It is “Chicken Tuesday” of Holy Week in Guatemala, and the Santiago Atitlan market is filled with Tzutujil Maya women selling their hand-raised hens and roosters.  Always a colorful scene, with women dressed in their hand-woven finery, the market is especially so today as hundreds of white, red, black and speckled hens clamor, their brightly hued heads straining on long necks from their netted baskets.  Some women prefer the brilliant roosters, tied by the legs with twine leashes, free to be grasped by the chest and lifted by a deft hand, skilled at determining the meatiness of a chicken in such fashion.  All in preparation for pulik, the  traditional meal every Tzutujil Mayan eats on festive days and always to commemorate the Last Supper during the week of La Semana Santa.

As with many of the traditions of the Tzutujil Maya, this festive food goes back long before the Spanish conquest and the domestic fowl that is used today. In the days when the cloud forests on the mountains that surround Lake Atitlan were home to species of guan, the Tzutujil hunted them for food.

Ixim Xkuya, “mother of all tomatoes” and pantzut, fragrant wild mint, were both gathered along the lakeshore. The heirloom vegetable, ch’mai, is gathered where it grows over the rocks or up a tree. Kuxu, the red seeds of the achote shrub, are harvested and used to add color and depth of flavor to the sauce.

Ingredients for the sauce, including corn for the thickening, were ground separately and then together on the ka, or grinding stone, insuring a creamy smoothness. Cooked over an open fire in huge clay pots, this delicious chicken with it’s delicately flavored tomato-mint sauce, is an example of a gourmet Tzutujil Maya food served to groups of interested travelers at the home of Candis Krummel, noted designer and founder of the Cojolya Association of Maya Women Weavers.

Krummel, who has lived in Santiago Atitlan since 1978, has opened her unique Guatemalan homestead, at Cojol ya, to visitors by renting her guesthouses to travelers and accommodating groups of cultural tourists for lunch. The luncheons include the festival dish described above, served in a three-course meal, accompanied with white wine.

The first course in the festive menu is a Tzutujil soup, kulix“. This is a hearty soup made of gathered wild broccoli greens, potatoes and braised beef. The soup is seasoned with fresh tomatoes and cilantro, and thickened with home-ground corn meal masa used for making tortillas. 

The main course is pulik, served with brown Guatemalan Pacific Coast rice, ch’mai, and cucumber salad.  A plate of black bean tamales, suban kn ac, cooked in green corn leaves, smothered with fresh tomato salsa and the locally-famous Zacapa cheese, accompanies the main course.

Dessert is a memorable homemade pie of seasonal local fruit:  Lemon meringue from the Cojol ya orchards, or fresh pineapple raisin, mango or Chicacao chocolate pie. Dessert is served with coffee grown on the property or herbal teas from the organic garden.

The luncheon follows a tour of her property and a chance to sip Krummel’s unique house specialty, Pitaya Wine, made from the fruit of a night-blooming Cereus.

Recipe for Pulik  (Serves Four)

Roast 3 pounds of tomatoes and one red sweet chili pepper and skin them. Place these in a blender with two celery stalks, and ½ teaspoon of achote (kuxu).  Take the leaves from six, large springs of mint and finely chop them, adding this to the blender as well. 

Wash a 4-pound, whole, free-range organic chicken, cut into quarters. Leaving the skin on the chicken will enrich the taste of the pulik. Just cover with water in a large kettle and salt to taste.  Add half of a large onion and four sprigs of mint. Cook until tender.

Blend the ingredients in the blender until creamy smooth.  Add four ounces of masa used for making tortillas to the mixture and blend again.  You may use a prepared corn masa mix for tortillas, but it will not have the same flavor as cooked, ground corn meal masa.

Add the blended sauce to the water in the chicken pot, along with peeled halves of two large quisquil (ch’mai). Gently simmer until the quisquil is tender, and your pulik is done. 

Serve the chicken and the quisquil smothered in sauce, next to brown rice and garnish with a fresh sprig of mint.