Pork and Beans Yucatecan Style

I really wanted to call this blog PIG'S ASS AND BLACK BEANS IN CIGARETTE BUTT SAUCE but I thought no one would want the recipe. So just bear with me.

This photo is actually Pork and Beans With Relleno Negro. I don't think it looks extremely appetizing, but it wasn't its appearance that put me off.

It might surprise you to learn that pork and beans is a popular Yucatecan entrée, that is, if you don't live here. Chunks of lean pork (I use pork butt) are cooked with black beans, onions, garlic, epazote, habanero, and other spices. Once prepared, I toss in tostadas with a handful of diced raw onion and cilantro. It is one of my favorite dishes.

People can be funny about black food. When we were little our Mom prepared a black soup. She told us it was chocolate soup and we loved it! The fact is it was duck blood soup, or czarnina. I'm sure it is an aquired taste, only acquired via Polish genes and the brainwashing of young and impressionable children. We ate other black foods, like kishka, which was made of pig's blood. I have seen blood sausage here, but I have already UNacquired a taste for that. I like my black bread, I have even tasted black tortillas in the Lacandon jungle made from black corn. And though not a huge fan, I have eaten caviar. Let's not forget mole which is black, delicious, and it really is made with chocolate. Black food can be great.

Ok, I digress. The point is, black food doesn't necessarily put me off. Two weeks ago, my housekeeper Maria made us some POLLO RELLENO NEGRO (Chicken with black relleno sauce). She brought the sauce from her pueblo, after it underwent a labor intensive preparation. They burn the shit out of a bunch of chiles and I am afraid to ask what they mix the chile ashes with, but the end product is a thick black substance consisting primarily of chile ashes. Maria cut pieces of chicken into the black sauce. This dish also calls for meatballs. Weird meatballs. She separated the hard boiled yolks from the whites. Leaving the yolks intact, she mixed raw hamburger with the chopped egg whites and patted them around the yolks to make meatballs. Those went into the stew with the chicken. It was a particularly thick and rich sauce, which we ate with chile habanero and hot corn tortillas. It was good, a little too rich for me, but good.

Maria left some of the relleno negro sauce in the freezer to use another time. I had no idea that the time would arrive as soon as the following week. She said she'd prepare pork and beans for lunch on Thursday . I was excited and waited till early afternoon to eat so I could eat a lot. Well, she made pork and beans all right, but she threw in that relleno negro sauce. Beans, when cooked correctly, are thick by themselves. The relleno sauce transformed the dish into black paste that tasted of cigarette butts. I don't know what went wrong with this dish, but I found it 100% inedible. I gagged on the first bite. I went hungry that day because my taste buds went on strike. My roommate Kris, who loved the chicken the week before, struggled through a plate of frijoles con puerco relleno negro, and then fessed up that it didn't taste good, nor did it sit well with her digestive system.

When even Pablo admitted it tasted horrible and no one had the nerve to eat it three days later, we started joking around. I called it Pig's Ass and Black Beans in Cigarette Butt Sauce. Then we drank some tequila and I took a photo to show you how it really tasted.

Let me know if you want the recipe.