Fermented Foods: Menudo, Chamoy, and Pig's Feet

It's interesting to think about what is and isn't going to taste good. Growing up, my mom saved our 'ethnic' food for when we were home together as a family. I'd get burritos for lunch (in a thermos where the tortillas we brought back from Mexico would get soggy and 'zombie-like,' according to a friend), sure, but most American kids are more familiar with burritos than they are with menudo. Menudo is probably the last thing on earth my mother would make for any guest at our house. For one, because she prefers the canned menudo over the freshly made kind, and two because it's such an 'out-there' food. 

Image from Open Food Facts CC 3.0 Unported

My friend, and then-girlfriend, wanted to try menudo after reading Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. My mom bought a can for us two to share. She told me Rachel wouldn't like it, and she was right, she couldn't eat much more than a bite or two. I think the texture of the tripas got to her, the cow-stomach menudo is made from. Admittedly, I don't like it either, but the soup and the maize were good enough that I was able to eat around the weird pieces of honeycomb meat. 

Had I grown up like my friend, I probably might not have been able to even do that much. But I've seen my cousins eat fried tripas in tacos as if it were candy. My uncle has brought a full pig's head from the market for my grandmother to make into something (maybe pozole, I can't remember). I don't know if much else will phase me now. One uniting factor between these two dishes: the maize in them, as well as countless other Mexican corn-based dishes, are all nixtamalized. 

When I read JBK and Dyer's chapter, I scrambled to find fermented foods in my own culture. It took me way too long to even think of one, which I suppose proves the point of the article. To me, it's just food. I never really had to think about it. My favorite chipotle sauce is fermented chiles, chamoy is fermented fruit, and the hominy in most of what we eat is somewhat fermented too. 

Image from Open Food Facts CC 3.0 Unported

I brought back a bottle of chamoy (pictured above) from LA because it was impossible to find here. I bought it from a 99 Cent store we stopped by on the way back from a restaurant. There was an entire section of Mexican candy (most covered in chamoy and then dipped in powdered chiles) right there, so easily accessible. That's something I've yet to find here, although I haven't really had a lot of time to go looking. In LA, where Mexican culture is heavily influential, it makes sense that we'd have our own candy aisles and people have adapted to our flavor profiles. 

It took my roommate a day or two to get used to the taste of it, and only then did she start to like it. I put it on fruit, something Anne still refuses to do because "fruit doesn't need to be seasoned." In my opinion, yes it does. The only way I ate jicama as a kid was if it was covered with lime, tajin, and chamoy. My other friends mostly don't like it either. It's sweet and sour and spicy and salty, such an odd mixture of flavor combinations that a lot of people are not really used to. I always explain to people that I grew up eating these foods and so they're acquired tastes.

My dad, whose family is Russian Jewish, did not grow up eating these foods. I think of him as the exception to this rule, since he can eat a good amount of Mexican food even my mom won't touch (with the exception of mole and nopales). His spice tolerance is probably even higher than my grandmother's, which, if you knew her, would be saying something. Admittedly, he might have not been like this when they first met over, like, thirty years ago, but I still think it's interesting to think about. He grew up in California, like me, and most Californians get some level of exposure to Mexican foods, candies, and flavor profiles. Most of those exposures are to foods that are Americanized and most of what my mom makes isn't. 

Every time my mom makes us something, he always tells her that it's the most amazing thing he's ever eaten. I wonder if now he's gotten so used to the smells, the tastes, and everything, that his answer would be the same as mine was at first. If I'm being honest with myself, though, his first thought would be of a horrifying childhood snack he's gleefully told us stories about: pickled pigs' feet.