The Taste of Freedom

El Grito de Dolores—listen for it starting around September 15.

Coincidentally or not, September 17 is also the night where we frolic beneath the oh-so-full Harvest Moon, known as the Full Corn Moon on the American prairies and plains before the arrival of Christianity, Winchesters and whiskey. Read on.

Grito (shout) rhymes with frito (fried), and that’s a good thing since September 15 ushers in Mexican Independence Day, Latino Heritage Month, followed by Dia de la Raza October 11, and national American Indian Heritage Month, and leaves a trail of pungent cemooalxochiyl (marigold) petals leading to the ofrendas(altars) of Dia de los Muertos in November – all occasions to experience the deep wonders of indigenous ingredients given unforgettable expression in the foods of Mexico.

The grito in question does not concern a lady named Dolores. This woman’s name means sorrows (or pains), and references the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mother. Dolores Hidalgo is also the name of a city located in north-central Guanajuato, Mexico.

 “The Cry of Dolores” references the rallying vocalizing by a Roman Catholic priest, Manuel Hidalgo y Costilla. It’s now also known as El Grito de Independencia (we’re sure you can translate the latter), because the pastor’s hollerin’, as well as ringing the bells in his parish of Dolores, the call to arms that set off the Mexican War of Independence from Spain, celebrating the overthrow of 300 years of European tyranny over Aztlán. This was essentially a revolutionary civil war, and it lasted 11 years, culminating with the drafting of the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire in Mexico City on September 28, 1821.

This time of year, every year, the Presidente of Mexico rings the same bell that Hidalgo used in 1810 and calls out an ear-splitting “¡Viva Mexico!” (three times!) from the balcony of the National Palace in Mexico City. This historic occasion far outstrips our Americanized Cinco de Mayo (which, granted, commemorates the badass defeat of Napoleon’s troops by a much smaller contingent of fearless Mexican fighters in the Battle of Puebla) in terms of historical importance in Mexico.

Wait—TL; DR? Just grab a tenedora (fork) and prepare to feast. Enjoying Mexico’s culinary heritage is a history lesson on the tongue, which informs our enjoyment of other cuisine. At the heart of it all: indigenous ingredients that literally bear the fruit of the specific terroir of the Americas.

Those sun-dried tomatoes on your pizza margherita? 

• Tomatoes, members of the nightshade family, are indigenous to the Americas, as are that loaded baked potato and “French” fries. Not to mention the eggplant that we love best as silky, yummy Baba Ganoush.

Those fiery flavors in Hunan cooking, or the pulse-quickening heat of Paprikash? 

• Peppers, period, hot or otherwise, are indigenous to the Americas, first collected and brought back to the Old World by Europeans beginning in the 1500s. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplants and (wheeze!) tobacco are all nightshades that call the Americas their home.

And how about that exquisite Chocolate Moelleux Cake (a moelleux is a soft, plush cushion…) that had you howling at the moon in Paris? 

• Although the French most sincerely believe that they invented cooking, along with almost everything else, that deep, dark chocolate essence is another gift of the pre-contact Americas, where the Olmec civilization turned native cacao into the forebear of modern chocolate. Their pots on display at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian still bear traces of the alkaloid theobromine, circa 1500 BCE. The Nahuatl word for the ferment translates as “bitter water.” But more enticingly, Theobroma literally translates from the Greek into “food of the gods.” Just sayin’.

• Oh, vanilla is also indigenous to the Americas, its fragrant essence scraped from the seed-pods of V.planifolia and V.pompona, orchid varieties native to Mexico and Central America.

The Bible mentions “corn,” as in Luke 15:16 describing the prodigal son getting’ piggy wit’ it, but that’s not what the original writers meant. In Elizabethan English, “corn” meant any harvested grain.

• Ixim, or maize (Zea mays), is indigenous to southern Mexico, where indigenous people cultivated it from a family of wild grasses known as teosinte about 9,000 years ago. This civilization revered a sacred Trinity long before the arrival of the blackgowns (Jesuits) and their Bibles: corn, beans and squash were planted together in what is now called Three Sisters Polyculture, a skilled companion-planting technique much-replicated today.

Maize and beans were, and are, often planted together in mounds formed by hilling soil around the base of the plants each year; squash is typically planted between the mounds.

The cornstalk forms a trellis for climbing beans, the beans “fix” nitrogen in their root nodules and stabilize the tall corn in high winds, and the wide leaves of the squash shade the soil, helping the roots to retain moisture, and discouraging weeds from popping up.

Even today among the Diné, Hopi and Zuni Nations of the American Southwest, Corn Maiden is a beloved figure, often finding her place alongside Guadalupe, the Brown Virgencita. 

Centuries of genocide and forced relocation have broken the connection between most indigenous cultures and their plants, and certainly not only in the Americas. 

The Cherokee Nation has recently distinguished itself by founding its own seed bank in 2006, where seeds including what are now called Cherokee Trail of Tears beans, collected from Cherokee on their traditional lands in North Carolina. Other seeds in the bank include White Eagle Corn and Candy Roaster Squash. In this way, ingredients themselves speak, and food-makers become story-keepers when heirloom corn and bean varieties pair on the plate as in the field to create the recipe for Cherokee Bean Bread, a large, moist dumpling which is wrapped in soaked hickory leaves or corn husks, tied with a piece of young river grass, and boiled for an hour or so.

And, may we just say, avocados?

The indigenous ingredients of the Americas have traveled far and wide. Ireland embraced the potato, China embraced the hottest of the hot peppers, the Mediterranean and Middle East made trans-Atlantic magic with the eggplant. And children everywhere love their chocolate and vanilla.

Read our conversations with local tastemakers in the Mexican tradition!