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In Guadalajara, sipping tejuino from a plastic bag is the American equal of consuming iced tea on a scorching day, in response to Alex Valencia, the co-owner and lead bartender at New York Metropolis’s La Contenta, La Contenta Oeste, and upcoming La Contenta Subsequent Door. Part of Mexico’s repertoire of fermented pre-Colombian drinks—along with pulque, an agave ferment, and pineapple-based tepache—tejuino is created from corn, Mexico’s most iconic crop, and significantly, nixtamalized corn.
Although it’s purchased by avenue distributors all by way of Mexico, the western states of Michoacán, Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit, and Sinaloa comprise the nation’s tejuino belt, and each space makes and serves the drink barely in one other method. Usually, to arrange tejuino, you boil piloncillo in water, combine masa with additional water, combine the two liquids, and put together dinner briefly sooner than transferring the viscous mixture to a transparent container and fermenting it for two to three days, merely until fermentation begins. The alcohol content material materials is nominal, decrease than 2%.
Rising up, Valencia drank tejuino with numerous ice, numerous glugs of scorching sauce, lime, and a scoop of nieves de limon, or lime sorbet. With its layers of corn, lactic fermentation, rich syrup, spice, and acid, a decked-out avenue tejuino can seem like a low- to no-ABV cocktail in its private correct, and American bartenders are merely starting to catch on to its potential.
Mining Mexican Flavors
Cliseria “Clio” Padilla-Flores was born in Aguascalientes, a state in Mexico’s dead-center, and moved to Sarasota, Florida, at age seven. She started working in bars at 18, found craft cocktails alongside the best way during which, and is now the bar supervisor at Sage, a globally impressed restaurant with a culinary-leaning bar program.
Padilla-Flores has certainly not returned to Aguascalientes and mines family tales about meals and consuming for cocktail inspiration. She realized about tejuino from a pal who visited Michoacán, and returned with intel on this “fermented corn flour issue,” says Padilla-Flores. “I was like, what the hell is that?” One different pal’s grandmother had a recipe for tejuino that tasted like “a candied tamal,” she says. “As a newbie, it was so out of my realm. How do you even ferment corn flour?”
Padilla-Flores shortly began to tinker, together with tamarind paste and cinnamon into the mixture. A shaken tejuino-mezcal cocktail shortly adopted. She wanted to wrestle to get it on the menu, nevertheless her “Masa Dulce,” with tejuino, mezcal, lime, guajillo-serrano chile tincture, and salt, is one amongst Sage’s prime sellers.
Revisiting Custom
Irving Gonzalez moreover hails from Aguascalientes, and as a baby, his grandma took him to a park “the place there was this earlier man selling tejuino with lime sorbet. I didn’t favor it the least bit. It tasted like vinegar,” he remembers.
Gonzalez purchased his start bartending in Tijuana and Baja California sooner than changing into a member of the beverage workforce on the Westin in San Diego. He’s now the proprietor of Snake Oil Cocktail Co., an events and drinks consulting group. Shifting to southern California shifted his palate and launched him to tropical bar classics, and he in the end revisited tejuino for a cocktail opponents.
Researching the Pearl Diver, Gonzalez found parallels between sweet, thick tejuino and the drink’s butter-based gardenia mix. “Every current a pleasing texture, and the tejuino has this vinegary factor from fermentation,” says Gonzalez, whose “Am I Rum” featured native Seven Cage Tiki gin, El Dorado rum, Rum Fireside, tejuino, gardenia mix, lime, and a pinch of salt.
In cocktails, he thinks of tejuino as a corn-based orgeat. Gonzalez says it pairs considerably properly with bourbon and mirrors the flavour of Nixta, a newly launched nixtamalized corn liqueur. He has even diluted tejuino with coconut water and used it reasonably than coconut cream in Piña Coladas.
Upcycling Leftover Masa
Denver’s Bruto was born as a pandemic-era pop-up, primarily a “taco stand in an alley,” says bartender Andrew Gross sales house. Central to the thought, which has since developed proper right into a 14-seat Latin-inspired chef’s counter, is freshly nixtamalized corn and house-milled masa. In December, Gross sales house salvaged a batch of over-milled blue corn by turning it into atole, a warmth, sweet masa drink that’s generally served throughout the vacations. He moreover tried to make chicha morada, the Peruvian corn beer, nevertheless when a batch failed, Bruto’s chef, Michael Diaz de Leon, urged tejuino instead.
Diaz de Leon’s workforce mills heirloom Oaxacan corn about three days per week for tortillas and tatelas, and Gross sales house snags the leftover dough for his not-exactly-traditional tejuino. He takes one pound of masa dough and blends it with 3 liters of scorching water and 1 cup sugar; he doesn’t put together dinner the mixture and supplies pineapple skins (à la tepache) to activate fermentation. After two to three days of setting up style and kombucha-level acid, the corn turns from blue to neon pink, and lots of the sugar has been devoured up by yeast.
Correct now, Gross sales house is serving tejuino in a relaxing Martini glass as part of his non-alcoholic beverage pairing menu to accompany quail and koji-wheat berry risotto, and he merely added a tejuino cocktail with mezcal, demerara syrup, and Angostura bitters. He says Bruto’s kind of tejuino would work properly reasonably than a shrub and make a “sick” cobbler with tequila, stone fruit, and berries. “Firm prefer it. I’ve had a pair people inform me that it’s one of many important thrilling drinks they’ve ever had,” says Gross sales house.
Make It Your Private
There’s no mistaken choice to make tejuino, nevertheless there are lots of choose-your-own-adventure methods. Padilla-Flores makes hers extra-thick, using 1 liter of water to eight ounces of maseca and letting it skinny out inside the cocktail shaker; she outlets batches for as a lot as a month. Gonzalez thinks un-nixtamalized corn works best and ferments his tejuino for seven days. Valencia’s enterprise companion, Luis Arce Mota, grew up in Mazatlán and supplies lemon juice to the pre-ferment; lime will also be widespread. His tejuino has the consistency of set gelatin, whereas others are additional akin to free polenta. I experimented with a standard recipe and low-cost maseca, along with variations with raw heirloom pink masa flour (4:1 water:flour), and acquired two fully completely totally different expressions of texture and style.
Valencia presently is creating tejuino and tejuino-based cocktails for La Contenta Subsequent Door, a enterprise that may showcase cebiche and tropical drinks from Mexico’s Pacific coast. As part of his course of, he consults with elders once more dwelling to make sure he understands standard preparations sooner than tweaking them for a up to date bar program.
When Valencia known as mates in Guadalajara to get his hometown tejuino specs, he realized that his go-to vendor, nicknamed El Tranzas, died closing 12 months. El Tranzas didn’t go away a recipe, nevertheless Valencia did get a secondhand account of the strategy: He combined masa and water and let the raw mixture ferment for two days. After fermentation, El Tranzas would add a rich cinnamon-infused piloncillo syrup and, critically, a sort of tamarind tea created from soaked and crushed tamarind pods.
Valencia isn’t sure how reliable the tactic is, nevertheless that’s the place he’ll start. “It’s part of the custom we’re dropping. The model new period doesn’t understand it. They don’t really care. Nevertheless I’ve the sources to dig into native customs and communities in Mexico,” says Valencia. “And New York Metropolis will need to have tejuino.”
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