Mesoamerica · Volume 03, The Port, the Delta and Vanilla's Own Country

Uliche

Chontal Tabasco (Nacajuca, Centro, Jalpa de Méndez, Macuspana and Centla), Mexico

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time: Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.

Researched: Researched from 65 sources in the brief, none yet linked in the text
Reviewed: Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked: Not yet cooked and reported

by Chontal Tabasco (Nacajuca, Centro, Jalpa de Méndez, Macuspana and Centla), Mexico

The Chontal of Tabasco call their own language Yokot'an, the true language, part of the Ch'ol-Chontal branch of the Mayan family, spoken today mainly in the municipalities of Nacajuca and Centro, where roughly three quarters of Tabasco's Chontal population lives. Chontal culture has historically centred on agriculture, fishing and the direct exploitation of the delta's own resources, which is the plain ecological basis of everything this chapter treats as Tabasco's own cooking, as distinct from cooking merely done in Tabasco. A named, place-based food route promoted by the state, Biji Yokot'an, runs through the Chontal towns of Nacajuca and names uliche, roasted pejelagarto and butifarras as its signature dishes, exactly the three this chapter treats as Tabasco's own spine. A genuine gap, honestly stated: no dedicated Chontal-authored or Chontal-community-published culinary source, as distinct from material written about the Chontal by outside academics or by the state tourism board, turned up in the research behind this chapter.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Uliche

Chontal zone; Día de Muertos, 2 November

Ingredients

An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.

1 turkey, cut into pieces (or the beef equivalent) turkey or beef
3 heads, roasted garlic
1, large onion
500g, parboiled once nixtamal (prepared corn)
cumin, toasted
1, sautéed tomato
sweet chile
achiote
cumin (for the achiote paste)
for garnish pumpkin seed, ground, to garnish
to taste chile amashito, to garnish

Method

Blanch the turkey or beef with garlic and onion until tender, then remove.
Grind the nixtamal with toasted cumin into a masa, strain through cloth, and add back to the broth with tomato and a sweet chile.
Cook over low heat with constant stirring until it reaches an atole-like consistency.
Grind achiote and cumin separately in a molcajete and stir in.
Serve in a clay cajete, garnished with ground pumpkin seed and chile amashito.

Notes

Prepared specifically for Día de Muertos and placed on Chontal altars on 2 November, concentrated in the Chontal zone.

What a modern chef changes

Chinois-strained masa, fresh-toasted spice

Method

Nixtamalize the maize at home, the same controlled transformation used for the garnachas above.
Strain the ground masa liquid through a chinois rather than cloth alone, for a genuinely silkier finished broth.
Toast the cumin and achiote fresh in the spice grinder immediately before use rather than relying on pre-ground spice, the comal-toasting principle applied to a wet-ground rather than dry-ground paste.
Dehydrate the pumpkin seed garnish briefly after toasting for a more concentrated crunch against the broth's own smooth body.

Open in the atlas: cook mode, scaling and tick off lists