REAL DEL MONTE: Isabel Arriaga Lozano carefully fills a small puff pastry with a tasty mixture of meat, potatoes and chili. She is making “pasta” (pronounced PAH-stay), a beloved Mexican snack with a rich history.
Originating in the mining town of Real del Monte, in the central Mexican state of Hidalgo, “pasta” was introduced by British miners in the 1820s and has since become a local culinary tradition. Every year, food enthusiasts gather in Real del Monte to celebrate the International Pasta Festival, honoring its delicious heritage.
Pastas are popular throughout Mexico, with fillings ranging from spicy Mexican mole to sweeter concoctions like pineapple or cheesy cranberries.
And while many are unaware of its surprising origin, a graveyard atop a cobbled hill holds the clue: around 700 moss- and lichen-covered graves with distinctly English names. These are the graves of the hundreds of miners who traveled to Mexico in 1824 to work in Real del Monte, extracting silver, copper, zinc, gold and mercury.
The miners came from Cornwall, a region in southwestern England that had a similarly strong mining community in the 19th century. They brought with them this iconic snack, known in England as a “Cornish pasty.”
Cornish pasties date back to the 13th century, when they were the food of the nobility and upper class. In the 19th century, they became popular with working-class Cornish families. A simple shortcrust pastry box was filled with cheap cuts of meat along with potatoes, kohlrabi and onion. The dough was then folded to one side, sealing the ingredients and giving the diner something to hold on to.
The corrugated side served as a sort of handle, which meant that miners could hold their lunch without the rest of the dough getting dirty with mud and grime from working in the mines.
Arriaga said he has been making pasta for 30 years. She married into a pasta-making family and took over the business when her husband died. Pastas, he said, have become a crucial part of life in the “magical town” of Real del Monte. “I think about 50% of us here make a living doing this,” he said, highlighting a very special ingredient included in each snack. “It is, above all, the love we put into each pasta that makes it a good product.”
He said that pastas have persisted thanks to the “Mexicanization” of the ingredients. Compared to Cornish pasties, he said, “in Mexico (…) we always look for that spicy flavor… we add pepper, we add parsley.”
Pastas are such an iconic snack in Real del Monte that they have their own museum.
“Pasta arrived in 1824, with English miners from Cornwall who arrived in Real del Monte to start working in the mines,” said Epifanio Garcés Torres, director of the town’s Pasta Museum. “The first Englishwoman to bake (one) here in Real del Monte was Mary Jenkins in 1824.”
Visitors to this year’s pasta festival sampled a variety of delicacies. While in the UK pastries have adopted fillings such as “full English breakfast”, “steak and ale” or “lamb and mint”, the Mexican influence on pastries here is clear: beans; The menu includes spicy mole sauce or Mexican-style tuna, with the obligatory chili.
“They are delicious,” said one festival-goer.
The festival featured colorful banners and posters displaying the Mexican, British and Cornish flags, highlighting a unique connection between Mexico and Great Britain dating back 200 years, linking the towns of Real del Monte and Cornwall, which are located more than 5,300 miles (8,530 kilometers). ) apart.
(This story is not edited by Republic and is published from a syndicated feed)
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