Carnitas Revisited: Some Tentative Thoughts about Origins
Thanks to everyone who has commented. I’m thrilled when blogging leads me to extend or reconsider my ideas.
To begin with, I agree that carnitas are a special meal. To add to the stories, the first time I had them was when I was invited to the rancho (village) of a maestro albañil. To translate his title as head bricklayer or stone mason doesn’t quite do it justice. These guys work with architects (and often without) to build houses and have a team who are pretty skilled at working with stone, concrete, and brick. It was May 3rd, the feast of the Sacred Cross and the Day of the Albañil.
To celebrate the maestro had killed a pig and polished up the big copper cauldron. He didn’t use a gas tank to supply fuel. He had a trench in his yard in which he lit a fire and then put the cauldron on two small bricks walls that ran along either side of the trench. When I asked him how often he killed a pig, he said twice a year. I imagine, as Bob mentioned in his comment, that the other time was Christmas–or perhaps a wedding or a quincena (15th birthday).
The maestro also volunteered that he killed one of his goats every couple of months. That was meat for the family. Otherwise it was beans, salsas and tortillas. His was a sad rancho, the soil bleached and white and useless for crops. Hence the men sought work elsewhere.
So, for campesinos (poor country people) carnitas are a special dish. And I think they really are a campesino dish. You never ever see recipes for them in the many Mexican cookbooks produced from the eighteenth century on. The well-to-do eat go to carnitas stands and find them delicious but (correct me if I wrong anyone out there who knows more about this than me) with a slight sense of slumming, just the attitude the the well-to-do in England had to fish and chip shops.
But then that raises the question once more that Adam and I are debating in the comments. Why this very unusual method of preparing a special dish? This is not pork baked in an oven (Europe) nor is it spitted pork (the Philippines). Usually special dishes, at whatever social level, have a special presentation. They are large or gussied up.
Nor is the meat preserved but eaten all at once. Carnitas do not last until the second day. They are horrid warmed up (though I do it for just a hint of that original taste). And this raises, tangentially why the Spanish in Mexico (or New Spain as it was in the colonial period) did not go in for the range of pig preserving that one assumes was already common in Spain. Most of the salting and sausage making of Spain just never made it here. When Roberto Santibañez and I were chatting about this a month or so ago, he suggested that the winters were not cold enough for hams and sausages.
I also think that part of the reason was the abundance of meat in New Spain. At least for the well-to-do, beef and mutton and pork were available in quantities unheard of in Europe. Why preserve for the winter when you can have fresh meat whenever you want? (Though against that, the preserved meats have a new taste and texture so why did they not want this, I say, arguing with myself).
Here’s a photo of tiles (sorry, I don’t have notes one where I got this) showing how blood sausage was made in eighteenth-century Spain. There’s that cauldron but presumably filled with water (as it would be presumably for making blood sausage here in Mexico).
So here’s the suggestion. Spain, like many other parts of the world, does have methods not just of salting pork but of preserving it in lard. Now suppose you are in New Spain. Suppose you are a poor person. You begin on the rendering of lard to make preserved pork. The meat that is cooked in the fat is delicious. You throw a feast. Any lard left over livens up beans.
Or does it? I ask, arguing with myself again. My impression is that refried beans (mashed beans enriched with lard) that are emblematic of Mexican food in the United States are rarely eaten even now in the Mexican countryside. There just isn’t the fat so they are a real luxury. I am always slightly horrified when the girls who work for me ask if they can take the frying fat that I am discarding.
So I’m not sure we are farther along. Perhaps, though, some of the outlines of the puzzle are becoming clearer. And I do find in general there is a logic to the way food is prepared. So any help ferreting this out would be welcome.
Those 18th century tiles are fantastic. An so informative about cooking techniques too. There are similar ones showing chocolate making for instance.
What was the relationship between the land owner and the tenant farmer in Mexico? In large parts of Europe, even though the pig was raised by the tenant, on slaughter, prime parts (or even all) of the pig might go to the land owner as part of the rent package. If are left with little other then offal and off-cuts it is difficult to develop a preserving culture.
A lot of the European “peasant” preserving of meat actually is done by relatively wealthy small land owners, rather then the stereotyped dirt poor peasant.
Another thought is that one of the other cultures that made a pig deal of boiling pig in a cauldron as a prestige dish were the various bronze age/iron age people in the UK and Ireland. Cauldrons and fancy meat hooks are reasonably common in museums now for this reason.
I wonder if the parallel here is the cooking technology. Todays pigs are different to iron age, medieval or even early modern pigs. The huge amount of fat for preserving or frying we associate with pigs is quite possibly relatively modern.
If you don’t have a food culture of frying then, roasting or boiling are you options. Did Mesoamerica have a frying culture before the introduction of the pig? Was the original carnitas cooking method a sort of transition technique that makes less sense if you only look at the modern dish/
Thanks so much Adam and Holly. Lots to think about. I’ll be posting again soon.
Again from Holly Chase. ” To continue—It IS interesting that the very extensive Iberian cured meat repertoire did not seem to make it to Latin America, especially since other Iberian foodways DID make the passage.
” I think of the planting of grapes and olives and producing wine and cured olives… indeed, one would think that the ambient temperature for storing terracotta jars of brined olives and wine would be just about right for storing cured meat….or at least keeping fat-sealed vessels for more than a few days. Of course, simply putting something liquid in an unglazed vessel helps to cool it, because of the evaporation.” holly@almostitalian.com
This is a subject that is also very puzzling for me. I think that the hypothesis regarding winters in Mexico is very possible but there are areas of Mexico where charcuterie can be made.
One area is the mountains around Jalapa, Veracruz, where today they are apparently making some good hams and cured meats.
I am having to lean more toward your statement Rachel of the sheer amount of meat available – led to a lack of need for cured meats.
I am especially confounded because the province in Spain from which most of the conquistadors of New Spain were culled was Extremadura. This is the chorizo making center of Spain.
Interesting that the inclusion of a new world ingredient found [chile] its way back to the ‘mother country’ and now appears without fail in the country’s most famous cured sausage; yet the technique of curing was not brought across the pond to Mexico.
Bernal Diaz even writes about the first feast of the conquistadors in New Spain in his relation of the Conquest. The menu could of appeared anywhere in Renaissance Spain – hardly any inclusion of New World dishes. I recall them feasting on some fowl in Escabeche among other dishes. They were obviously going to lengths to eat like they did in Spain – yet why no chorizo.
It might be worth looking into the differences between one fresh sausage that appears both in Mexico and Spain. The blood sausage – I believe called Moranga in Mex and Morcilla in Spain. Why was this tradition carried out if meat was so plentiful? [Ive got a great recipe for Moranga in Salsa de Morita thats begging to be made!]
Even today around Christmas time Mexicans are indulging in Bacalao – salt cod. I cannot think of something more “non-mexican” that this ingredient yet the power of Religion may be so strong that this tradition continues to exist.
Other foodstuffs that beg to be looked into are grapes, olives and wheat. Apparently the ripped out the grapes and olives to create a monopoly of the Spanish product.
I cannot thank you enough for sharing your thoughts with us Rachel! Engrossing topic!
Holly brings up a good point. One thing that we may be missing here is that until 1810 Mexico was a colony of New Spain and as such the inhabitants were expected to send raw material to Spain and purchase finished goods in return. The priest, Miguel Hidalgo, the “father” of Mexico tried unsuccessfully to initiate wine production because wine was expected to be purchased from Spain. The authorities quickly ripped up the grape vines that he planted and also the mulberry trees that he tried to grow for silkworm production. As far as meat is concerned there are some profound regional differences. For example, the area around Monterrey in the North is meat country. The people eat a lot of meat. In fact, I have been to restaurants where the meal consisted of nothing but various cuts of meat. In Central and Southern Mexico people are more likely to partake of the three “sisters”; corn, beans, and squash. Most meals among the common folk that I live and work with consist of beans, rice, corn tortillas, chilies, tomatoes, fruit, potatoes, cream, and cheese. The only meat used is in very small pieces which are usually in the form of a “guisado” which is a chunky form of gravy eaten with a tortilla as a “sop”. I personally know people who subsist on nothing more than tortillas, beans, nopal cactus, and chilies. Up until the Revolution of 1910 just about the only protein in many people’s diet came from a drink called “pulque” which comes from the agave plant. It is a fermented drink that is very high in vegetable protein. Regarding sausage, we have chorizo, longaniza, moronga and morcilla (blood sausages) and salchicha (various types of hot dog-like sausages). If you ever get the opportunity you should try a moronga taco topped off with salsa and sour cream. Fantastic!
Alex, I seemed to have stepped on your toes a bit. I apologize. Honestly I didn’t see your post when I wrote mine. You obviously have a pretty good “handle” on Mexico. Saludos!
Adam, in the colonial period most of the poor worked as peons on large haciendas. This continued after Independence and through the Revolution of the first decades of the twentieth century. Then many were broken up in a land reform program that started with the best of intentions but that has not proved an unmitigated success for lots of reasons. This has again been changed in the last decade, allowing the poor to get title to land and to sell what before had been owned cooperatively.
There was no frying culture pre-Conquest because there were no fatty animals and probably no system of pressing oil from seeds though there is now a hint that it might have been expressed from cotton seeds. We’ll see. Good point about pigs earlier having less fat and worth bearing in mind.
And yes, much of the fresh sausage making did come to the Americas. It’s the long-keeping ones that don’t. Like long-keeping cheeses.
But may be haciendas are the answer. May be there was a tradition of preserved pork there. There are few recipes for the same reason there are few recipes for bread. And maybe the habit of an occasional fiesta with carnitas is something that the hacenderos put on for the peons.
Hmm. Another post brewing.