(Yes, el sexo. There will be somewhat raunchy penis-talk, in two languages, which won’t be to everyone’s taste, so you’ve been warned. But the centerpiece is the sort of dirty joke that cracks middle-schoolers up, so I don’t see the point in keeping it from kids.)
Yesterday’s adventure in all things posole (in my characteristically American English spelling) / pozole (in the usual Mexican Spanish spelling — in either case, pronounced with an [s]), with my caregiver León Hernández Alvarez (hereafter L). L and I were putting away the (extensive) leftovers from the lunch he had just cooked for us, when I remarked that I had a huge bowl of superb pozole left over from my last restaurant-food order (from El Grullense Grill in Redwood City), and L was stunned.
First, that I had even heard of pozole — Mexican hominy and meat (classically, pork) soup, traditionally red with chiles, fragrant with spices, a bit sharp with citrus juice, and crunchy with cabbage — which he had thought of as utterly Mexican, homey comfort food that the rest of the world didn’t know about (the way Vietnamese pho was before it became fashionable). Then, still more amazing, that it was one of my favorite foods, and had been for decades (like, five decades, from when Ann Daingerfield Zwicky (who died in 1985) and I made it ourselves in Columbus OH, ’cause where in central Ohio in the 1970s would you find pozole?).
Then, to bolster these fantastical claims, I referred him to two pozole postings on this blog: the first from 2011, describing a considerable previous history with pozole; the second, from 2017, with a recipe for an eccentric, deeply non-traditional (but very tasty) variant, based on chicken (plus tomatillos and huge amounts of cilantro). At which, this exchange:
L: But it’s chicken
A: If you can do it with chicken, you can do it with pork
L [laughs out loud]: We say, el pozole como el sexo, entre más puerco mejor (‘pozole is like sex, the more pork the better’)
A [laughs out loud, asks for the joke written down]
Wonderful: a food joke, about pozole, and a dirty joke, about penises. Happy happy joy joy.
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