Semana Santa Comes to a Close

It was a Happy Easter!
We spent the Easter weekend hanging around Santiago barrio. Saturday we went to the market and bought fresh tortillas and went over to the supermercado for the ingredients to make Pollo Pibil.

We had decided to make a traditional Yucatecan meal for our Easter Dinner. It was really going out on a limb as neither of us had ever prepared it and neither of us could be sure we had ever ordered it out. Although both of us knew we had smelled the main ingredients just about every time we walked by a cocina economica or a Yucatecan restaurant. The recipes goes something like this: you make a marinade of achiote paste and sour oranges and whatever else you want to add in the way of spices (salt, cumin, garlic, onion, etc.) The only additional thing I addeded was crushed fresh garlic. Achiote comes from the annatto seed and has a nutty, unique smell to it. Sour oranges grow everywhere down here and are used in Yucatecan kitchens a lot. You rub the sauce generously on the chicken and let it marinade for as long as you want, but at least 4 hours. It's a pasty consistency. I added  sliced onions and poblano peppers to the pan and marinaded them as well. The achiote gives the chicken a very bright orange color.

Achiote and Sour Orange

Ready to Marinade

To cook - you dig a dirt hole, light wood in the bottom and after the coals form, you line it with foil, wrap your marinaded chicken with banana leaves and place the chicken in the hole. This is where we went less Yucatecan and more Texas-Bohemian. I sauted the chicken pieces in a skillet using a small amount of oil and cooked the chicken until tender. Then lined a large pot with banana leaves from the backyard, added the onion and poblano, placed the chicken pieces on top and covered it all with the banana leaves.

Covered in Banana Leaves

Then cooked slowly, adding water as needed, for about 2 rum and cokes worth of time.
We made fideo with mixed veggies and fresh tomatoes. And brought out the fresh torillas.

Fideo with veggies and fresh tomatoes

Two rum and cokes later

It was muy bueno. Success! I think I'm turning Yucatecan. 

Pollo Pibil, Fideo, Aquacate slices, and fresh tortillas

We spent the earlier part of the day lounging up on the rooftop mirador where the weather went from still and humid to clear/dry with a gentle fresh breeze.

The mood around town seemed to be very solemn today. No church bells rang. There was no bici-ruta down Paseo Montejo. Traffic was extremely light and neither of us could recall seeing one person walk down the street whereas it is usually bustling with people passing by in front of the door and down the sidewalk.

The Bierhaus

On Friday we discovered The Bierhaus. It was purely by accident. We left out to see if we could find a re-enactment of Jesus bearing the cross. We left out around 1 in the afternoon thinking sometime around 2 or 3 things would start up. We were figuring it would be going on around several of the many churches. We never saw any sign of a re-enactment taking place...anywhere. But we did see a lot of people going in and out of the churches to pray for a moment or two. There also seemed to be a lot of nicely-clad Mexican tourists in town. The men all had on their white guayabera shirts, linen pants, and straw fedoras and carried cameras while many of the women had on big-brimmed straw hats and very high heels. Well, back to the Bierhaus...it was hot and we were running on empty so we decided to stop in the new place in town - The Bierhaus. We had the cutest, young Mexican waiter. Although Germans own the place we didn't meet them. Nobody in the place spoke German, nor did anybody speak English. We each had a beer from the unbelievable selection of local and German beers then headed home.

But, we'll go back to this place!