ON NATIONAL COFFEE DAY, A PIQUANT REMEMBRANCE

 By Juan Montoya

Many years ago, before Starbucks was a national chain, and before specialty coffee shops came into vogue, about the only exotic coffee one could get locally was from the coffee and peanut store next to the Mercado Juarez in Matamoros.

(For those uninitiated souls among our readers, Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, is right across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, USA.)

The aroma of the roasting coffee beans and goobers wafted through the entire block and Brownsville residents often went to the mercado every weekend to get their kids haircuts, and to bring a kilo of the freshly roasted and ground coffee and perhaps half a kilo (about a pound) of peanuts for the kids.

It was next to impossible – if you wanted to get coffee grown in Jamaica, some Central American countries, or Africa or other exotic locale – to find the varieties of coffee we now have coming from all parts of the world.

That's why his friends were interested to hear Guicho, a local wag who used to know his way around the city, when he sat and told his group of friends about the time he was able to get a full, unopened bag of coffee from El Salvador. 

Guicho was married to a woman from there, "a guanaca", as they call themselves. At one time South Texas was awash in Salvadoran refugees escaping the civil war. Some, like Guicho's wife, stayed. He said he came across the bag of Salvadoran coffee as a gift from one of  his friends who used to work as a waiter for banquets at a luxury hotel at South Padre Island.

The hotel held conferences for professional groups, political groups and candidates, and for celebrities, from throughout the Texas and the United States. As such, the hotel management brought the best of the best for these gatherings. When the confab was over, instead of throwing some of the fine wine bottles, cheeses, and other delicacies purchased for the banquets, management allowed the banquet workers to take what they wanted for themselves.

One of Guicho's friends, Polo, had brought the coffee – among other items – to his home and when he found out that his friend was married to a Salvadoran lady, he offered it to him as a gift. Guicho was delighted and the next morning woke up early to brew a cup of Salvadoran coffee for her. But there was only one problem: The bag contained only whole roasted coffee beans. He tried the blender, but it pulverized them and didn't grind the coffee well, and he didn't have a coffee grinder. 

So he looked around the kitchen and hit upon an idea. He would grind enough for  couple of cups of coffee with a molcajete (a pumice grinding bowl used to grind spices) kept largely unused in their pantry. In no time, he had the coffee maker brewing and surprised his wife with a fresh cup when she was attracted by the distinctive smell from coffee grown in her homeland.

As they sat there sipping on the coffee, Guicho marveled at the taste of the exotic coffee and the curious tingling of this tongue. Soon both were sweating profusely and blowing at their cups to cool it a bit so they could drink it.

That's when she asked Guicho where he had gotten the coffee and then, how he had ground it to brew it.

Guicho looked around and pointed at the kitchen counter where the molcajete – in which some ground coffee still remained – and told her that was what he had used.

"Menso," she said, and burst out laughing. "That's what I use to make salsa from the piquines I pick from the plants outside. Nos estamos enchilando!"