Passport & Plate - Chapulines, with avocado slices, lime, and chipotle
Mexico | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 3 photos
Ingredients
30-35 grasshoppers
2 tablespoons of garlic, finely diced
7 dried chillies, chopped in half
1 ripe avocado, stoned and sliced into 6 horizontal slices
2 spring onions
1 tbsp spoon of rapeseed oil, or any other neutral oil
Chipotle sauce 1/2 red onion, chopped
250g tomatoes 200ml chicken stock
2 to 4 chipotle chiles en adobo,depending on how hot you like it
1 tsp red wine vinegar 1 tablespoons rapeseed oil (or any other neutral oil) Salt to taste
How to prepare this recipe
First, indulge your inner childhood bully, and pull the wings and legs off your grasshoppers. Heat a pan, preferable cast iron over a low heat. Wait till the oil is hot, and then add the garlic. Fry for 4 mins, or until your garlic starts to take on colour. Add your grasshoppers, and fry until browned, 10-15mins.
While they are frying, slice the whites of the spring onions into small diagonal slices. Your grasshoppers need to be cooked through, so they are crunchy and golden, like crisps. Just before they turn golden brown, add the chillies so they release they heat. Turn off the heat, and stir through the spring onions. Transfer to the serving bowl, and squeeze over half a lime. Take an avocado slice, scoop up some grasshoppers and drizzle over some sauce. Enjoy
For the sauce
In a small saucepan, heat the oil and add the onion, cover and cook for 8 minutes, or until translucent.
Add the diced tomato and chicken stock, reduce for five minutes, add the chipotles and vinegar, and cook for five minutes more on a low heat, until the sauce has reduced to the consistency of runny honey Pulse several times in a food processor until smooth.
The story behind this recipe
Some people skip breakfast, because they can't face food too early in the morning. Others knock an espresso back to push on through. I take a different approach. My first breakfast in L.A. found me feasting on a banquet of brain tacos, lamb roasted in a pit, and the unexpected highlight of the meal, grasshoppers and avocado. Sat in a roadside restaurant, the sun streaming through a window, I’ve never felt more at home, yet so far removed from where I live.
I ordered these dishes because I had never seen them before. Because for them to be on a menu must be for reasons not just driven by market forces, but by both pride and a desire to keep these dishes alive. And when the cool creaminess of the avocado combined with the crunch of the grasshopper, and the chilli lingered in my mouth, I understood that pride.
Yes, there were moments where the grasshoppers loomed large, and the culture I grew up with asserted itself. ‘Don’t eat that’ my brain shouted, but in the end my tastebuds won out. I removed myself from the grey english mindset, and properly arrived in America. It was the last time I thought of the U.K for the two weeks I was there, and I have the grasshoppers to thank.
Yet whilst this dish screams of Mexico, the roadside location was Los Angeles through and through. While famous for the silver screen, L.A. is a city that has its routes in Mexico, and remains almost 50% Latino.
This dish for me really epitomizes two places. Los Angeles, and Mexico. It shows how people bring food with them to remember where they came from, and to show others the joy that brings. It represents the merging of cultures, the start of a perfect holiday, and makes me smile everytime I think of it.
