Super Sunday: A day of Aromas and Flavors
On Zarela’s Mind: Traveling Through Flavors
By Zarela Martinez
Published March 19, 2011
Guava photos courtesy of Christian González Verón/Flickr.com
The whole day was planned. Little did I know that it would be a day of pleasant surprises.
First, I met my delightful Sunday volunteers, Gabriela Lopez and Alex Ulloa, her multi-talented, efficient and adorable boyfriend of many years at Zabar’s, the famous food emporium. I had run out of my favorite olive oil and the Zabar’s deluxe olive oil is the only one I like to cook with. I forgot to buy my Pastene canned tuna, but I can live without it.
Next on our agenda was going back to Las Palomas Mexican Grocery, to see if they really had chacales and ground shrimp. But the shrimp were a suspiciously strange red-brick color. I was very disappointed, but the excursion was not a waste. I bought some very un-Lenten chicharrones for a tasting of botanas for my possible next restaurant. But as I was leaving, for some reason I removed a piece of paper from a box to see what was hidden below.
The aroma of ripe Mexican guayabas immediately took me back to Calvillo, Aguascalientes, the guava capital of Mexico, where my sister Marina lives. Miles before you arrive, the intoxicating perfume of this delicious fruit—one of my favorites—envelops you. I’m not talking about those large hard green ones with beautiful pink flesh and no flavor or bouquet. These are tiny, smooth and yellow, with an intense flavor and large seeds, so watch your teeth. Some people take the seeds out but I think the fruit then loses its essence. It was one of my happiest moments in a long time.
My grandson Yuma ( I plan to call him Yummy and that he is) had been born a few days before, and I wanted to go to the Bronx Museum of the Arts for an exhibition of work by his immensely talented, ground-breaking, world-famous 95-year-old great-grandmother, Elizabeth Catlett. Her sensuous sculptures of the female body are prized and in her last show in New York one of them sold for $200,000! I hope my grandson inherits some of her talent.
The main reason for our trip was to go to the Golden Mall, a below-street level Chinese food court in Flushing where every stand features one specialty. It was a chilly day and our first stop was for hand rolled noodles. The twists and turns that the cooks give the dough separate it into incredibly uniform noodles. We ordered vegetable broth, but there were other tempting options like pig’s trotter and fried beef tendon . Across the aisle we bought a chive-filled flaky pastry “for later” but it never made it home. One stall over there were shredded-lamb “hamburgers,” heavily scented with toasted cumin. This had been a day of aromas and flavors and I wanted that particular one to stay with me for a while.
There are two other seductive flavors that I love: tamarind and pomegranate molasses.
One day while lying on a hammock under a big, shady tree in Mismaloya or Yelapa near Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, I happened to look up and saw some brown pods hanging on the branches. I got up to look closely and was amazed to see that they were tamarind pods. I had been eating tamarind paste since I was a child. First as balls rolled in sugar, then in powdered chile with or without lime. When I moved to NYC and discovered Kalustyans and a particular Indian tamarind paste I started cooking with it or eating it by the spoonful as a stomach cleanser. I recently gave a taste to my raw foodie yoga instructor and watched her eyes pop with surprise.
During my time as a troubled twenty year old, my mother banished my father and me to our ranch during pomegranate season. We made 24 jars of pomegranate jelly and reduced the rest to molasses and I’ve been cooking with it since. This is one of my seduction dishes. Is it Mexican? Well partly. Spain conquered Mexico in 1519 and had ousted the Moors but their influence still lives in the food and adds another dimension to my cooking.
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