Yucatecan Food I

We anticipate we will have multiple posts about the Yucatecan food. Here is Yucatecan food part 1!

We enjoyed our Friday evening at a local Yucatecan restaurant called La Chaya Maya.

The highlight of the evening was watching local Mayan make handmade tortillas. They had two Mayan ladies making hundreds of tortillas while we enjoyed our meal.

We know there are several of you very interested in knowing more about the Yucatecan food. Here are pics and descriptions (some copied from other sources!) of the foods we enjoyed.

Chips and Salsa/Dips

We forgot to take a picture before we dived into the chips, so you get the after pic! What was unique about this are the ‘dips’. One was a pumpkin seed dip, one was the normal pico de callo (with a slightly different flavor than what we are accustomed to, yet very good), black bean dip, and a wonderfully flavored haberno salsa.

Relleno Negro

This unusual dish gets its dark black color from the spices it contains. Relleno negro combines turkey, “ground meat”, and broth. The “ground meat”, which is the soul of this dish, is made with tomato, pepper, chopped egg, oregano, achiote, cumin, epazote, and black recardo paste. This is made into a meatball-like dough, lightly fried, and added to the broth with the turkey. It was very rich and delicious.

Chicken Pibil

This iconic dish is made from chicken marinated in achiote paste, sour orange juice, garlic, cumin, salt and pepper. It is wrapped in banana laves and baked in the oven, or better yet in an underground pit known as a “pib.” It was extremely tender and super delicious!