My Mother-in-law’s Secret Recipes: Menudo a la Sinaloa
by Gregorio Brady
(culinary espionage agent)
 Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico, Febrary 21th., 2008.- (Patient reader, I know we promised duck pozole for this edition, but, for latitudinal reasons, maybe mañana...) On the bright side, we instead offer possibly the most sacred of all her recipes: menudo. Every Mazatlan colonia has a few houses that make up a big pot of homemade menudo each Saturday afternoon/ evening, to be ready for the steady Sunday morning stream of family and neighbors carrying plastic buckets to be filled with the classic traditional Mexican good-for-what-ails-ya-especially-a-hangover stew. My dear mother-in-law is a transplanted Jalisco hillbilly and tends to prefer the Jalisco way of doing things, but after many years of cooking menudo on a weekly basis for the locals, she has come around more to a Sinaloan style of menudo manufacture, which she achieves as follows:
Go to the mercado and buy:
3 kilos of carne de menudo (the chewy beige linings of a cow’s stomach)
2 kilos patas de res (raw beef hooves)
1 kilo hueso chucachuela (savory bone)
2 kilos maíz pozolero (grains of maize)
A couple of medium cebollas blancas (white onions)
Some oregano
1 head of ajo (garlic)
1 mazo de hierba buena (handful of minty herb)
Salt
1 small baggie of cal (Is it really the same lime dust that they use to mark the base paths in beisbol? Tastes like it!)
1 dozen limes
1 dozen bolillos (fresh flour buns)
Several 2 liter bottles of coca cola
Bag of café Marino (local coffee grounds), plenty of sugar
2 kilos tortillas
Then, go home and wash the carne de menudo and patas de res in purified water. Wash them again. And again. Remove some of the fattier cling-ons.
Wash the maize a couple of times, place in a pot used exclusively for maize, covered with purified water. Add a big tablespoonful of fresh cal (the less cal, the redder the menudo comes out, and it should be as shown in photo). Boil for 5 or 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the cascaritas (yellowish skins or jackets) slip easily off the grains. Add cold water and allow to cool. Rub the cascaritas off until all of the maize looks pale.
Mix a big tablespoonful of cal in a pot of water, and soak the carne de menudo, patas de res and hueso chucachuela for ten minutes or so. Rinse three times. Add juice of three limes (If you don’t already have a lime squeezer, shame on you! Go back to the mercado and buy one).
Out in the front yard, stoke up a fire of wood and tarpaper scraps, twigs, dried branches, stump shards, phone pole splinters, whatever, and heat up ye olde cauldron. While menudo can theoretically be cooked on a conventional gas stove, it shouldn’t be. In order to impart that authentic homemade flavor, wood heat is essential, I’m told. Also, I suppose, the aroma is free advertising. Add a few gallons of water to taste, throw in the carne, patas and hueso, add half a head of garlic, a big tablespoonful of oregano ground up in a molcajete (large volcanic mortar and pestle), salt to taste. Simmer until the carne de menudo is tender and the maize opens easily, 4 or 5 hours maybe. Add the other half a head of garlic, the minty hierba buena and a little more oregano, and cook for an additional ten minutes or so. If the carne is tender but the grains of maize are still al diente, remove the big slabs of carne and keep cooking.
 When everything is perfect, cut the carne into pedazitos (little pieces) and swish it all together in the olla. Serve in chipped ceramic bowls garnished with cebolla picada (finely diced white onion), chopped minty hierba buena, oregano, chiles verdes (green chiles), and generous splashes of lime juice. Traditionally accompanied with warm tortillas, fresh bolillo buns, heavily sugared café de olla (boiled coffee) and/ or coca cola al tiempo (room temperature). Enjoy!
Next edition: duck pozole, maybe.
El Menudo in Spanish
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