I love Mexico, I love Mexican food, and especially, I love the Yucatan.

Merida, the humble capital of the Yucatan, is one of my favorite cities. I love the nearby access to the pyramids and the Native American history and culture. I love the colonial Spanish architecture of the Merida Centro, the diversity of the population, the freshness of the food… I love the Yucatan’s nearly white beaches and the azure water. Some will love the access to so much fresh seafood.

When I put Mexican food on my table, I almost always have a bowl of Mexican pickled red onions. This condiment, a sort of pickle relish, comes from the Yucatan (and has been traditionally paired with seafood, often fish tacos).

I adore both its brilliant pink color and its bright flavor. I have seen, and made, many variations: Sometimes the onions are blanched, sometimes they are added raw, sometimes the flavor is quite clean and sometimes spices, like earthy cumin may be added… This is the way I have tended toward making the onions of late.

I suggest that you make this a few days ahead, so that the flavors have time to combine – and the onion sort of pickles and crisps.

You will need:

¾ cup boiling water

½ teaspoon salt

1 medium red onion

10 black peppercorns

1 bay leaf

½ teaspoon oregano

½ teaspoon cumin

½ teaspoon sugar

1 and ¼ cup red wine vinegar

½ small lime, juiced

A small – medium glass jar with a lid, e.g. holds about 2 cups or so of liquid

A mandolin slicer is highly desirable (and I suggest you either buy a cut-resistant glove, or just put the band-aids on before you get the slicer out of the box).

A fine mesh colander

First, cut the top off of your onion. Trim the root so that you have removed the root fibers without cutting far into the flesh of the onion. Then, cut your onion in half from pole-to-pole/top to root. Lay the half rounds so that the flat surface is down and either run the flat top against the mandoline’s blade or make thin, horizontal slices with your knife. In a small pan, boil the water and add the salt. When the water comes to a boil add in the onion slices and stir to just coat the onion with the boiling water. You are not cooking the onion. You are just barely blanching it. Drain the onion using a fine mesh colander.

In the glass jar combine, the onion, the peppercorns, the bay leaf, the oregano and cumin, the sugar, and then, pour the vinegar over the top of these. Squeeze in ½ a lime.   The jar should be nearly full. If it is not quite full, it is ok to add a little water. Put on the lid and shake everything up to combine well. Take the lid back off of the jar and allow the mixture to cool thoroughly for an hour or so. Then, put on the lid, give it another good shake, and place it in the refrigerator. Leave it over night. You can serve these as soon as the next day. I think it is best a few days later. The onion will lose its sharpness and the flavors will develop over a few days.

Serve these onions with any tacos. I sometimes even put this on my vegetable enchiladas. I also regularly serve these on salads. I absolutely love these with cooked greens!

As much as I love to eat my vegetables, and really all vegetables, I am not a fan of iceberg lettuce salads, nor even, any mostly lettuce salads. I like big, hearty salads, kale salads, roasted vegetable salads…
My mom’s favorite salad is a black-eyed pea salad. I love this salad too, for its heartiness, for its flavors and for the healthy fat in its avocado. My parents are at my house, visiting, and my mom wanted to make a dish to take to her church this weekend for their potluck. I think this one is a great choice when one needs to bring a dish to a potluck or party.
She and I each make this salad a little differently than the other. Today, we made her classic style – and below, I suggest variations that I tend toward.

The salad itself – and nothing need be exact about any of this – includes:
2 cups of fresh or thawed from frozen corn kernels
2 cups black-eyed peas or 1 can, rinsed (I use dried, cooked the day before and rinsed, but my mom prefers canned and rinsed) (I also sometimes use 1 cup of rinsed black-eyed peas and 1 cup rinsed black beans)
1 pint of cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
½ medium – large red onion, diced
1 medium – large avocado, cubed
1/3 – ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
Optional: I also like halved or quartered green, pitted olives, maybe 1/3 – ½ cup. I also add a diced bell pepper. If you like heat, you could add a thinly sliced jalapeño.

The dressing includes:
2 tbsp. olive oil
¼ cup red wine vinegar
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. pepper
¼ teaspoon each of garlic powder, cumin, oregano
Add several good dashes of hot sauce

Once the vegetables are chopped, the hardest part is over. This is so easy. Combine all of your vegetables in a large bowl. Combine all of your dressing ingredients in a small bowl and whisk them together. Pour the combined dressing over the vegetables and gently combine. You can serve this immediately. I prefer to let it marinate together overnight. This will serve ~6.

Truly, it is a humble, but healthy and flavorful dish.

When I imagined starting an Austin, Texas based, vegetarian, Tex-Mex culinary blog, I made a long list of topics that I wanted to talk about. I have a long list of favorite foods to cook that need to be converted to proper recipes and I am already enjoying the process of recipe testing. But of all the potential topics, it was hard to imagine the best starting place. What would make a meaningful first blog post, something future posts could begin to build on?

I knew what I did not want to do. I knew I did not want some boring post about how to get your protein. I began to imagine something about pantry staples for this regional cookery… And then, I imagined something even more fundamental, which ironically, took me back to how to get your protein.

In cooking, we sometimes refer to Old World foods (crops) and New World foods (crops). We mean where the food originated and evolved, prior to the colonization of the Americas by the Europeans.

Part of my personal philosophy about eating is that people and whole native foods evolved together and that one should eat whole foods, known to our bodies – and certainly, eat nothing created after World War II!

The Europeans brought to the Americas apples, apricots, citrus, various melons and cruciferous vegetables, not to mention the Old World spices, black pepper, cinnamon and cardamom. And the New World gave us the avocado, the potato, tomato, chocolate, corn, many of our beans – and wild rice (as opposed to Asian rice).

This brings me to area I truly want to talk about: Tres Hermanas, The Three Sisters. The Three Sisters are corn, beans and squash, native plants to the Americas, which were traditionally planted together. The beans, climbing beans, were planted as companion plants to the corn. They grew together and the beans would climb the corn stalk as the season progressed to harvest. The squash provided ground cover. For the next season, the beans gave nitrogen to the ground and the squash, mulch.

Everybody knows that rice and beans, eaten together, are a complete protein. And in this context, we do mean the Asian rice which came to the Americas. But to the native Americans, corn and beans, together, were a complete food. The native corn lacks Lysine and Tryptophan – which the body needs to create its protein – but the bean has both. And, so, what grows together, goes together. This is the foundation of American cookery.

Hold this consideration, as we go forward together into vegetarian Tex-Mex cooking.

– The Vegetexican