Remember the papalo? Today I ran into the farmer who grew mine, which reminded me I needed to update you.
I guess we Anglos don’t immediately take to the stuff, as evidenced by one writer’s referring to it as the wet dog herb and another saying it smells like gasoline. I can’t say that either of those scents came to my mind when I broke a piece of papalo, but, as I previously mentioned, it is strong stuff.
My last and best experiment with papalo was on beans and rice with lots of salsa and crumbled feta. I got bold this time and chopped a couple of stems-worth of leaves (see below), but I carefully sprinkled it on top, just in case it overwhelmed the dish the way it overwhelmed plain tomatoes and a pasta dish. I figured if the papalo still didn’t suit me, I could pick it off when no one was looking.
But—eureka!—papalo clearly is meant to be paired with hot peppers. It complemented the salsa, beans, cheese and rice, and I wound up mixing it right in.
One of these days I may have to try the epitome of papalo use (at least as far as I’ve been able to determine): cemitas. These sandwiches, a specialty of Puebla in Mexico, seem to require papalo to be authentic. You can find a recipe at Epicurious, and btorillo has an appetizing photo of one on Flickr.
If I understood Bob correctly, he pulled up the remaining papalo, so I won’t be using it again this year. And if he has it next year? Well, I may just have to try a cemita.
Wow, that must be one potent herb. Now I’m really curious about this. I had a cemitas once (in LA) but don’t recall any strange tastes to it. Maybe they didn’t put papalo in it?
Indeed it is potent. I’ll bet your cemitas had papalo but it had some hot peppers, too, to blend with it. Just a guess, though!