menu—especially those gigantic camarones our neighbors have polished off—but we are too full to eat another bite. There's always tomorrow..

But first we must go for dessert.

Contact: El Bayo, Carmen Perez No. 31 at the corner of Netzahualcoyolt. Telephone: 178-1333. Web:
www.elbayo.com.

Recipe: Horchata, or Cinnamon Ricewater Drink

Adapted from Maria Elena Serena, Coatepec

On a hot day, this sweet, milky, cinnamon-scented drink, poured over ice, is surprisingly refreshing. We drank it across the state of Veracruz and it was unfailingly delicious. This recipe has been adapted from one given by Maria Elena Serena, a remarkable cook in the town of Coatepec. In days to come, you will hear much more about our cooking lesson with this cheerful, meticulous woman whose home boasts the ultimate luxury: two kitchens, a detached one for frying or“smelly” cooking,” and an indoor one for finishing up.

Be sure to use crumbly Ceylon cinnamon. which may be sold as canela or Mexican cinnamon in the international section of your grocery store. (You can also order it from www.penzeys.com.) Ordinary cinnamon, which is really a stronger tasting cousin known as cassia, is too hard to pulverize in a blender. If canela is not available, use powdered cinnamon to taste, adding it to the rice milk 1/4 teaspoon at a time.

Makes 3 to 4 cups

Ingredients:

3/4 cup white rice, soaked in 2 cups of water overnight
1 1-inch piece of Ceylon cinnamon, or to taste
1/4 cup sugar
Ground Ceylon cinnamon, if desired

Method:

1. Drain the rice and place in a blender with the cinnamon and 3 cups of fresh water. Blend at high speed until the rice and cinnamon are pulverized. Taste, and add more cinnamon if desired.
2. Place a large strainer lined with cheesecloth over a bowl and strain the rice milk, pressing on the solids with the back of a spoon. Then pick up the cheese cloth and squeeze the solids to release the last drops of liquid.
3. Return to the blender and froth at high speed. If the horchata is a little too thick for your taste, add 1/4 to 1/2 cups more water and froth again. Serve in a tall glass over ice. Sprinkle with powdered cinnamon if desired.

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“Guero, guera! Guero, guera! Guero, guera!“ Standing on a corner between two Veracruz ice cream shops, we are caught in a friendly shouting match, ambushed by exploding word bombs. Raucous touts for both enterprises are yelling “Blondie! Blondie! Blondie! “ at us, hoping to snag our attention and get us to part with our pesos.

Why “Guero, guera”? No one seems to know—or care. In a city of dark-haired Jarochos, as Veracruz natives are sometimes known, shouting “Blondie!” at passersby might seem like a good marketing hook. But on this hot and humid night, we are simply desperate for cooling ice cream, so Silvia has navigated her big Ford SUV through the crowded streets, snagging a parking spot just a few blocks from the Zocalo and steps from Neveria Guero Guera.

You’d never guess you were about to enter ice cream paradise when you walk into the dilapidated, white-tiled, grimy-floored shop. In one corner, there is a shrine to the Virgen de Guadalupe, resplendent in glittering green and gold sequins, under an arch of pink plastic roses. Benignly detached, she appears to bestow a vague blessing on the shop’s greedy patrons. That would be us, or course.

We pay 12 pesos to a cashier in a high, old fashioned booth, then turn to the locus of our desire: a long counter into which are sunk a dozen or so round, stainless steel containers of the most exquisite tropical flavors this side of Tahiti. Twelve pesos will buy a 4-ounce cup with your choice of two: You can get chocolate and vanilla, of course, but why stick to the tried and true when you can sample some truly exotic tastes? There’s ice cream made of nanche, for instance, a small golden fruit which we’ve seen pickled in jars in the market, jobo, which resembles a yellow plum, and the mysteriously named marucaya.

Susana picks guanabana, a local favorite, I’m trying jobo and mango, other cups are filled with scoops of coco and cacahuate. Soon our spoons are dipping in and out of each other’s cups, and with full mouths, we’re all exclaiming, “Try this one!” Guanabana, or soursop,is wonderful, with an appealingly mellow, sweet tropical flavor. Golden-hued jobo is pleasantly plummy, but the mango, though refreshing, lacks intensity—later we learn that the local fruit, hanging green on the trees, will not ripen until late April. Creamy coco with shreds of grated coconut is divine, as is cacahuate, which tastes as if freshly made peanut brittle has been mixed into the ice cream. It’s sweet, salty and crunchy with lots of coarsely ground roasted peanuts.

I notice that at first taste, flavors seem rich--after all, they’re made with fresh cream, stirred with a big wooden paddle during the freezing process. But gradually the ice cream seems to thin out and taste more like an ice. Sort of like Chinese food—an hour later I'm hungry again. But that’s OK, because we didn’t have a chance to sample nanche or marucayaor at least four other flavors. Oh, yes. We’ll be back.

The night sky is inky, the heavy air has softened, and the palms are rustling in the light sea breeze. We are in the zocalo, Veracruz’s sprawling open-air living room, where every evening friends gather to drink, to chat, to look, to stroll, to dance, to flirt. Bordered on one side by the apricot-colored 17th century Palacio Municipal, the zocalo, or town square, is the heart of this colonial city. It is the site of Los Portales, where you can relax at one of several venerable cafes, quaff an Indio beer and listen to competing marimba bands. The 18th century cathedral, Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion, is here too, as are legions of cigar-hawkers, jewelry vendors and Indians selling hand-woven belts and embroidered clothing.

Tonight, as always, the atmosphere is lighthearted, A meandering circle of orange plastic chairs has been set up near the ornate bandstand. The chairs are for the danzon, and if you sit in one, anyone can ask you to take a turn on the marble-tiled floor. A stately couples dance with a tropical lilt, the danzon migrated to Veracruz from Cuba in the late 19th century. Eventually it became the dance of high society, though today it is for anyone who wants to keep the tradition alive.

A woman with a yellow daisy in her hair tells us that a host of dance clubs have gathered for tonight’s danzon. Women of a certain age are wearing tiny tank tops, metallic gladiator sandals, flowers tucked behind one ear. Lips are rouged, skirts are short, hoop earrings dangle. The men, in slacks and shirts with rolled up sleeves, seem more relaxed, though for many, this is the high point of the week.

We wait. A wiry grey-haired woman walks by, swinging a glass case with three shelves of creamy custard. “Flanes, flanes,” she intones. A cluster of metallic balloons bobbles across the square like a giant aluminum cloud. A man saunters along with a day glo plastic lizard creeping down his shoulder. I buy a handwoven belt, which everyone tells me is just what my clingy beige and white dress needs. Babies cry, lovers kiss.

Just before 9 o’clock, the band launches into the lilting strains of Augustin Lara’s 1936 classic “Verzcruz.” Almost in unison, couples slip comfortably onto the dance floor. Although I have heard the danzon described as “smoldering” and “sensual,” tonight it seems elegant and graceful. The dancers scarcely touch each other, hands resting lightly at the hip and shoulder, and there is at least eight inches of air between their bodies. Their movements are measured but fluid, as they glide along in a smoothly executed box step. At a musical prompt, all the couples pause and turn to face the band, then resume the dance.

A man in a blue shirt, with crinkly laugh lines and silvery hair slicked back, approaches Susana, He has the best pick up line of the night: “Yo soy Jesus de Veraxcruz. Los Jesus de Alvarado huelen de pescado. Pero yo soy Jesus de Veracruz.” (“I am Jesus from Veracruz. Men named Jesus from Alvarado smell like fish. But I am Jesus from Veracruz.”

They edge onto the dance floor. She laughs as he shows her how to move through the steps of the danzon. Overhead the moon is rising.

Common sense tells us that some Veracruzanos eat breakfast at home, but with so many other tempting options, the question is, “Why would you?”

It is around 10:30 in the morning and we are at Antojitos Lolita, a modest white stucco restaurant in central Veracruz with a cheerful crazy quilt of mismatched tile running around the interior. Today is the Dia de Los Compadres and on the television mounted high in one corner, a talk show hostess oozes warmth as she interviews rosy-cheeked children and their doting godparents. Outside the air is just beginning to steam; inside, alluring smells wafting from the kitchen have stirred the ravening wolf.

Lolita’s is a breakfast mecca, with a long menu of typical Veracruz specialities such as picadas and gordas, as well as eggs, or huevos, fixed many different ways, each more tempting than the last. As well, we could order bistec ranchero, chicken enchiladas in salsa verde, empanadas stuffed with shrimp or crab, and for dessert, coconut and pineapple tamales.

Susana, Deborah, Silvia and I settle for good strong café con leche and freshly squeezed juice from the state's divinely sweet oranges. Our waiter takes our order, never batting an eye even when we ask for tastes of almost everything. Soon we are sampling an assortment of salsas plunked down the center of the table: fiery chipotle (a regional favorite made with a smokey dried chile), cooked tomato with charred jalapenos, milder salsa verde with avocado, onions, fresh jalapeno and garlic; and a dark, tropical mole enriched with chocolate, almonds and peanuts, and sweetened with raisins, bananas, prunes and sugar. Three dried chiles--mulato, ancho, and pasilla add heat. This luscious mole is cooked in a clay pot, for 5 to 6 hours.

And then a dozen plates arrive. Here’s a little of what we’re eating:

Picadas: Handmade tortillas, gently fried in manteca, or lard, and shaped to form a little dish with raised edges. You can order them lots of different ways, filled with any of the house salsas or with longaniza, a spicy, salty local sausage, seared steak, chicken, eggs, or chicharon, crackling pork rind. I am seduced by a picada with tomato, onions and queso fresco, a fresh crumbly white cheese, topped with avocado. I add black beans and smokey chipotle salsa. I could stop right here and be forever happy.

Gordas: Masa, or cornmeal dough, is shaped into little rounds and fried in manteca until it puffs up—hence their name which could be translated as “fatties.” At Lolita’s, gordas come three way: blancas, which are plain; dulce, sweeted with piloncillo, dark unrefined sugar and flavored with anise; or negras, mixed with black beans and salt and served with a cooked tomato salsa. All three are irresistible.

Huevos: Eggs at Lolitas can be ordered in more than a dozen hearty styles. We try huevos tirados, a Veracruz specialty, and fall in love with the smooth richly flavored refried black beans mixed with lightly scrambled eggs. Huevos a la veracruzana, scrambled eggs inside a soft, folded tortilla, lightly sautéed in manteca, topped with chorizo, queso fresco and chiles, are a close second.

Senora Delores Gomez Mencilla, the small, energetic woman who runs the kitchen and whose curiosity has been piqued by reports of four women enthusiastically ordering everything in sight, comes out to meet us. After a quick chat with Susana about her cooking school, she agrees to take us behind the scenes and show us a trick or two.

The sweltering two-room kitchen is a swirl of activity. Seven or eight cocineras, hair covered by white cotton cofias, or caps, are cooking gorditas on a hot plancha, blackening tomatoes and chiles on a long cast iron grill heated by red hot coals, and patting tortillas by hand. In the back, there are big bowls of salsa ready to be served with each order. I spot a football-sized, bright green-skinned avocado. Nearby a whole just-plucked chicken is about to go into a pot of broth for caldo tlalpeno.

There are also huge vats of those delicious black beans. Senora Mencilla tells us that after cooking the beans, they mash them by hand until they are smooth and creamy. Then comes one of her flavor secrets: In very hot manteca, onions are fried almost until they are burned, then removed from the fat. Whisk in a little flour, add the mashed beans and fry gently.

Outside, trucks are roaring past Lolita’s. A gutarist is strolling the restaurant, singing “Quarenta y Veinte,” (‘Forty and Twenty”), a romantic ballad by the popular singer Jose Jose. Lunch patrons are streaming in. It’s time to go.

Contact: Antojitos Lolita, 16 de Septiembre, no. 837, between Zapata and Escobedo. Telephone: 932-0760. Open 7AM to 7PM.

This recipe is a version of the delicious huevos tirados served at Antojitos Lolita in Veracruz. The secret of Senora Mencilla’s smooth, richly flavored black beans is manteca, or lard in which an onion has been fried until it is blackened. Even though we don’t have the pleasure of using that lovely soft, caramel colored pork fat, cooking the onion and the beans in peanut oil does add a touch of extra flavor.

To serve 2

Ingredients for the black beans:

1 pound black beans
3 cups water
3 to 4 tablespoons peanut oil
1/2 medium onion, sliced thin
Chicken stock, if desired

Method:

1. Wash the black beans, removing any stones. Place in a medium bowl with 4 cups of water and soak for 3 hours.
2. Place the beans and their soaking liquid in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover with a tightly fitting lid, and reduce heat to low. Cook until the beans are very soft, but still hold their shape, 40 minutes or longer. Older beans usually take longer to cook; check to see if it is necessary to add more water. When the beans are done, they should be should be slightly soupy.
3. Scoop 1 cup of cooked beans from the pot, with some of the cooking liquid .and place them in a bowl. (Reserve the rest for another use.) Using a potato masher, mash them until they are very smooth and creamy. Add a little water or chicken stock if they seem dry.
4. Heat a frying pan over medium heat. When it is hot, add the peanut oil. When the oil is hot, but not smoking, add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are blackened. Remove the onions from the oil in the pan. Add the mashed beans and slowly fry them until they have absorbed all the oil. Remove from the heat and let them cool. The beans can be kept overnight in the refrigerator.

Ingredients for the tomato salsa:

1 pound plum tomatoes, cored and chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon cilantro, chopped
1 large jalpeno pepper
Salt to taste

Method:

1. While the beans are cooking, combine the tomatoes, onion and garlic in a medium saucepan over medium low heat. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the mixture is cooked through. Add the cilantro and stir.
2. While the salsa is cooking, char the jalapeno in a gas flame until it is blackened and blistered all over. (Or toast it on a griddle or in a dry cast iron frying pan that has been heated over a high flame.) Let it cool slightly, then remove the stem, cut in half and remove the seeds.
3. When the tomato mixture is cooked through, put it in a blender along with the jalapeno and whir briefly. The salsa should not be smooth, but a little chunky.
4. Remove from the blende, add salt to taste, and allow to cool. The salsa may be refrigerated overnight.

Ingredients for the eggs:

5 large eggs
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablepoon canola oil
Sliced avocado (optional)
Sliced papaya (optional)

Cooked tomato salsa (see above)
Refried black beans (see above)
Chicken stock, if needed

Method:

1. In a small saucepan, heat the tomato salsa over a low flame. In another saucepan, heat the refried black beans very gently over low heat. If the beans seem dry, thin them with a little chicken stock. They should be very soft, but not runny--about same consistency as eggs that have been just barely scrambled.
2. When the salsa and beans have been heated through, whisk the eggs in a large bowl with salt and pepper to taste. Heat a cast iron or nonstick pan over medium high heat. When it is hot, add the oil. When the oil is hot but not smoking, whisk the eggs again and pour into the pan. Reduce the heat to medium and with a spatula, begin to scramble the eggs. When they are partly cooked but still soft and loose, add the refried beans and scramble them together until the eggs and beans are completely mixed. Do not overcook—lower the heat if necessary.
3. Serve at once with cooked tomato salsa on the side and, if desired, slices of avocado and ripe papaya.

“I must warn you—the fish market smells a little bad,” says Silvia as we thread our way through the narrow, bustling streets off the malecon, or quay. Clearly she is worried that we will turn up our noses. It is close to noon, the sun is fiery and all four of us are perspiring in the humid air, but the prospect of buying fish just hours out of the briny deep is too alluring to be dissuaded by a little rank odor.

Veracruz’s municipal fish market is small, but exuberant—and it smells mainly of salt and seawater. We wander happily down a single outdoor aisle, extending the length of a short block, flanked by shops on either side. In front of each are large wooden crates filled with crushed ice on which the most tempting glistening seafood has been arranged. Silvery skins gleam, eyes are bright, antennas quiver--all of it seems to have been swimming just moments earlier.

“Camarones! Caracol! Robalito!” shout the fish merchants. “Que va a llevar?” Fishmongers everywhere are a raucous lot, but in Veracruz they also seem really good-humored. Like so many Jarochos or natives of the city, they are full of wisecracks, sometimes a little off color, rowdy but fun, almost as if life were a rolling party and they were the hosts.

At one shop I am transfixed by a crate of jaiba, live blue crabs artistically tied up in green palm fronds to keep them from escaping over the sides. The grinning fishmonger, looking prosperous in a polo shirt and wire-rimmed glasses, lifts a monstrous, silvery-red jurel, or jack fish, that sports a rather glum expression. “Buy him and I’ll make him smile for you,” he sings out. Jurel is sometimes used in albondigas, or fish meatballs, but I smile and shake my head. He is big enough to feed forty.

Sizing me up, the merchant picks up a much smaller yellow-bellied pompano. “Here’s the way I make pompano papelado; Stuff the fish with tomato and onion inside, and sprinkle it all over with lime and salt. Seal it up and bake it. “ A customer frowns, “You shouldn’t put the tomato and onion inside,” she says. “It’s my recipe!” he barks good-naturedly.

I recognize the pompano, but what are all these other denizens of the deep? There is champa, for instance, a plump fish with a lizard-like skin. Robalo turns out to be snook, a narrow, silvery fish with a thin black racing stripe down the side. There are clear plastic bags of frozen pink, black and cream hunks that are conch. But I nearly gasp when I see the shrimp: from head to tail, these gigantic pink wonders are at least seven inches long.

Silvia hustles us around the corner to Pescadoria Gandara, a big indoor fish market where we will buy some of those shrimp, as well as crabmeat and negrillo for the cooking class she is giving us. There are two big rooms. In the first, you pick your fish out of a long line of blue and white tiled basins packed with ice. After your catch is weighed and paid for, you take it to the next room where it is scaled, gutted and filleted.

The array of fish is almost kaleidoscopic. Sierra is thin and silvery with brown spots, sargo is round and flat with grayish stripes. I see huachinango chico, small red snapper, and suddenly the long ago taste of huachinango a la veracruzana, smothered with tomatoes, onions, olives and capers, is on my tongue. I lust for all three kinds of shrimp: pink, gray (cristal) and white (blanco). There are slithery heaps of pulpo de Veracruz, or octopus, piles of caracol del caribe, the queen conch, and spiny acamaya, or freshwater crayfish which seem to have only one claw. Pescadoria Gandara has recipes mounted on the walls,and printed copies to take away, including one for fish with tamarind sauce favored by “Bill Cleenton.”

In the room next door, a fishmonger is wielding a wicked looking mocha, a knife with a scimitar-like curved blade with a barbed hook at the end. He is gutting a cherna, a big brown speckled fish weighing 4 to 5 kilos. I ask if I can take his picture. Obligingly, he poses with his mocha raised in the air, looking appropriately diabolical. Then he winks and twirls his blade; in a few moments the fish has become a stack of meaty fillets.

The three of us—Susana, Deborah and myself—are standing around the island in Sylvia’s kitchen. There are two kilos—that’s four pounds, six and one-half ounces—of jaiba in a wide, shallow bowl placed between us. Jaiba is blue crab and the crabmeat in question is utterly sweet and luscious--at least it must be because the crabs were scuttling across the sea bottom just hours ago. But even though the meat has been plucked from the shells, it is riddled with tiny pieces of cartilage. We three are carefully picking through it, a teaspoon at a time, making little piles of translucent discards. It is slow, tedious work, but the promise of Chilpachole de Jaibas spurs us on.

The crabmeat is part of yesterday’s catch from Pescadoria Gandara. Our foray also netted an enormous bag of plump, gorgeous shrimp, each nearly as long as my hand, and a big negrillo or sea bass, which has been scaled, gutted, and cut into long thick fillets. As we sort though the cartilage, our minds are reeling at the sheer profligacy of the haul. At $30 or more per pound, most home cooks would only dream of buying so much crabmeat, but here in the port of Veracruz, we can have the crab, the shrimp and the negrillo for the price of a single entrée at Le Bernardin. Sylvia’s eyes widen when we tell her this. “Really?” she asks. “It costs so much?”

It is wonderful to have our cooking class in a private home. Professional kitchens are great--Susana’s has a powerful VitaMix blender, an outdoor oven, and lots of extra hands for prep and clean up--but to get a sense of how a recipe is going to work at home, where the burners don’t get as hot and there is never enough counter space, it’s good to navigate the quirks of a real family’s kitchen. When the stove and oven start to create a mini-inferno, we just open a door and let the breeze blow through.

Today Sylvia will teach us how to make four traditional Veracruz dishes from her family’s own recipes. There is Chilpachole de Jaibas, a light crab stew flavored with blackened tomatoes, onions and chiles; Camarones Enchipotlados, shrimp simmered in a sauce of smoky chipotle chiles and garlic; Negrillo, sea bass smothered in tomatillo salsa, wrapped in hoja santa and banana leaves; and Torta de Elote, a delicate cake made of fresh corn kernels, served with rich vanilla ice cream.

For the next four hours, we shell shrimp, peel garlic, cut corn off the cob, blacken chiles and tomatoes over a gas flame, stir sauces, whisk eggs, chop onions, peek in the oven to check the cake. We taste everything from the vibrant green tomatillo salsa poured over the sea bass to the incendiary chipotle sauce for the shrimp. We madly annotate our booklet of recipes, as Sylvia imparts some of her family’s culinary secrets. My favorite simple trick: Slice plaintains lengthwise very, very thinly and fry the long strips in canola oil until they are crisp, brown, and irresistible.

We are so busy that we do not notice that the late afternoon sun has become golden in the garden outside the kitchen door, but at last we are done. Sylvia’s parents, who have remained discreetly invisible for most of the day, invite us into the dining room. We sit, and enjoy the luxury of being served the food we have prepared.

And it is wonderful: the negrillo, bathed in the tart tomatillo salsa, emerges moist and tender from the banana leaves; the camarones, simmered in an earthenware cazuela, are burnished in the glow of the anise-scented chipotle sauce; the chilpachole de jaibas is delicately spiced; and the dense, sweet torta de elote really tastes of fresh corn.

The conversation is good too: we talk of children, dogs and orchids, and of the old Mocambo Hotel, a grand Veracruz pile where passengers embarking for Europe once stayed. Deborah, who is a weaver, promises to make red and silver ornaments for the family’s Christmas tree; Silvia’s father offers to get cigars from his favorite shop for my husband; Susana writes down the names of a dozen restaurants we must try during our travels. But first, we must have another serving of negrillo....

(adapted from Sylvia Lagunes Troncoso)

Fish fillets, cooked in tomatillo salsa with acuyo leaves, is a classic Veracruz dish. At the Pescadoria Gandara, the big indoor fish market next to the municipal fish stalls, we saw a recipe for Pescado en Salsa Verde y Acuyo al Vapor (Steamed Fish in Green Sauce and Acuyo) written on a blackboard--a useful prompt for cooks who might wonder what to do with the beautiful seafood displayed in the tiled bins.

This version is adapted from one of Sylvia's family recipes. Although she uses negrillo, a type of sea bass, Susana suggested that we try it at home with striped bass fillets—a great idea since the tomatillo salsa adds a deliciously tart edge to the flavorful, meaty fish.

Acuyo or hoja santa (literally “holy leaf”) is a large heart-shaped leaf with an aromatic, anise-like taste that is widely used in Mexican cooking. Sylvia’s family grows acuyo in their backyard, but in the US the fresh leaves are hard to find. The dried leaf, sold as hoja santa, is widely available at Hispanic food markets and that is what we used.

I noticed that when we were served the negrillo, Sylvia's mother carefully removed the hoja santa leaves and set them aside. As Diana Kennedy explains in From My Mexican Kitchen, there is some concern that hoja santa may be toxic. It contains "about 70 percent safrole and caphoradione A&B, two aporphine-type alkaloids of unknown physiological properties," according to Arthur O. Tucker and Michael J. Maciarello of Delaware State University. Kennedy suggests that those who are highly allergic avoid hoja santa, although the leaves are usually not eaten in "concentrated form." Still, if in doubt, leave them out.

To serve 4

Ingredients:

2 pounds striped bass fillets, skin removed
1 large lime
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon garlic, finely chopped
2 pounds tomatillos (see note)
1 large jalapeno pepper, stem removed
3 fresh hoja santa leaves, finely chopped (or 1 tablespoon dried hoja santa, crumbled ) (see note)
1 cup fresh cilantro leaves
2 tablespoons olive oil
4-6 fresh or dried whole hoja santa leaves (see note)
1 large banana leaf (see note)
Aluminum foil

Method:

1. Set the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Place the striped bass fillets in a glass pan and squeeze the juice of one lime all over them. Sprinkle with garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

3. For the sauce: Peel the papery husks off the tomatillos, wash well and core them. If they are very large, cut them in half.

Put the tomatillos and the whole jalapeno pepper in a medium saucepan with 1/2 cup water over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, then cover and reduce the heat to low. Simmer until the tomatillos are cooked through. They will be soft and greenish yellow in color.

Remove the jalapeno pepper, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds and discard them. Place the pepper in a blender along with the cooked tomatillos and cover. Blend until the sauce is very smooth.

Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan. Return the tomatillo sauce to the pan, along with the fresh hoja santa leaves (or one tablespoon of the dried hoja santa) and cilantro. Add salt to taste. Simmer for 5 to 10 minutes over medium low heat. The sauce should be fairly thick. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.

4. For the fish: Take a glass pan, 9 X 14 inches and line it with sheets of aluminum foil, so that there are six inches of foil extending over the edges of both the long and short sides.

Rinse and dry the banana leaf. Cut or tear into large pieces and place them shiny side down, over the aluminum foil, leaving enough of the leaf on all sides to wrap the fish.

If using dried hoja santa, dip 4 to 6 whole leaves into a bowl of warm water to soften slightly. Place 2 or 3 leaves on top of the banana leaf. Pour in a little tomatillo sauce, then add the fish fillets, layering with more of the sauce. Finish by placing 2 or 3 more hoja santa leaves on top of the fish and pouring the rest of the sauce over everything.

Fold the banana leaves over the fish, then fold and seal the aluminum foil by crimping the edges, so that the fish is contained in a neat packet of banana leaves and an outer layer of foil.

Cook in a 350 degree oven for 40 minutes, or until the fish is cooked through.

5. To serve, open the aluminum foil and the banana leaf. Remove the hoja santa leaves from the top of the fish and discard. Lift a portion of the fish with a spatula onto each plate and spoon the tomatillo sauce over it. Serve with white rice that has been sautéed until golden in a little oil and cooked with chicken broth.

Note: Fresh tomatillos are available in the produce section of most supermarkets. Dried hoja santa leaves can be found at Hispanic grocery stores. We discovered fresh banana leaves at our local Whole Foods; they are often available frozen at Asian markets.

I have come to Veracruz to glimpse the elusive vanilla orchid on the vine, to catch the rich scent of glossy beans curing in the sun, to breathe in the fragrance of the world’s finest vanilla in its Mexican birthplace. Everything up to this point has been a sort of lagniappe, as the Creoles say, a delicious extra. Such is the nature of obsession.

It is about 10:30 AM and as usual, the sun is brutally hot and the air thick with moisture. Norma Gaya is driving the three of us—Susana, Deborah and myself—down a rough dirt road so deeply rutted that we are thrown from side to side as we jounce along at just a few kilometers an hour. I notice that she has woven two vanilla beans in and out of the louvers of the air conditioning vents which are now wafting a faint scent towards us.

Norma lives and breathes vanilla. At 35, she is willowy and cool, a bit ethereal except for the smattering of light freckles across her nose. Today she is wearing a watery aqua silk dress screened with pale lavender orchids. With her sleek hair and delicate sandals, she looks as if she might be throwing a garden party.

But this is a work day. When we arrived at the Gaya Vai-Mex offices in the dusty town of Gutierrez Zamora earlier this morning, she had been on the telephone for hours talking with distributors of her family’s vanilla. Founded in 1879, the company is one of Mexico's leading producers of high quality vanilla extract and plump, flavorful beans. In the past, its customers have included Nielsen Massey, a purveyor of Madagascar, Mexican and Tahitian vanilla to Williams Sonoma and other upscale gourmet stores.

Last year Gaya Vai-Mex bought 28 tons of green vanilla beans from 400 farmers in four states; many of them harvest only a few kilos a year. But Gaya also owns an 11-hectare organic vanilla plantation, where 11,000 vines are planted. This is where we hope to see the orchid in bloom.

We lurch down the road through groves of naranja or orange trees, some heavily laden with fruit. Here and there palms erupt with clusters of bright red berries. Up ahead a brilliant blue and black butterfly swoops and swirls. Norma brakes suddenly. “Look,” she says. “There is a flower.”

We tumble out and gingerly pick our way through tall grass. Vanilla vines are all around us, pale green, with bulbous stems and fleshy leaves, clambering up naranja as well as the native cacuite and pichoco trees which have traditionally been used as tuteurs or supports. Some trees are gnarled and have enormous woody excrescences where they have been repeatedly cut back to reduce the amount of shade they produce; a few spindly branches grow out of these living stumps, but clearly their mission in life is to support the sun-loving vine.

And there it is: A creamy, greenish-yellow blossom, not much bigger than a silver dollar. This is a modest flower, a virginal cousin of the more colorful and lascivious orchids that mimic female genitalia. In the nursery trade, the flower might even be termed “insignificant,” but up close, its delicate petals and perfectly formed lip seem to guard the entrance to an exotic, mysterious world. In the language of the Totonac Indians who originally domesticated vanilla, the flower is called xanat or caxixanath. In Spanish the latter means flor recondita, or “hidden flower.”

Now for the seduction: A man bends close, his brown face a study in concentration. He clasps the flower in one hand and with the other, gently inserts a tiny pointed stick deep into its heart, lifting a flap that separates the pollen-bearing anthers from the female sex organs. With his finger, he bends the anthers onto the stigma, coating them with pollen. Impregnation takes only a few seconds; gestation is nine months. By December, this vine will bear clusters of plump green beans that will be harvested and taken to a warehouse for curing.

Vanilla flowers bloom only once for only a few hours, usually in the morning, and it is during this window that they must be pollinated in order to produce vanilla beans. Though insects randomly perform this service in the wild, yields are bigger and more certain when the blossom is pollinated by hand. The young man standing next to us is a descendant of the ancient Totonacs who were cultivating vanilla as a sacred plant when Cortez landed on the coast of Veracruz in 1518. Every day he and ten other workers walk the plantation, checking each of the 11,000 vines for blossoms that will unfurl tomorrow ,just as his forbears may have done centuries ago.

There is something soft, almost feminine about the traditional way of growing vanilla in Mexico. But it may not be economically viable, especially in a world in which Madagascar, the world’s largest producer, sets the prices. Three years ago, when cyclones devastated the island, prices soared to $500 per kilo. Today, a kilo brings just $100, and many small farmers can no longer afford to grow labor-intensive vanilla.

Norma Gaya has seen the future and it is just down the road: a modern greenhouse, covered with black shade cloth, watered by automatic sprinklers. Here 3,000 vines are planted in raised peat moss beds on split bamboo canes; two to four vines can be planted at the base of each 10-foot cane, then looped up and down to make pollination and harvesting easy. “Outside it takes four years for a vine to bear its first flower; in here, only two,” she explains.

And yet the lure of tradition is strong. Lately she’s been thinking of planting some cojon de gato trees. It’s a very old tree, once thought to be the best companion for the vanilla vine. Who knows? It might be wonderful.

This mural at the Gaya Vai-Mex warehouse depicts the ancient world of
vanilla: blooming orchids on the vine, green uncured beans, and a Totonac
priestess at El Tajin, symbolizing the reverence the Indians held for the plant.

Contrary to what you might think, the vanilla orchid has very little scent. And green vanilla beans don’t smell anything like vanilla extract. The secret of vanilla’s aroma is in the curing of a bean, a labor intensive process if ever there was one. It involves five months of baking, sweating, sunning, aging and all around coddling under the watchful eye of someone with the instinct and experience to know when the moment of perfection has arrived. It’s good to remember this when you feel assaulted by the price of vanilla.

We are at Gaya Vai-Mex’s hilltop warehouse which has glorious views in all directions. The air is heavy with the scent of vanilla: sweet, a little fruity, spicy, alluring. And no wonder: vanilla beans are all around us. There are thousands of dark beans lying in the sun, neatly arranged on woven straw tapetes or mats; tens of thousands more are stacked in long wooden boxes on shelves inside the warehouse. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be bathed in this intoxicating fragrance everyday.

In 2005 Gaya cured 30 tons of beans. The process begins when mature green vanilla pods are delivered to the warehouse. Whole beans are separated from those that have split. They are washed, put in long cedar boxes with screened bottoms, and placed in a big walk-in gas oven where they are baked at 70 degrees centigrade for a day. “The heat stops the maturing process,” explains Norma Gaya who is showing us her family’s business. “The ovens are the same as those used in Italy to cure silk worm cocoons.” (The Gayas came to Mexico from Italy in the late 19th century, possibly intending to farm. Instead, they saw the Totonacs growing vanilla and never looked back.)

Vanilla beans are carefully laid out on straw mats to dry in the sun.
The curing process can take up to 5 months.

The next day the beans are tucked into a deep box, covered with blankets and allowed to sweat. Then for five months they are gently carried in and out of the warehouse; they soak up the sun for a few hours on warm, bright mornings, in the afternoon, they are put to bed in the warehouse. Again and again they sweat. When they are adequately dried—a properly cured bean is 20% water—they are stacked in boxes ten high on racks inside the warehouse and allowed to age. When everything goes right, the beans are glossy, supple and intensely fragrant. After all that work, it’s hard to believe that the current wholesale price for one kilo of beans is just $100.

For centuries vanilla beans cured naturally on the vine. Vine-cured beans are high in vanillin, the phenolic compound which creates vanilla’s distinctive aroma; sometimes the vanillin crystallizes, giving the bean a frosty appearance. “The crystals are like black gold,” Norma says with a rueful smile. “But no one wants to buy them, so the farmers just leave the beans hanging on the vine.” When Hernan Cortez landed in Mexico in 1519, the Aztec emperor Moctezuma served him cups of cold bitter chocolate flavored with vanilla gathered in the wild. At first, the Spaniards hated the taste of chocolate, but when the Aztecs told them vanilla was an aphrodisiac, they were interested. Eventually Cortez took both back to Spain, igniting a craze.

Norma’s 72-year-old uncle Orlando is Gaya’s curing maestro. He is a burly, white haired man with a genial smile, but he keeps a close eye on the vanilla beans lying in the sun. He decides when the beans have dried out enough and when the flavor has reached its peak. Moisture control is critical: The alternative is rot and ruin.

Later we follow Orlando in his pickup truck to his own plantation. Towering over his cinderblock house is a nacaste tree, over six feet in diameter and nearly 40 feet tall. Clambering up this gargantuan trunk is an equally gargantuan vanilla vine, fatter and more bulbous than any of the well-mannered vines we have seen earlier in the day. “This is vanilla pompona,” says Orlando, as he points to a super-sized greenish yellow orchid 30 feet up in the branches of the tree. “It blooms only one day between 6 A.M and 11 A.M. When it opens, big flies come and pollinate it.”

Vanilla pompona is said to have a cherry-like aroma and is used primarily in perfume and non-food applications. Most culinary vanilla comes from vanilla planifolia, and it is this variety that is widely grown from Mexico to Madagascar. Tahitian vanilla is a hybrid of the two; its intensely floral aroma comes from the pompona side of the family.

Orlando is completely in his element as he leads us down an overgrown path, past lushly planted naranja, cocuite and pichoco, the three trees traditionally grown as tuteurs for vanilla vines. But unlike Gaya’s neat and orderly plantation, this is a vanilla jungle. Four to eight vines are planted at the base of each tree—10,000 in just three hectares—and though the growth is rampant, he knows exactly which flowers must be pollinated the next day. There are also lychee, pistachio and palm trees here; exotic birds screech as they flutter through the dense woods; butterflies float in the air.

It’s paradise, of a sort. Back at his house, Orlando offers us vodka in a tin cup. Caught off guard—well, it’s barely noon—we demur. With a wolfish grin, he raises his cup to us: “Two shots of vodka in the morning, hot milk with vanilla at night.” And he winks. Later over lunch, Norma rolls her eyes. “You should have been here last year. So many women…”