Currently viewing the tag: "Puebla"
Torta Árabe con Queso
Tacos Árabe (Arabian Tacos) are very similar to the Tacos al Pastor that are served in the Yucatan. The main difference, the location. Tacos Árabe are a Puebla dish. It is one of the most popular dishes in the area, although not authentically Mexican. Tacos Árabe is a Middle Eastern dish that was introduced in the 1930’s with an interesting history. Easily served on a tortilla or torta, the meal was quickly adopted by the Mexicans.
Hard to make on your own, here is a recipe for them.
Real Tacos Árabe are made by layering pork loin and onions on a spit. This task can take over an hour to complete. Then the pork is slow roasted for many hours to perfection in front of red, hot coals.
In Puebla we enjoyed our tacos with a cold beer at a small chain called Tacos Tony.
Tacos are under $20 mxn ($1.50 usd) each or you can by meat by the kilogram. Tony’s was good, but the best way to enjoy Tacos Árabe is at an open air fair or market where people are lined up to get them and you just know they are piping hot.
You need a super sharp knife to chop the meat up.
This man really liked his knife!
Quinceañera also called quince años or simply quince, is the celebration of a girl’s fifteenth birthday in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. It is similar to when a Debutante makes her debut in the southern USA, but in Mexico it is a birthday celebration that marks the transition from girl to young woman. Families save for years for this event in which the young girl wears a formal ball gown and make-up. Traditionally it was to be the first time she wore either of these things, but most girls are now wearing make-up at a younger age. The dress is a huge part of the event with professional photos being hung in the family home for years to come.
Dresses in Puebla shop window
The celebration begins with a Catholic mass giving thanks. The entire family and extended families join in the celebration, along with traditionally 14 friends of the girl paired into couples known as damas and chambelanes. After the mass, there is a reception which includes a grand entrance made by the Quinceañera, a formal toast given by the family, and a first dance beginning with the girl and her father. This is followed by a family dance and then finally a party with gifts. During the reception, the birthday girl usually dances a traditional choreographed dance with her “chambelan de honor”, who is her chosen escort. A huge meal completes the evening, which goes well into the wee hours of the night.
If I was going to guess at a day where things would go wrong, this is always it. To start with, the very expensive toll road between Villahermosa and the turn to Veracruz is never great. We left our campsite at 9:25am. All went fine until just before noon when we hit some rough road. First the truck started making some load noise on the passenger side. We knew right away that is was a pipe connecting to the manifold which we had just had fixed. It wasn’t too bad, so we continued on. Just after noon we hit a very rough stretch of road and suddenly BANG! The truck started to roar. We quickly pulled to the side of the road to find a break in the exhaust pipe leading to the muffler on the other side of the truck. Nothing was hanging down so we continued on to the next Pemex where Rob crawled under the truck and wired the broken pipe up to be safe. We were heading for Puebla, where they make auto parts for the entire country, our best bet was to continue on and get the problem fixed there. The truck was so loud we couldn’t hear ourselves speak and we had 5 hours of travel to go.
We had only lost about 25 minutes so we were still in good shape to make it to Puebla before nightfall until we hit construction. We waited in a 2 km line of traffic not knowing how long this would take and how far it would put us behind. Last November we hit two of these delays, the first was 4 hours and the second was 3 hours. These delays made us miss our target campground forcing us to park at Pemex for two additional nights. This delay turned out to be only 40 minutes.
In the end we made it, half deaf, to our campsite by 6:50PM. With only two stops for gas we covered 646km (401 Miles) in 9.5 hours. Also in this time we went from 37C (99F) to 13C (55F) and from -6 meters (-20 feet) in altitude to 2616 meters (8583 feet). A crazy day overall.
Next post…. How to get a muffler fixed in Mexico
