krusty kritter wrote:
> 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...
> # * 0 * #
> ^
>
>
>

Now you can understand why some put salt on watermelon. It "brightens"
the sweetness.


jim