By Paola Briseño-González, The New York Times
When Gabriella Gonzalez Martinez was a teenager, she would grab chamoy-flavored candy from the tiendita, a corner store up the street from her high school in a Los Angeles suburb. She still felt the pull of its sour-spicy-sweet tang as an adult living in Portland, Oregon. Now a pastry chef, she treats the classic Mexican condiment as an invitation to play in the kitchen.
The magic of chamoy lies in its simple yet striking combination of jammy fruits and sour citrus, along with the high acid of vinegar and the subtle heat of dried chiles, usually in the form of a smooth sauce or vibrant red-orange powder.
It’s most commonly drizzled over mango, watermelon or other fruit and vegetables, used as a tangy dip for chips, or rimmed on micheladas, and lends itself to new iterations. At Libre, her mezcal and dessert bar, Gonzalez Martinez makes a strawberry chamoy thick enough to pipe onto pineapple sorbet and mixes chamoy with pickle brine from a local company for a unique version of pickled chamoy. She’s one of many chefs and home cooks who’ve been using the sauce in imaginative ways for years.
That journeying, evolutionary spirit of chamoy is rooted in its origins, which aren’t documented clearly but reflect a connection between the Americas and Asia. The word “chamoy” whispers its Chinese roots from “suan mei,” the sour plums that were most likely carried to Mexico on the Manila galleons, Spanish trade ships that traveled between the Philippines and Mexico from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Japan’s umeboshi offer a striking parallel: Those tangy pickled plums and their electric taste of preserved fruit may have also influenced chamoy’s creation.
In Mexico, suan mei took on the bold flavors of local dried chiles, such as guajillo and árbol, and the rich, molasses-like depth of tamarind, a tart fruit native to Africa now found in Mexican candies and aguas frescas. This sweet-sour-spicy-umami blend is prevalent in the singular culinary fusion of Mexicali, Baja California Norte’s desert capital. After the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, laborers in the United States originally from the Chinese province of Guangdong relocated to the Mexicali Valley for agricultural and railroad work, leaving a legacy of more than 300 Chinese restaurants today (they outnumber taquerías) and a Chinese-Mexican cuisine that continues to flourish.
Chef Ilean Padilla, a cachanilla (Mexicali native), celebrates this at her restaurant, Mexica Fé, where she weaves cocina del desierto with Cantonese-inspired sweet-sour notes that echo chamoy’s. She uses suan mei, also called saladitos Chinos in Mexicali, in dishes including grilled steak aguachile and in cocktails, such as a sour plum reduction with tea, tamarind and coffee. Saladitos Chinos taste like a precursor to modern chamoy with its tangy, salty bite. Locals tuck saladitos Chinos — sometimes coated in salt, sugar, chile or chamoy — into halved oranges, sucking the juicy orange until the orange juice rehydrates the salted, dried fruit. Padilla thinks the salted plum and orange snack morphed into chamoy in its sauce form.
Although store-bought jars of it are easy to find online and in Mexican and other markets, chamoy can be best made at home. Prepared with late-summer stone fruit, such as plums and nectarines, it tastes especially thrilling. You simply simmer fresh plums or other stone fruit into a glossy sauce with orange and lime juices to amplify their tartness, along with tamarind. When you make your own, you can adjust the ingredients for more sweetness, tartness or heat until it’s exactly the way you like it.
The styles and varieties of chamoy are endless, as are its uses. (Pouring chamoy over raw seafood in ceviche proves its versatility.) Padilla likes to pair the sauce’s brightness with the savory crust of grilled steak and other meats. So does chef Althea Grey Potter of the French-inspired Bar Nouveau in Portland, Oregon. Potter buys Gonzalez Martinez’s housemade strawberry chamoy and uses it as a glaze for roast duck.
“It is one of my favorite dishes I’ve had in my life,” Gonzalez Martinez said.
Recipe: Chamoy
Chamoy, a vibrant and tangy family of sauces and condiments from Mexico, is traditionally made with fruit and mild dried chiles (and sometimes mango, tamarind or hibiscus flowers as well). To make your own at home, grab those stone fruits on your counter and simmer them with dried chiles until softened, then blend with sugar, tamarind, vinegar and orange juice into something electric and tangy. Taste along the way to dial in the sweetness and tartness, so it’s exactly as jammy or restrained as you want. Just like tajín, chamoy makes a delicious accent for watermelon, jicama and cucumber spears. It’s also delicious drizzled over fruit salad, layered into mangonadas or used on the rim of micheladas. Think of chamoy as the syrup on a sundae, but much more thrilling in flavor.
By Paola Briseño-González
Yield: About 2 cups
Total time: 45 minutes
Ingredients
- 3 medium plums or 2 medium nectarines (12 ounces)
- 3 dried guajillo, California or New Mexico chiles (1/2 ounce), stems and seeds removed
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup fresh orange juice (from 2 medium oranges)
- 1/2 cup distilled white vinegar
- 1/4 cup (2 ounces) seeded tamarind paste
- 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal) or 2 1/2 teaspoons fine salt
Preparation
1. In a small saucepan, combine the whole, unpitted fruit with the chiles and 1 cup water. Bring the water to a boil over medium-high heat, then partially cover with a lid. Cook until the fruit starts to soften, about 5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer fruit and chiles to a medium bowl and let cool. Reserve 1/3 cup cooking liquid from the pot.
2. When cool enough to handle, discard pits from fruit and transfer the fruit mixture to a blender. Add the sugar, orange juice, vinegar, tamarind, salt and the reserved 1/3 cup cooking liquid. Blend until completely smooth.
3. Return the purée to the saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Adjust heat until the mixture bubbles at a low simmer, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching. Cook until the sauce has reduced by half, about 20 minutes. It will be thick and deep brick red. Remove from the heat and cool at room temperature. Store chamoy in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 1 month.
Tips
Tamarind paste is available online, in some grocery stores and in many Asian markets. At South Asian markets, you may see tamarind pulp instead: It’s sold in blocks of seedless fruit pulp, and sometimes labeled tamarind slabs. You may also find whole tamarind fruit pods, which are common at Mexican grocery stores, specialty markets or online. If starting with pulp, follow a recipe for tamarind paste. If starting with tamarind pods, remove and discard the outer shell and seeds to extract the pulp, then follow a recipe for tamarind paste.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.