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A Culinary Guide To Mexican Herbs - Las Hierbas de Cocina MexConnect
A Culinary Guide To Mexican Herbs - Las Hierbas de Cocina MexConnect
With the current international interest in Mexican cuisine, several mail-order companies have begun to specialize in plants and
seeds for Mexican culinary herbs. Even if your space is confined to windowsill pots in a city apartment, you can easily
experience the joy of cutting your own fresh herbs as you get creative in the kitchen. Those with no inclination toward tending
even the hardiest herbs can now find several of the more common herbs used in Mexican cooking being sold in the produce
department of the local supermarket.
The following guide lists only culinary herbs; there are hundreds more used in Mexico for medicinal, aromatic and cosmetic
purposes. Although herbs are technically only the aromatic leaves of plants, the list also contains those plants whose seeds are
found frequently in Mexican recipes. It includes both idigenous plants used since pre-Hispanic times and herbs that arrived after
the conquest. Several of the herbs, in addition to being used in food and beverages, are also employed in home remedies, and
these are noted below.
Next month’s column will feature some favorite recipes using these wonderfully fragrant and tasty plants, as well as a source list
for ordering Mexican culinary herbs through mail order and Internet sites.
The English name, when there is one, appears in parentheses, followed by the botanical name.
Acuyo or tlanepa:
Names used in Veracruz for hierba santa (see below)
Chepiche:
A strong, clean fragrance characterizes this Oaxacan herb, used both traditionally and in Nouvelle Mexican cuisine. In the
latter, it flavors a delicious mushroom and watercress salad.
A self-seeding annual, with a tangy, almost pungent flavor, cilantro is used in a great
variety of Mexican dishes. Its leaves are required in fresh green salsas, as well as in
several other cooked and fresh salsas, bean and rice dishes, soups, stews and moles.
Less frequently, the seeds are ground and added to stews. Cilantro cannot be dried
successfully, since it loses most of its flavor in the process, but is widely available
fresh in produce departments and markets.
Flor de cimal:
This small, red-leafed herb that grows at the base of the maguey – century plant – is incorporated into tamale dough in the
traditional country cooking of the Sierra Oriental, whose indigenous population gathers and cooks with a wide variety of
wild herbs.
Halachas:
A downy, wild herb, with triangular, sprear-shaped leaves, purple flowers and tiny round fruit, eaten by the indigenous
people of eastern Mexico, in combination with onion, garlic, chile and squash.
Laurel (bay leaf, bay laurel) Mexican: litsea ssp, Mediterranean: lauris nobilis:
Mexican bay laurel has thinner leaves and a milder flavor than its European counterpart, but the difference is little enough
that they may be used interchangeably. Many Mexican recipes call for bay laurel in soups, stews, and marinades.
Quintoniles:
A wild herb with long, wrinkled oval leaves and green flowers, this plant is used to make a guisado – stew – with chipotle
chiles and the small white fish called charales.
Link to second part – A culinary guide to Mexican herbs: Las hierbas de cocina, Part Two