Motuleños Eggspress

Egg dish from the Yucatán whispers the flavors of the Middle East

Pat Reed | The New Mexican

1/6/2009 - 1/7/09

I had never eaten Huevos Motuleños before I took a recent trip to Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Every time I saw the dish's list of ingredients in a restaurant or cookbook, I thought it was, well, strange. The recipe called for green peas. Green peas? No way.

But shortly before the trip, I read Gary Paul Nabhan's Arab/American: Landscape, Culture, and Cuisine in Two Great Deserts. Nabhan's book told me a fair number of descendants of Lebanese immigrants can be found in the Yucatán, something I hadn't known. In fact, Mérida, the capital of the Yucatán state, has an estimated 30,000 of them.

Nabhan is, among other things, an ethnobiologist, a nature writer, a research social scientist at the University of Arizona and a winner of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. He's also a Lebanese American, and not long ago, his daughter, Laura, spent some time in Mérida researching Lebanese immigration to the region.

On a visit to the area by the two, Laura took her father to Restaurante Siqueff, a Lebanese eatery in Mérida. Years earlier, the restaurant — then called La Sin Rival, or The Unrivaled — had been in the town of Motul, not far from Mérida.

"That was where don Jorge Siqueff, a Lebanese chef, and his wife, a Mayan woman from Motul, first brought an altogether odd assortment of ingredients together to improvise a breakfast for (Yucatán Gov.) Felipe Carrillo Puerto," Nabhan writes.

Siqueff's granddaughter, María, said Carrillo Puerto's breakfast occurred sometime in the early 1920s. (In 1924, Mexican revolutionaries stood Carrillo Puerto against a wall and opened fire, killing him.)

Today, the Huevos Motuleños served at Restaurante Siqueff include fried plantains topped with a tortilla spread with black beans, fried eggs, a tomato-chile salsa, ham, peas and Mexican cheese.

When Siqueff created Huevos Motuleños, Carrillo Puerto was hosting a "power meal," possibly hoping to turn a few deals with local politicians, Los Dos, a Mérida cooking school, says on its Web site. This particular event was to be held in a cenote, a type of sinkhole containing groundwater that was sacred to the Maya.

The governor, a man of mixed Maya heritage, was fond of food that came with a large variety of accompaniments, Los Dos reports. "On (this) particular occasion, there were so many guests in Carrillo Puerto's company that Siqueff quickly realized that the restaurant did not have sufficient tableware. Instead of serving the accompaniments individually, he simply used all of them atop a couple of fried eggs."

Nabhan writes: "Don Felipe savored that concoction of Old World and New World ingredients as it crossed his lips and lingered on his (palate). He suggested to his friend don Jorge that the cafe might want to offer this breakfast dish on a regular basis."

At his restaurant, Siqueff served, among other dishes, Lebanese food. But, Los Dos says, Huevos Motuleños was "hardly a Lebanese dish." Nabhan, however, insists the recipe calls for more Old World ingredients — chicken eggs, plantains, onions, ham, cheese and peas — than New World ones — tortillas, black beans, tomatoes and habanero chiles.

* * *

Arabic/Islamic culture came to the Yucatán in the early 16th century aboard Spanish ships.

In 711, the Berbers of North Africa and some Arabs from the Middle East crossed the Mediterranean to invade the Iberian Peninsula. During the nearly 800 years they ruled the region, these Muslims brought to Spain as assortment of agricultural goods — sweet orange trees, banana trees, date palms, almond trees, sugar cane and other plants. In addition, they introduced wide-scale irrigation to the country's dry lands. It produced, says Saudi Aramco World magazine, "a cornucopia of riches, many of them never before grown on the Iberian Peninsula. ...

"The markets (in Andalucía) were piled full of all kinds of vegetables and fresh and dried fruit, meat such as lamb and veal, and a variety of game and fish, particularly tuna, shad, and sardines. And — most spectacularly — they included thousands of aromatic herbs and spices. Saffron, cumin, aniseed, mint, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, coriander, parsley and mustard were spices considered indispensable in the kitchen."

The cuisine the Muslims created in Spain was, in a word, incredible.

But in 1492, the Muslims lost Spain. Jews and Muslims had to either convert or leave the country. Many of them fled to North Africa, but others — most of whom claimed to have converted to Catholicism — found refuge in the Americas along with Spanish Christians.

These settlers carried to the New World the food gifts from the Moors: cherries, apricots, melons, parsley, cilantro, eggplant, garbanzo beans, fava beans, lentils, cardamom, sesame seeds, pistachios, capers and raisins, Los Dos says. "Many other ingredients, for example the mango, cinnamon, citrus, ginger, coffee and especially cane sugar, succeeded in being slowly acclimatized in American soils and, above all, in the palates of its inhabitants."

In the latter part of the 19th century or early 20th century, the Arabs — mainly Lebanese Christians — made a second assault on the Yucatán. Some left Lebanon to escape the Ottoman subscription of Arab men into its armed forces before World War I, Nabhan writes. Others had lost jobs with the collapse of silk production in Lebanon. A plague of locusts had also hit the area.

Nabhan's great-grandfather left the Middle East, thinking he was headed for the United States. His boat, however, landed in Veracruz. Alberto Salum Abbala, the founder of Alberto's Continental, a Mérida restaurant that serves, among other things, Lebanese dishes, said his grandfather boarded a boat for the New World in 1894 because "the Turks were killing all the Christians." The ship was ready to return to Europe, so grandfather was left off on a pier in the town of Sisal, then the Yucatán's main port.

"During the 1920s and 1930s, thousands more Lebanese arrived," Los Dos reports, "and Mexico's oil boom of the 1930s witnessed most of them settling on the Gulf coast. ... The largest group of Mexicans of Lebanese descent still lives in Mérida."

By the 20th century, Lebanese immigrants could buy some of their essential ingredients at local markets. "Tabbuleh, for example, could be concocted with very few problems," Los Dos says. "The original recipe calling for wheat semolina with olive oil and citrus juice, parsley, tomato, salt and pepper was only lacking fresh spearmint. Some Yucatecan and Campechano recipes called for the addition of cucumber, onion and juice of the ubiquitous naranja agria (Seville or sour orange). The acceptance of this salad (called ensalada árabe or Arabic salad) in the peninsula was overwhelming."

The cooking school reports the exchange worked both ways. Mayan women, for example, adapted the traditional recipe for marzipan, substituting pumpkin seeds for the almonds — a treat found in almost every street stall. When ingredients such as grape leaves, olives, lamb and certain condiments couldn't be found, "Lebanese cooks were left with no choice but to borrow elements from their new land."

The inclusion of new ingredients in old recipes resulted in a hybrid cuisine. The Arab dish called kibbeh — which cooks in Lebanon made from lamb — had to be prepared in the Yucatán with beef, deer, fish or potatoes, the cooking school writes. Now called quibbes, the food has been adapted to Yucatecan tastes and has become a street delicacy. It is served with pico de gallo or x'nipek, a tomato-chile-citrus salsa, instead of yogurt or hummus.

"The traditional spit-roasted meat called shawarma — generally (made up) of layers of seasoned lamb on a vertical skewer that rotates in front of a flame — evolved locally with the substitution of pork marinated in achiote with a pineapple balanced on top. Thin pieces of pork and pineapple are shaved off ... the skewer and onto a fresh tortilla. The now-Mexicanized name of this dish — tacos al pastor, or shepherd's taco — reveals its ancient mideastern roots and belies its principal ingredient, which would no doubt be viewed as a scandalous twist in the land of its origin. Again, this taco is finished — and localized — by the diner's own addition of chile tamulado (a habanero salsa), x'nipek, lime juice or other typical condiments."

* * *

I had driven by myself several times through Mérida's mind-boggling traffic. (It's a city of a million people, and most of them are madmen on the road.) But each time, I had failed to find Restaurante Siqueff.

However, I had met an American woman, a librarian, at a folk art shop in the town of Izamal, where I was staying, about an hour's drive from Mérida. Figuring I needed navigators to find the restaurant, I invited her and her husband to go with me the next day to Mérida in search of the restaurant.

We had stopped first at Sanborns, the Mexican retail store, to buy a book, De Líbano a México, that Nabhan had recommended, and a clerk there steered us to Siqueff, only a few blocks away.

The restaurant, on a busy street, was lovely. We sat in the courtyard, surrounded by yellow walls and the luxurious tropical growth that the Yucatán enjoys. The husband, Mike, and I ordered Huevos Motuleños. The wife, Anne, couldn't abide eggs, she said, and ordered French onion soup.

The huevos looked sensational when they arrived — the white-and-yellow fried eggs topped with an incredibly red salsa and those bright green peas.

"Did you like the eggs?" I asked Mike, who had left an almost clean plate.

"I loved it," he replied.

Me, too. Peas and all.

Recipes

This recipe is adapted from Spirit of the Earth: Native Cooking from Latin America, by Beverly Cox and Martin Jacobs (Stewart, Tabouri & Chang, 2001).

The only difficult thing about preparing this dish is having everything hot at the same time. To make it easier, prepare the sauce and beans ahead of time. You can reheat them while you fry the tortillas and eggs and assemble the dish.

HUEVOS MOLTULEÑOS

(Serves 4 to 8)

1 recipe Chiltomate (cooked tomato-chile sauce).

See recipe below.

2 cups Tsah Bi Bu'ul (black bean purée). See recipe below.

1/2 cup butter

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 ripe plantains, peeled and cut in 22 diagonal slices, or
8 bananas, peeled and split in half lengthwise

Vegetable oil for frying tortillas and eggs

8 (4- to 5-inch) corn tortillas

8 large eggs

1/4 pound baked or boiled ham, cut in small cubes

2 cups fresh or frozen peas, cooked

2 cups crumbled queso fresco

1 or 2 habanero chiles, thinly sliced (optional)

In separate saucepans, heat the Chiltomate and the beans; keep warm.

In a sauté pan, melt the butter and vegetable oil over medium-high heat and cook the plantains or bananas until golden brown on both sides. Set aside.

Pour oil to a depth of about 1 inch in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Fry the tortillas one at a time, turning once, until crisp, about 2 minutes on each side. Drain on paper towels. Pour off all but about 1 tablespoon of oil from the skillet. Fry the eggs over medium-high heat until the whites are set but the yolks are still soft.

Arrange the plantains or bananas on a warm plate. Spread a spoonful of beans over each tortilla. Place the tortillas on top of the plantains. Place 1 or 2 fried eggs on top of the tortillas. Spoon Chiltomate over the eggs and garnish with the ham and peas. Sprinkle with the cheese. Top with a slice or two of habanero chile, if using. Place each finished plate in a warm oven until all are assembled. Serve immediately.

* * *

In the Yucatán, salsa ingredients are often roasted on a hot comal. Roasting imparts a distinctive mellow flavor to the sauce.

CHILTOMATE

Cooked Tomato-Chile Salsa

(Makes 3-1/2 to 4 cups)

1 or 2 fresh habanero chiles

1 large white onion, unpeeled and halved

5 or 6 medium-size, firm ripe tomatoes, or 12 plum tomatoes, unpeeled and halved

2 or 3 cloves garlic, unpeeled

3 tablespoons lard or vegetable oil

1-1/2 teaspoons minced fresh oregano (preferably Mexican) or 3/4 teaspoon dried

1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro

Salt to taste

Preheat a griddle or a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Roast the vegetables and the garlic on the griddle for 6 to 8 minutes, turning them with tongs to brown all sides.

Peel and dice the onions, tomatoes and garlic. Place the roasted ingredients in a mortar or blender or food processor and grind or chop to the desired consistency.

Melt the lard in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the salsa and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the oregano and cilantro, and season to taste with salt.

* * *

When we were first served Tsah Bi Bu'ul in the Yucatán, it seemed thin compared to the refried beans of the American Southwest. Was this a sauce or something to be eaten as a side dish? In fact, it is both.

TSAH BI BU'UL

Maya-style Black Bean Purée

(Makes about 8 cups)

One 16-ounce package dried black beans

1 fresh jalapeño chile, roasted

1 head garlic, roasted

1/2 cup lard or vegetable oil

1 white onion, roasted, peeled and chopped

Salt to taste

Pick over the beans to remove any debris and rinse under cold running water until the water is clear. Place the beans in a large, heavy, nonreactive pot and add enough distilled water to cover them by 5 inches. (Beverly Cox calls for the distilled water in her recipe. It's also what I read several years ago in a bean cookbook after I spent 14 hours cooking a pot of beans. But Emily Swantner, my cooking partner, scoffs at that idea. She says she's cooked beans all her life in tap water, and she's had no problems.) Soak the beans overnight. (Or bring the beans and water to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes; cover, turn off the heat and allow to soak for 1 hour.)

Add the roasted jalapeño and the entire head of garlic to the beans and place the pot over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce the heat to maintain a steady simmer. While the beans are cooking, gently stir them every 20 minutes or so and make sure there is adequate water — at least 11/2 to 2 inches above the beans. If you need to add more water, add boiling water because cold water tends to toughen the beans.) Cook until the beans are nearly tender, about 3 to 4 hours. (That's Cox's amount of time, but Swantner says her black beans usually cook in less time.)

While the beans are cooking, melt the lard in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the onion and lard to the beans and continue to simmer for about 1 hour more, until the beans are tender and the flavors have blended. Remove the garlic and chile. Season the beans with salt to taste.

To purée, place the beans in a food processor or blender and pulse on and off until puréed. If the mixture is too thin, cook the purée over low heat, stirring often so the beans don't stick.

Note

If you'd like to try Huevos Motuleños but don't want to do the required cooking, at least two restaurants in Santa Fe offer their own versions of the dish:

* Cafe Pasqual's, 121 Don Gaspar Ave., 983-9340 (a vegetarian version — with no ham — is available on the breakfast and lunch menu only).

* El Tesoro Cafe, 500 Montezuma Ave. (in the Sanbusco Center), 988-3886 (a green rather than a red salsa tops its version, it uses no ham, and the black beans are whole, not mashed).

Although Huevos Motuleños has been a standard offering on these restaurant menus, we suggest you call before you go to be sure they are still being served.