This Christmas Punch Requires a Formerly Forbidden Fruit
This month, Gastro Obscura is sharing the recipes and stories behind amazing holiday dishes and drinks from around the world in the ongoing series “Home-Cooked Holidays.”
In Mexico, ponche Navideño —or Christmas punch—is a holiday classic, served up at parties and posadas, neighborhood-wide re-enactments of Mary and Joseph seeking shelter for the birth of Jesus. “Christmas in particular has so many foods and rituals attached to it. So you would have your ponche and your tamales,” says Lesley Téllez, a food writer and the author of the cookbook Eat Mexico.
But for a long time in the United States, one vital ingredient for this Christmas specialty was forbidden fruit: fresh tejocotes. In fact, tejocotes were, until recently, the fruit most often confiscated by authorities at the U.S. border. As for why someone would risk a fine or confiscation for bringing the fruit illegally into the country, the answer is simple. Tejocotes are more than just an ingredient to be easily replaced or left out of ponche entirely. Tejocotes, journalist Maria Gaura once wrote, are “a symbol of Christmas as potent to Mexican-Americans as pine and mistletoe are to norteamericanos.”
A number of drinks across the Spanish-speaking world are called ponche, and their ingredients can vary widely. Mexican ponche Navideño is a sweet, hot, fruit-salad of a drink. A pot of ponche fills the whole house with the smell of cooked fruit, such as guavas, apples, tejocotes, raisins, and prunes, as well as the warm scent of cinnamon. These ingredients bob in a sweet, tangy mixture of water, tamarind paste, a whole cone of raw cane sugar (piloncillo), and, often, dried hibiscus flowers (jamaica). Final touches include sticks of fresh, fibrous sugarcane and a splash of rum, brandy, or tequila. The alcohol is optional, but makes the drink even more warming.
