Wednesday, September 3, 2014

PORK – MMM…MMM…mmmm – Good! Chicharrón

Just too good to hurry through!
A visit to Yucatan is a culinary sojourn down memory lane to a place from by-gone years before prepackaged foods embalmed with corporate chemicals and barcodes.
This is fun food worthy of the search.
You can enjoy it even if it is nutritious.
These pork delights are fondly enjoyed throughout Latin America, North America to Canada…even Europe and Asia.
Regional seasonings and presentations are uniquely area specific.
The good news is that one of Yucatan’s classic delights can still be found here in Mérida.
We invite you to come and meet smiling Don Herberto the purveyor of these succulent treats and find out for yourself.

Enterprising  Herberto Chán is located at the corner of C. 28 and 37 in Emiliano Zapata Norte, two blocks east off Paseo de Montejo. Find him there daily from mid morning to mid afternoon.

This is smiling Don Herberto Chán who we have been happily patronizing for more than thirty years. He has been in this neighborhood business for thirty-seven years and his excellent quality has remained unchanged. Sample an authentic morsel of Yucatan from years gone by.
He has tortillas, limes, habanero chilies, and pre-cut taco stuffing and veggies bagged. 
His gastronomic delights will make you into a repeat customer.


Pork Rinds or chicharrones:
Mexico is one of the world's largest producers of pork rinds, known as chicharrón or cuerito. The very best is fresh from street vendors, eaten as snacks or antojitos.
Packaged store bought pork rinds are adulterated with preservatives and flavor enhancers such as MSG. Remember no bar-coded foods from Don Herberto!
A 1-ounce serving of chicharrones contains zero carbohydrates, 17 grams (g) of protein, and 9 g of fat which is 43% unsaturated. Consider this; chicharrón has nine times as much protein as potato chips.
I still love them even if they are healthy.

In the Yucatan these tasty delights of yesteryear are cooked to absolute finger-licking perfection.
No place in Mexico does pork better than Yucatan. Regional subtleties are the standard. 
Exquisitely cooked and ready to take home to devour. Buy chicharrón by the kilo, gram, or as custom made tacos. .
We like to buy a chunk of pierna or leg and slice it very thin and serve it warm or cold.  Building tacos makes ingestion a pleasurable occurrence.
I still haven’t learned how to build a little taco.  
No product code and 100% natural food from tropical Yucatan
In the above photo starting at the top: glasses of pineapple liquefied in the blender and flavored with slow steeped jamaica tea, chicharrón and bacon bits, lower left, a all meat pork taco with chicharrón and lower right a salad featuring home made sauerkraut, shredded onion, carrot, chopped sweet peppers, tomato, chives, and radishes with a hard boiled egg. The dressing is key lime juice and olive oil.
My creative wife who happens to have won the Betty Crocker Homemaker award quickly made our salad into fusion food. She suggested dumping the contents of our pork taco onto the salad and it was terrific!
Come savor this authentic slice of genuine paradise before it is gone! You will have only one regret…you didn’t find it sooner.