drunk in a banana tree/more taco pop up shenanigans

june, 2016

the climate in yangshuo is similar to that of a southern summer: the bugs sing in a loud,

near-drunk hum from the trees and the smallest bit of effort causes the thick air to run trails down your back. the downside to this weather is that you can never wear light grey because sweat stains will turn your shirt into a smelly, unflattering tie dye, but (on a completely unrelated note) the upside is the amazing crops that come out of these environments. just like the south, the produce that comes out of this area is varied, flavorful and plentiful. there are 3 fairly large farmer’s markets that would have locavores from the bay area pissing themselves with excitement, and yangshuo is by no means a large city. in china, these farmer’s markets hawk better produce at a better price than the grocery stores, and each one has something that the others do not. the market close to the hospital has the best pork belly, the one near the roundabout has the biggest variety and the one close to omeida (the english school) has the best mushrooms and greens. coming to know where these are, how to buy, how much things should cost, and getting comfortable with the method of scavenging for seasonal vegetables turned into part of my life that i would do/still do for a long time every day. in the united states, and especially in the san francisco bay area (where i moved from), i could get whatever i wanted whenever i wanted it, but here the produce is dictated by the seasons, which everyone who believes wholeheartedly in the ‘eat seasonally’ movement should love…but going from getting just about anything and everything you want to all of a sudden having to actually eat and cook along with the seasons can be a little challenging. sweet oranges, for instance, are no longer available. they have been replaced by smaller oranges that look a lot like tangerines but are more sour. jalapenos don’t exist here, but there is a pepper that looks nearly identical; sometimes parsley is sold at in a back corner of the omeida market, sometimes it’s not…little things like this make it difficult to keep a consistent recipe, but more interesting to cook.

it is finally cooling down, though. the temperature probably has not dropped very much, but any sort of decline in the heat index is noticeable and something to be celebrated (maybe i can start wearing grey again??). looking back on summer, i have come to realize that i had very few reprieves from the hateful heat: the breezes generated by my scooter speeding around the country roads, jumping in the river, and drinking too much alcohol. keep that last one in mind.

about two weeks after the diner opened, i had an idea: mexican night. for all of the climbing bums who have called yangshuo home over the years, i was surprised to find that no one had catered to the one type of food i believe all dirty climbers are most commonly seen eating. just having moved from oakland and having spent a significant amount of time in el paso just next to the mexican border, i thought i knew a lot about mexican food…turns out i don’t.

fortunately, i had a book brought over from the states (Hartwood) that contained a lot of mexican recipes from the tulum area. i began to dig in to rick bayless’s tome of mexican recipes and scavenge the internet for ideas. after a good bit of research i found a recipe for yucatan style pulled pork. while the flavor profiles of each type of cuisine are (literally) a world apart, the flavor base needs very few changes to transition from one to the other. i’d found black beans (in china, black beans are used in a fermented sauce that is sometimes used on tofu and vegetables), rice (duh.), and cumin/oregano/other peppery spices (all often found in sichuan cuisine). i could pull it off and i got really excited.

…so there was this yucatan pork. basically the idea with pulled pork is it’s rubbed in spices, thrown in a slow cooker or dutch oven and cooked with onions, peppers, pineapple, more spices and covered with banana leaves to create a more fragrant steam. there are banana trees all over town: some in the park, some out far along the bike paths near the yulong river and some in a small plant nursery close to the restaurant. tao, my assistant, and i had been trying hard to get everything ready for mexican night. he’d never tasted any sort of mexican food before and said ‘yeah good!’ enthusiastically when he first tried tacos. the night before the event, i asked him if he had ever had a margarita before. he said no, so i made him and i both margaritas. given that my alcohol tolerance was quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with, my already heavy handed pours became leaden. i absolutely made these margaritas too strong. i asked tao what he thought of margaritas. he laughed ‘yeah very good!’. we finished our margaritas as we rolled out tortillas. i asked tao if he wanted another one, and he said yes, so i made us both a second round. ‘this is very good!’ tao kept commenting as we continued to drink. ‘yes, this is the way my mom and aunt drink them,’ and i began to regale him with stories of when i was younger and my mom would grill out back and drink margaritas with my aunt and what mexican food was like in the united states. tao, at this point, is still learning english, so i’m not sure if he really understood what i was talking about, or if maybe he just thought that his boss was getting loaded and telling stories like a senile grandparent and was afraid to interrupt. we finished our tortillas and cleaned up. on the way home, i passed by the plant nursery, and had an epiphany which i imagine as a slurred voice in my head yelling: ‘they have banana leaves! you need those!’ i got off of my bike and marched toward the banana trees at the back of the nursery. the owner came up to me and i pointed at the tree, saying one of the only words i knew in chinese at the time ‘xie xie’ (which means ‘thank you’). i kept saying ‘thank you’ while making scissor motions with my hands and pointing at the leaves. his face became mostly comprised of confusion and- maybe slightly- of fear. if someone came up to me saying ‘thank you’ over and over again while making crafting motions with their hands i would probably not feel confident about my safety, either. he did eventually get the picture, though, and handed me a pair of garden shears that were the size of a fully grown saint bernard. i bushwhacked back to where the trees were but realized the leaves were actually a bit high up the tree. there were some low hanging branches, though, so i climbed up on one of the bigger ones and stretched toward the leaf with the banana flower attached to it. it was still out of reach. the owner saw me doing this and grabbed a long stick. he crawled through the bushes and stood on the other low branch, pulling the leaf towards my shears.

at this point, i was very wobbly and felt as though i was exerting a lot more effort than i needed to. i was making audible stretching noises and kept missing the leaf as he pushed it closer to me. both of us were stretching our bodies clumsily across this tree in what must have looked like a new episode of most extreme elimination challenge.

finally i snipped the leaf and heavy flower off. what i failed to plan on (which i am going to partially blame on the booze and partially on my ‘just do it and see what happens’ attitude) was where the leaf would fall. my face acted as a nice target for the basketball player sized leaf and the flower fell deep into the underbrush. taking a banana leaf to the face wasn’t pleasant, but it was fortunately light and didn’t hurt too much. after climbing out of the tree and digging around near the roots for a minute i found the flower and stood up in sweaty victory. i made it out of the bushes with my harvest, and began rummaging around in my backpack to offer the owner some money. he what i was doing and shook his hand and head together, gesturing ‘no’. i said, in slurry english: ‘are you sure?’ he began laughing and then shook his head again.

i revisited this nursery the following weeks, only to be greeted kindly with a knowing smile and an immediate gift of adolescent human-sized garden shears. it turns out the owner knows a little bit of english, or at least enough to be confident in the fact that his english was (and probably still is) better than my chinese. after a couple of weeks, though, i figured that there were only so many banana leaves i could be taking out of this beautiful little garden and have since then found some wild trees growing on the edges of town or deeper in the country -which also provides me with a tidy excuse to head off on a scooter ride on a nice day when the restaurant is quiet. i still go to this nursery often, though, and have bought all of my house plants from him. he grows lovely plants, but i would feel almost guilty having put him through the motions of dealing with me drunkenly climbing up into his tree and not supporting him in some way. he is a champion and a wonderful gardener.

about the recipe: i’m not pretending to be a mexican grandma here, but if you are looking for a really fragrant, juicy pork dish that goes well in tacos, burritos, rice bowls or just by itself in a bowl while you are watching rick and morty in your underwear on your couch, then this is the pork for you.

one last thing about banana leaves: if you don’t have a banana tree you can climb into after you’ve imbibed too much tequila, don’t worry. you can usually buy frozen banana leaves at any local asian market. if you still can’t find them, take comfort in the fact that it is still going to be slow cooked pork shoulder…which means it’s gonna be delicious. just make yourself another margarita and don’t worry about it.

YUCATAN PULLED PORK

4-5 pounds of pork shoulder

2 feet of fresh banana leaves

1/2 pineapple, skinned, cut into strips

1/2 onion, cut into large chunks

4 cloves garlic

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tbsp apple vinegar

1 lime, cut in half

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

1 tbsp ground cumin

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 bay leaves

1. Preheat a pan or grill to searing heat. Score the fat back on the pork shoulder. Sear pork on all sides, about 2-3 minutes on each side.

2. Preheat the oven to 175C. Line a dutch oven with banana leaves. All add ingredients, including enough water to cover 3/4 of the pork. Cover the top of the pork with a single layer of banana leaves.

3. Put the dutch oven in the oven for 4 1/2- 5 hours.

4. Take dutch oven out to cool. After about 20 minutes, pour the contents through a strainer, reserving the liquid. Discard the vegetables, fruit, and bay leaves. Remove the fat cap with a spoon, setting aside. Using two forks, shred the pork into small strips. It should be falling apart and tender. Mix the melted fat vigorously to form a paste and add back into the finished pulled pork. This helps you control the fat content, as some shoulders will have a lot of fat that kind of overwhelms the nice texture of the leaner pulled pork.