What You Miss If You Don't Eat Quelites

My grandmother left a long clay pot in the center of the table. When I uncovered it, a great disappointment hit me: inside was a jumble of green strands smelling of wet herbs that tangled with each other. Just a few cubes of onion added some visual interest to this dish that my mother's mother referred to as quelites. You're going to like them. I put some garlic in, she said, as if that statement would convince a ten-year-old girl to tackle that green mass like a piece of cake. Reluctantly – or to try the still-warm tortillas from the ladies who worked with my grandmother in her restaurant – I made a taco. To my mouth came hard notes of earth, like the little grass cakes my brother and I made when we played cooking in the park and had no other ingredients for our dishes than mud. I thought it was only right to add a few drops of lime to the taco. The experience improved drastically. In the quelites now shone something that tasted like salt, which I now refer to as the minerality of the soil present in my grandparents' milpa. I liked it. I liked it even more when another day my grandmother prepared them with potatoes and olive oil. Since then, even the word reminds me of her, of Sundays at her country house, of the warmth of her kitchen when frost fell outside. Recently, I had the opportunity to reconnect with that memory. I confess that since my grandmother passed away, I have not been to that country house nor tried any quelites. It was at the event organized at Arca Tierra that two chefs presented several preparations made with these herbs in front of other diners and me. Lucio Usobiaga, director of this project where he also delivers vegetables grown in his chinampas to restaurants and individuals, and Rafael Mier, director of Fundación tortilla, invited us to cut quelites in the milpa of Arca Tierra's chinampas in Xochimilco. The event – the second chapter of Milpa Viva in the Chinampa – brought together two chefs who, besides educating us about quelites, demonstrated that they can be a cornerstone in a celebratory banquet. With the quelites brought from her native Oaxaca, Thalía Barrios, chef of La Levadura de olla, prepared a soup of pumpkin vines and quelites and a pork with mole accompanied by purslane seasoned with the flavors of firewood. The Veracruz native Lesterloon Sánchez prepared dishes such as a battered chili stuffed with quelites covered by a remarkably balanced piloncillo sauce.Getting deeper into the topic, Rafael Mier told us about the existence of more than 350 types of quelites that flourish among the Mexican milpas. Due to the diversity of the five geographical zones distributed across the national territory, the products that grow in each region vary, so the rule that only pumpkin, chili, and beans grow in the milpa is not set in stone.What are quelites, what are their benefits, and some examplesMore than just an ingredient, quelites are a category of edible herbs that find their way among the products of the milpa. The word quelite comes from the Nahuatl quilitl. That word referred to vegetables, just as we today refer to vegetables, which actually encompasses a large number of products, Rafael adds. Currently, under this semantic field, foods such as amaranth, which, before being the raw material for a sweet, is a plant composed of buttons of red little balls, are included. There are also the forgotten quintoniles, the delicious huauzontles, the pungent radishes, the chipilín that adds so much flavor to Chiapanecan tamales, the chaya that makes Yucatecan cuisine shine, the pápalo that is never missing in hundreds of taquerías, and the romeritos, the kings of Christmas and Lent. The flavor of each is a particular experience; some contribute acidity, others pungency, citrus or anise notes that complexify Mexican dishes since pre-Columbian times. Evidence of this is their presence in the Florentine Codex and centuries later in the Mexican Cook of 1831. But the nutritional power of these small and humble herbs surpasses their culinary greatness. That characteristic green color can only mean one thing: fiber, lots of fiber. Additionally, they contain large amounts of vitamin A and C, calcium, potassium, and iron essential for a strong immune system. Their medicinal uses are as effective as they are ancestral. For example, chaya has been used to cure kidney pain, purslane to relieve digestive distress, hoja santa for headaches and stomach pain, and pápalo to cleanse the liver.We need to bring quelites back to the discourse of everyday tablecloths, to festive tablecloths, to the territory of locals with plastic tablecloths. Quelites are a story that grows humbly in the Mexican countryside and adds layers of complexity to dishes that require time. In each one, there is a tremendous nutritional contribution, medicine that heals the body and spirit, and living culture that barely touches the wallet.