Ready to think way outside the bun? Chicago’s Field Museum is teaming up with more than a dozen area restaurants to give us a sampling of truly old school Mexican food, a Taste of The Aztec World. This weeklong, multi-venue celebration is part of their exclusive exhibition, The Aztec World. Acclaimed and up-and-coming chefs and mixologists will create dishes and cocktails with the Aztec empire’s cuisine in mind.
That cuisine, it turns out, has a lot in common with what we think of as traditional Mexican food. Plenty of maize [or corn] for tortillas, tamales and pozoles [soups or stews], for example. Lots of legumes, vegetables and fruits. And maguey, or agave, a native Mexican plant with broad, long, spiked leaves; it resembles a cactus plant, but it’s not—in fact, it’s related to lilies. I’ve seen these large, impressive leaves [often two feet or more in length] in produce departments of Mexican supermarkets in my Logan Square neighborhood and wondered what they were for. I’m still not clear how home cooks use the leaves, but agave nectar is a very sweet syrupy liquid that you can use like honey—in tea and coffee, on pancakes or French toast or in desserts… Agave is also used for making high-end tequila as well as mezcal and pulque, fermented maguey juice whose boozy origins actually predate the Aztecs. Seafood was also an important part of the Aztec diet, as it is in modern Mexican cuisine.
There were differences, though. No cilantro, rice, pork, chicken or cheese in Aztec cooking. Very little meat either, although domesticated turkeys and ducks provided both meat and eggs. The Aztecs did eat bugs, though—Ants, grasshoppers, jumil (small stink bugs) and maguey worms. But only the wealthiest of Aztecs washed down those bugs with chocolate.
Restaurants participating in Taste of The Aztec World will offer an impressive mix of Aztec-inspired flavors, ranging from imaginative—Confit Duck Leg over Vanilla Roasted Vegetables at Cafe Ba Ba Reba—to adventurous—botana mexica, fresh masa cups filled with chapulines [grasshoppers], chinicuiles [maguey worms] and escamoles [ant eggs]. Don’t worry—you can wash them down with a number of flavors of fermented maguey juices. You’ll find a complete list of participating restaurants and clubs here.
Taste of The Aztec World
Sunday, January 11 – Saturday, January 17, 2009
The Aztec World
The exhibition continues at the Field Museum through April 19, 2009
Thanks for the tip, Terry! I’m happy to see so many accessible restaurants participating in such a sensory experiment. The Berghoff is an especially curious choice!
I know! And for me, the Kit Kat Bar & Supper Club is an interesting call!
Sounds like a fascinating exhibition. Can just imagine you & Marion chewing those grasshoppers!
Helmut—I think nibbling warily would be more our speed.