I was exploring Old Town in the city where I grew up and discovered that some
of the old stores had been "gentrified", made into upscale restaurants to
attract wealthy tourists who might be looking for antiques...

Problem is, I am never in Old Town when those expensive restaurants are open
for dinner, but there is a taqueria that opens for breakfast and lunch, and
it's always filled with Mexican families, so that's where I experienced my
first Escamocha...

But I was Jonesing for some kind of greasy antojito fix, looking for something
like a tamale or enchilada but a little different, when I noticed that the
Saturday specialty was Birria de Chivo, young goat in red chile sauce...

Now, I had previously tried Birria made from an old goat's back and ribs, and I
had found the experience to be greasy and messier than trying to eat barbecued
ribs without getting barbecue sauce all over me, and the old goat tasted
like---well, an old goat. And the experience of fishing the goat's vertebrae
out of the red chile sauce sort of reminded me of Conan the Destroyer sampling
the stew in Thulsa Doom's caverns, if you know what I mean...

But the concept of Birria made with the meat of a young tender kid intrigued
me, so I ordered that, and got into deep chile, the red sauce was fiery and I
had to make the choice of whether to eat something that was burning up my mouth
or whether to throw away something that I had already paid for...

I was pulling the chunks of meat out of the flaming hot sauce and making little
burritos with the flour tortillas provided. I believed that no sober human
being could ever get to the bottom all the the fiery red chile sauce in the
bowl of Birria de Chivo and live to tell about it...

That was when I decided to try the intriguing Escamocha from the juice bar...

The first thing the girl at the bar did was put about half a teaspoon full of
the secret ingredient in a large dessert glass, then some milk and honey and
some papaya that had been run through a blender, filling the bottom of the
dessert glass...

Then she added large slices of papaya and mango and watermelon and pineapple,
you name it, whatever goes into a fruit salad, she threw it into the mix...

But to call her Escamocha "fruit salad" insults her creation. To me, fruit
salad was always something that came in a can labeled "Dole", with limp and
almost flavorless small chunks of fruit and wrinkled grapes...

This Escamocha was vibrant and exciting, a culinary creation of the fruity
kind...

She topped the fruit salad with banana slices and walnut halves and sliced
strawberries and kiwi fruit and shredded coconut and topped all of that with a
cherry and poured more of the papaya and milk and honey and secret ingredient
mixture over it all...

And the Escamocha put out the fire that was burning in my mouth after the
ordeal with the Birria de Chivo and the secret ingredient came to my rescue...

The secret ingredient was half a teaspoon of ordinary table salt...

Salt will act to draw moisture out of the tongue and inside of the mouth and
stop the chile burning sensation...

Salt draws the flavor out of sliced fruit...

Salt in fruit salad? It worked for me...
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