Las Garnachas se Comen de Noche...
You know when you lose track of time and realize you’re in that space where time doesn’t really exist anyway?
Growing up, we made garnachas really only once a year. Usually late December for my dad’s birthday when we were all residing in that timeless space. No school, no work, no schedules.
Just plenty of time to cure cabbage in pineapple vinegar and oregano for at least three days until it’s tart and crisp. The time to hand craft miniature, beef-filled tortillas by the dozens. The time to fry a batch up, eat them, and fry up another round. Bathed in stewed salsa, crowned with pickled slaw, quenched with ice-cold Coca Colas, Victoria beers, hearty laughs, and salacious tales.
When I bite into a garnacha, the crunch, and ensuing bitter-sweet heat feel like a fault line – a crack between worlds. When I bite into a garnacha, I am transported to Juchitán, Oaxaca. A dusty city in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the skinny part of Mexico that curves like a “C” into Central America. A town of black iguanas and purple bougainvillea, gale force winds, and kaleidoscopic hammocks.
“Las garnachas se comen de noche,” my Tía intones. And it’s true, garnachas are eaten at night.
Na Maria, the most famous garnachera Juchitán ever knew, was killed by a stray bullet, but her legend lives on. Her embroidered skirts were long and her silken braids black as night. The unctuous aroma of her garnachas frying in chicken fat floated on the night breeze like the brassy notes of a son cooing out of El Bar Jardín. To this day, hers are revered as the most carefully crafted, most exquisite garnachas in all of Juchitán. Anyone will confirm this to be true. And when you visit the cemetery to offer fresh alstroemeria and wash the slate stones of your loved ones, you ask a passerby, “Which way to La Garnachera’s tombstone?” and they will tell you.
Las garnachas se comen de noche…
In a tiny apartment in Roma Norte, a leafy neighborhood in Mexico City, Na Maria’s daughter, my Tía Vicky, makes garnachas. She massages the masa and molds tortillas, filling them with ground beef and onions. She pours mezcal from an unmarked jug until dappled light and flitting hummingbirds signal a new day. A plate of predawn garnachas sends me off to her ochre hammock for a dreamless sleep.
Las garnachas se comen de noche…
In a city less leafy and much farther north, I make garnachas once or twice a year. I braid my hair and don my huipil. I invite friends to come linger and lose track of time over plate after plate of garnachas. Laughter, mezcal, and smokey plumes of rendered chicken fat fill our apartment.
Las garnachas se comen de noche…
This year, we find ourselves in a perpetual expanse of collapsed space and time, a bizarre limbo. And so while there are no crowds of friends to come partake, I make a small batch of garnachas for my husband’s birthday. I cure the col for three days in vinegar and pineapple skins. I press the masa. I coax chilis from their casings and stew them with tomatoes. And with every bite I’m transported at once to my childhood home, and to the windswept streets of Juchitán, and to the warm metropolis of Mexico City. I can taste the laughter and the gossip, and as the smoke rises from my comal, I open a window to the sirens of the heavy night.
Las garnachas se comen de noche…
Find the recipe inspired by the tale HERE.
