Get Me Out of Church for Coconuts
Get Me Out of Church for Coconuts
Your tropical fix for the last heat wave of the year
The young coconut was jelly-like in texture,
translucent, and slippery like an oyster.
I grew up going to church on Sundays in Vallarta. The kind of church where they speak in tongues and people fall to the ground one by one, like dominoes.
I’d sneak out in the middle of the sermon to hide from the pastor who would put his hands on people’s heads to pray for them. I always felt like he might be able to tell I was a black sheep if he prayed for me.
I still feel like the black sheep.
But outside of the church, my search for the machete-wielding man who would set up his white wooden cart piled high with coconuts was all I cared about. Having my pick of the youngest, most tender coconut before the crowds from church lined up was the escape I needed.
Coconuts were my salvation. How did these coconuts of my dreams come to Mexico?
On tomorrow’s Sunday edition of The Los Angeles Times, I write about “Going Coco for the Coconut Flavors of Coastal Mexico” online now and on newsstands tomorrow!
I owe my salvation to a particular trade route that began more than 450 years ago. The Acapulco-Manila trade route started in 1565 and connected Mexico and the Philippines for more than 2½ centuries. Over the course of that period, some Filipinos — including sailors who came over on the large shipping vessels known as galleons — migrated to Mexico.
Filipinos brought coconuts to Mexico, along with techniques to ferment coconut tree sap into tuba, a fermented beverage consumed in the Philippines since pre-colonial times. Agave distillation began in Colima, research shows, through the adaptation of the Philippine technique for distilling coconut spirits, turning tuba into a stronger coconut liquor known as lambanog or bahalina. These fermentation and distillation techniques were used with agave, eventually becoming what we now know as tequila and mezcal.
Next time you visit Vallarta, look for the men dressed all in white from head to toe, hauling large hollowed-out gourds filled with chilled tuba, and topped with chopped pecans and diced apples. Tuba is nothing short of perfect in the relentless tropical heat and truly, one of the last vestiges of the Filipino heritage on Mexico’s coast.
To celebrate what will probably be the last heat wave of 2023, try my Coco Limonada. My first recipe installment on this season’s Fresca drop, BEVY PARA TU SED. I’ll be publishing recipes for my favorite beverage obsessions all of October and I promise that they will turn you into a bevy kind of person.
The flavor of nutty coconut milk in this Coco Limonada is amped up by the Oaxacan technique used in agua de limón rallado. Do as Oaxaqueños do and zest your citrus to make quite possibly the most nuanced variation of a lemonade. After soaking lemons and zesting them, use the infused water as the base for a dose of tropical refreshment.
To make this Coco Limonada, a mixtape featuring some of the songs I was prohibited from listening to, but you guessed it, they were prohibited so I was of course obsessed with them.
Your subscription of $5/month covers my ridiculous grocery expenses, so many hours of recipe development, testing, and what turns into Javier’s endless lunches, plus all of the resources that go into creating Fresca for you. Thank you for your support!
