The Gastronomic Fair Where The Tacos Grow Tails

El festival gastronómico donde a los tacos les crecen colas (Leer en español)

Skunk taco, one of the exotic dishes offered at the Valle del Mezquital Gastronomic Fair held at Santiago de Anaya, State of Hidalgo, in Mexico.

Inside every Mexican lives a taco expert. But not every Mexican has the guts to eat a taco with a tail hanging from the tortilla – or one that could escape from your mouth at the slightest provocation.

Skunk, chipmunk, possum and six-legged delicacies tacos from the Valle del Mezquital are the main course on a singular gastronomic festival held in Santiago de Anaya, Hidalgo, a town 37 miles north from Mexico City, where very Good Friday, people follows this motto –or warning as you may prefer–:

«If it flies, crawls or run, it goes into the pot».

Here in Valle del Mezquital –far away from Mexico’s traditional gastronomic destinations like Oaxaca, Puebla or Mexico City– , crickets are just the tip of the iceberg of edible insects; many other six-legged –or none at all– proteins species are the stars of the menu: tree bugs (called Xamués), cicada’s larvae, maguey worms (chinicuiles) and many other assorted.

Xamués («Thasus giga») are a common tree bug species very present at local tables.

Neverthless, ant eggs are the favourite ones. Escamoles, as they’re called, are eggs from the Liometopum apiculatum, a characteristic ant from the drylands of Mexico and the United States. Also known as “mexican caviar” for it’s delicate taste, that bursts into your mouth with every chew like little tiny pearls of flavor –cooked with butter or chicken eggs or with cheese in a quesadilla– , but also by his high price. Thus, it’s no surprise that they are a very reverenced ingredient in the menus of chefs like Enrique Olvera, Cosme and Pujol, as in the more modest tables of the Mexican countryside.

Because of their price, escamoles –eggs of the «Liometopum apiculatum»– are also known as the “Mexican cavier” and you can find them in the menus of chefs like Enrique Olvera, Cosme and Pujol, as in the more modest tables of the Mexican countryside.

If you have a more conservative taste, the Valle del Mezquital Gastronomic Fair has dishes like the Ximbó: chicken or rabbit stuffed with cactus and pigskin dressed with salsa wrapped in maguey leaves and cooked for hours on a hole in the ground. Vegans won’t have any problem with local dishes as cactuses –in a thousand ways of preparations– , quesadillas with zucchini flowers, maguey flowers (gualumbos) –with a sweet delicate taste– or corn smut (huitlacoche). If you’re feeling thirsty, Pulque –an alcoholic beverage made with the fermented sap of the maguey– or “agua fresca”: flavored water made with lime, watermelon, garambullo –a kind of berry that grows in cactuses– or “tuna” –cactuses fruit– .

In this region, one with the highest poverty rates in Mexico, defficiencies are supplemented with the flora and fauna that it has to offer and ancestral culinary techniques. Remember: if your taco has tail or it wants to run, you bet you made it to the Valle del Mezquital.

In addition to skunk meat, you can also taste tacos made with coyote, chimpmunk, possum, rabbit or boar.