Golden tejocote: Praise to a humble Day of the Dead fruit
A clutch of tejocotes (te-ho-COT-es) with a plum tomato by their side to give you a sense of scale. They look like minature golden apples, don’t they? Doll’s apples.
So it’s a little sad that when you bite into one, it’s really not great. Woolly not crisp, fairly tasteless.
Here’s one I’ve nibbled and you can see that this is not a miniature crunchy apple.
So what are these things? They’re Crataegus mexicana (sometimes pubescens though that’s not the scientifically correct name), part of the hawthorn family that I was so familiar with growing up in England. There we children always nibbled on the red fruits of hawthorn but they were only about the size of blueberries with a big stone in the middle, so the pithy fruit yielded little beyond satisfying the curiosity.
In fact, the Mexican species is one of the few that yields fruits of economic interest. And I have a soft spot for them even though they’re in a different league from peaches and raspberries and mangoes.
I find something so mundane somehow reassuring after all the foodie hype about the perfect you fill in the gap–strawberry, tomato, peach. These have always been the tip of the fruit and vegetable iceberg, so to speak.
Most often people ate humble fruits, forgotten in the world of modern marketing. A friend of mine who grew up on a remote hacienda where near self-sufficiency was the goal told me that preserved tejocotes were the fruit for much of the winter.
And that’s the way they are still usually eaten, peeled and preserved in a heavy syrup with a hint of canela (true cinnamon).
Here are some that I bought in a plastic tub in the market last week. You can see the cinnamon and the fork is the tiny kind. And my stark modernist tendencies have been overridden once more and the tub is on this intricate and beautiful mat hand made not far from here. Well, that’s the soft sell for Mexican needlecraft.
I’ve been eating these for breakfast and, could it be that it’s the cinnamon and the sugar? but they are transformed into something more than palatable, verging on delicious. Of course, you do a lot of spitting out because each one has three or sometimes more seeds inside.
But imagine on a remote hacienda a row of glass jars with these gleaming golden balls in the pantry.
And the syrup is thick, thick because whatever else tejocotes do or don’t have in their favor, they are loaded with pectin. They are a standard ingredient for the Mexican Christmas ponche (punch) to which they add color floating around and an unctuousness that the other ingredients just don’t. In fact they are so rich in pectin that they are grown just to extract the pectin.
And need I say that they crop up in many other typically Mexican uses: as an ate, a fruit cheese, and caramelized like toffee apples. Oh joy. And the ones in syrup make magnificent decorations for sophisticated desserts and there’s no way that I can be the only person who uses them that way (pity about the seeds, of course).
And then, today, driving the 50 mile stretch from Mexico City to Guanajuato, high, dry country, all along the verges and the median strip from Tula to San Juan del Rio, these golden balls dangling from their spiky big bushes or small trees, leafless now, just the golden fruits and below them the ground scattered with golden fruits, people with sacks gathering this semi-wild harvest.
And gold plastered on gold, the banks glowing with golden marigolds, the cars on their way to the cemetary loaded with crimson amaranth and more marigolds.
Wish I could have taken a photograph for you, but suicidal stops on the highway, well no.
But really, El Dorado.
Rachel,
My mother used to make rice pudding, arroz de leche, sprinkled with bits of the tejocotes. Very simple dessert, and delicious.
Thanks for the information, it all helps fill out the picture.
Your mother sounds like a fabulous cook. The gold against the creamy white of the pudding must have been lovely.
Three varieties of the species Crataegus grow in Greece too. The fruits can be eaten fresh or used in making jam and canela -flavored liquor.
Sounds great and reminds me a little of the autumn olive berries in my backyard right now: a little strange, a little wild and requiring a little effort, but all in all much more interesting than an apple.
One of the most common uses for the tejocote is in Mexican ponche navideño. This winter drink, served hot and often with a piquete (shot of liquor), is just the ticket for taking the chill off a (relatively) cold fall or winter night. It’s wonderful for a party and traditional at Christmas.
Ponche Navideño
Ingredientes:
● 25 tejocotes, halved and seeds removed
● 15 guayabas, quartered
● 1 tza. Pasitas
● 2 tza. Ciruela pasa
● 6 pzas. caña, cut in julienne
● 4 manzanas, cut in eighths or smaller
● 6 tzos. Canela (15 cm)
● piloncillo al gusto
● ron o brandy
● 25 a 30 tazas de agua
Preparación:
Lavar y partir la fruta y ponerlas en olla a hervir junto con
canela, caña y piloncillo.
Cuando estén cocidas retirar del fuego.
Servir con ron o brandy al gusto.
Salud!
Wonderful description – thank you!
Me parecen muy adecuados sus comentarios sobre todo enfocados hacia una fruta poco apreciada en altiplano Mexicano
Mil gracias Miguel.
I had a drink at a street corner from a Mexican stand 2 days ago. The lady couldn’t tell me the name of the drink (I gather now it was some sort of ponch or agua fresca?) and also couldn’t tell me the name of the berries inside. The drink was delicious and refreshing. It has crushed ice, mango pieces in a sweet juice, salt, I gather some chili powder, lemon juice, some red sauce out of a bottle (could’ve been hot sauce but I don’t really know) and then these berries also in a sweet juice. I had to look for them online for 2 days but not I think those were Mexican Hawthorn or tejocotes. I remembered eating something similar in Iran where the stone of the fruit seemed to have fur around it!! So after reading in Wiki that Mexican Hawthorn is called Zalzalac in Iran, I am quite sure this is the same berry. We used to eat them more ripe so they were darker (dark brown). The flesh had the consistency of aged apple (so not crunchy but more mushy). And there is not much flesh to it either. I rarely write any comments online but since it took me 2 days to compare pictures (it was hard to tell the exact color of the berries because they were soaked in a red sweet juice) and read on various berries and fruits, I thought I post this. So maybe the info can be useful to the next person looking to find out the name of those little berries in those delicious Mexican ponches.
Thanks for this long comment, Erika. How interesting. I’ve not seen tejocotes served in a drink in Mexico. Were these preserved berries? It would be unusual to find fresh ones at this time of year in Mexico. And where in Mexico was it? And I wonder what the red syrup was. Could it have been chamoy sauce? Salty/liquoricy (and originally Chinese, but that’s another story).
I did not know the Iranians had a similar fruit although I know it occurs in the Mediterranean.
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