Welcome to IXTA.WORLD!

In this first post I introduce you to little Ixta and share a recipe for Easter, with step by step pictures.

Lil Ixta in front of The Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacán, Mexico

Easter / Ixta

My name is Ixta but it’s pronounced Eesta, so as you can imagine, Easter is a very confusing time of year for me. It feels like everyone’s talking about me, but of course they’re not, they’re discussing chocolate eggs, bank holidays and how to cook the perfect slow roast shoulder of lamb.

Coincidentally I was born just after Easter, but my name has absolutely nothing to do with the holiday. I'm actually named after a Mexican volcano called Iztaccíhuatl / Ixtaccíhuatl (more on that later).

I’m not religious, but I’ve always worshiped at the Church of Chocolate. My Dad used to call me a ‘chocolate fiend’ but it wasn’t just chocolate, I was fiendish about good food in general. You see, when I was young my mum started her journey into Nutrition and Functional Medicine, and thus I wasn’t allowed sweets (or bread, crisps, fizzy drinks etc). I considered this a gross injustice bordering on child abuse. I would throw tantrums about the food I wasn’t allowed to eat, the food I saw my friends enjoying. They had no idea how damn lucky they were.

Little Ixta would have EXPLOSIVE arguments with my poor mum, in doing so proving my parents right to have named me after a volcano. This is actually what got me into cooking in the first place. One day, in the midst of one of my eruptions, my mum exasperatedly exclaimed that if I wanted to eat the food I pleaded for, I needed to learn to cook it myself. And so I did.

Cooking since day

But I digress. Back to Easter and more importantly, back to chocolate eggs. We lived in Italy when I was young, because my dad worked in the Italian wine trade and spent most of his time traveling around the country visiting producers. Easter is A VERY BIG DEAL in Italy, a chocolate fiend’s paradise. Giant chocolate eggs- bigger than I was at the time- lined supermarket shelves and filled every shop window. It was all too much for little Ixta to handle.

Since I wasn’t usually allowed sweets or chocolate, the annual Easter egg hunt was an exhilarating event I looked forward to all year. Our house was nestled halfway up a mountain, about 45 minutes northeast of Florence, surrounded by olive groves. It was a beautiful and rugged place to grow up and I’m forever grateful for those formative years of my childhood. Our backyard- essentially wild mountainside - was the ultimate setting for the annual Easter egg hunt. We’d roam around with friends and our dog Giacomino, hunting for chocolate eggs our parents had hidden.

We only lived in Italy for 4 years, but my dad continued working there into his late seventies, and we kept the house- his office- until 2019. For years after we stopped the Easter egg hunts, whenever Dad was home in Italy and craved a sweet treat, he’d go searching for the ones we’d missed. He claimed to find stale, half-melted eggs long after the tradition had ended.

Our place in Italy has been in my life the longest, so more than anywhere else in the world, it’s home. I’m heading back next week for my birthday, to spend time with my darling dad, whose ashes are scattered there in the place he cherished. I’ll tell you more about my favourite corner of the world then.

Home

Anyway, this all leads me to the recipe I’ve developed for Easter- Prawn, sticky rice and chipotle stuffed peppers- a recipe that actually has nothing to do with Italy. You’ll find it at the very end of this post.

On the origins of ‘Ixta’

A lot of people mistakenly think I’m Mexican because of my name. Sadly I’m not. It’s a very long story but I’ll try and condense it here. In 1964, Brazil’s military overthrew President João Goulart, leading to a right wing dictatorship regime marked by censorship and human rights abuses. My mother’s father was a leftwing activist involved in a pilots’ trade union in the Northeast of Brazil and as such, was forced into exile. Because of this, my mother, her siblings and my grandparents left Brazil and headed for Cuba, via Mexico.

My Brazilian grandparents. Xochimilco canals, Mexico City

In Cuernavaca, near Mexico City, they stayed in a halfway house for left wing political refugees, which just so happened to be owned by my father’s father, Cedric Belfrage, who had himself been deported from America for his ties to communism. My grandad Cedric lived in Cuernavaca for the last thirty years of his life and this was where my parents first met (though they didn’t end up together until twenty years later, when my mum moved from Brazil to London).

From the garden of my grandad’s house in Cuernavaca, you can see the volcano Ixtaccíhuatl, after which I’m named. It’s pronounced ‘Ees-tak-see-watl’ and more commonly spelled ‘Iztaccíhuatl’ with a ‘z’ these days. I’ve always been a bit confused about the different spellings and if you are too, keep reading…

Over thirty years, my dad visited his father in Cuernavaca and was always captivated by the volcanoes visible from the garden- Ixtaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl. He used to tell me how, most mornings, he’d wake before sunrise to watch them emerge from the mist, their shapes unique and unforgettable. Popocatépetl is active- jagged and imposing. Ixtaccíhuatl, by contrast, is dormant and resembles a woman lying down, which is why she’s also known as La Mujer Dormida (The Sleeping Woman). In Nahuatl mythology, Popocatépetl was a warrior turned into a volcano to watch over his beloved Ixtaccíhuatl, whose still, graceful form symbolises eternal peace.

La Mujer Dormida - Iztaccíhuatl aka Ixtaccíhuatl

Whilst in Cuernavaca the summer before I was born, my dad read Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. The novel is set in Cuernavaca (referred to in the book by its previous spelling ‘Quauhnahuac’) on the Day of the Dead, with the two volcanoes- Popocatépetl (referred to in the books as ‘Popo’) and Ixtaccíhuatl (referred to in the book as ‘Ixta’) always looming in the background. Popo is active and erupting throughout the book, representing chaos, destruction and the inner turmoil of the depressed, drunken protagonist. Ixta is calm and dormant, symbolizing I don’t know what because I haven’t finished reading the book yet. My dad was instantly taken by the name. Apparently it took a bit of convincing to get my mum on board, but in the end, he won her over.

I’m slightly obsessed with volcanoes now. So much so that this year I climbed Etna and got a volcano tattoo. One day in the not too distant future, I’ll climb Ixtaccíhuatl, too.

Etna, Sicilia and Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

As I’ve mentioned, these days Ixtaccíhuatl is spelled Iztaccíhuatl. And Quauhnahuac is now known as Cuernavaca. Both are words of Nahuatl origin - the language of the Aztecs and many other Indigenous peoples of central Mexico.

Nahuatl was a spoken, not written language, so when the Spanish conquistadors arrived and began documenting it, they transcribed sounds using the Latin alphabet and phonetic rules. This led to variations in spelling that have evolved over time. For example, the ‘x’ sound in Nahuatl was used to represent a sound similar to ‘sh’, but in modern Mexican Spanish, it often became a ‘ks’ ‘z’ or ‘s’ sound. So despite the spelling variations between Ixtaccíhuatl and Iztaccíhuatl, neither are technically correct, as they’re a transliteration of a language that was never written down in the first place. Iztaccíhuatl has become the standardised way to write it under Spanish influence, I guess my Dad just preferred the ‘x’.

There are many ways to pronounce ‘x’ in Mexican Spanish and no clear rule. I appreciate this is probably of absolutely no interest to those without a Mexican name containing the letter ‘x’, but I found this video fascinating.

When I was younger, I resented my parents for giving me a ridiculous name. A boy I hated (read: probably fancied) used to call me ‘Ixta Egg’ and ‘Ixta Bunny’ and I absolutely despised it. My face would turn red with shame and embarrassment, and I’d cry out, ‘I AM NOT AN IXTA EGG!!!’, whilst fighting back tears. What a completely ridiculous thing to get upset about. Anyway, now I love my name.

My most treasured food memory is watching chiles rellenos (stuffed chiles/peppers) being made in my grandad’s kitchen in Cuernavaca. This was long after he’d died, but my step grandma still lived there and we were visiting her. She let me watch as she made the batter, but she wouldn’t let me do anything else. I’ll never forget the smell of chile poblano grilling, the sizzle as they were fried in fluffy batter. The sound of salsas being pounded in a molcajete (a pestle and mortar made from volcanic rock) which I always liked to think was made from a piece of my namesake, Ixtaccíhuatl.

This wonky, beautiful molcajete my mum bought in Cuernavaca many moons ago is one of my most precious possessions.

I remember being completely blown away when I took my first, dangerously hot bite; the soft crunch of the batter giving way to the aromatic grilled pepper, which in turn revealed gloriously oozy cheese. And it was all bathed in warm salsa. A few years ago I developed the recipe pictured below, based on this memory.

Prawn & sticky rice stuffed peppers with chipotle-coconut sauce

These peppers are a big departure from classic Chiles Rellenos. They’re not deep-fried, and they’re filled with an untraditional mix of sticky rice and prawns.

In this recipe, Romano peppers are grilled, then stuffed with a mix of sticky rice and raw prawns, flavoured with chipotle, tomato paste, parmesan and curry powder. They’re baked in a sauce made from coconut milk, chipotle paste and tomatoes, which you baste over the peppers a couple of times as they cook. The sauce splits a little in the most beautiful way, and the rice becomes sticky inside and gloriously golden-brown and crispy on top.

I highly reccomend Gran Luchito chipotle paste. I also like using Thai Taste sticky rice, as it cooks quicker than other glutinous rice brands and in the context of these peppers, the rice doesn’t need to be soaked.

I’m absolutely obsessed with this recipe, I really hope you’ll give it a go. If you want to make it vegetarian, swap the prawns for a finely chopped mix of fresh and rehydrated dried mushrooms.

INGREDIENTS

6 medium romano peppers
1 lime, halved
10g coriander
½ onion, thinly sliced
Chilli oil, to serve

Filling
300g raw peeled prawns
200g Thai Taste sticky rice (raw, uncooked)
60g water
30g tomato paste
20g parmesan, very finely grated
2 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, finely grated/crushed
1 tsp Gran Luchito chipotle paste
1 tsp fine sea salt
½ tsp medium curry powder
20 twists freshly cracked black pepper
Some grated nutmeg

Chipotle-coconut sauce
1 x 400g tin full fat coconut milk (at least 70% coconut extract)
200g sweet cherry tomatoes
30g runny honey
20g Gran Luchito chipotle paste
15g tomato paste
1 tsp medium curry powder
¾ tsp fine sea salt

METHOD

1. Turn the oven grill to the highest setting.

2. Cut a slit along one side of each pepper. Place in a 35 x 26cm baking tray, slit side down, and grill near the top of the oven for 7-9 mins or until lightly blackened on top. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool. Turn the oven to 200C fan.

NB The reason you grill the peppers slit side down is to colour the bottom side and to soften them, while excess liquid naturally runs out with gravity. Once you turn them over you might feel they’re a bit too hard and raw, but don’t worry, they’ll soften and colour further as they roast with the filling in.

3. While the peppers are cooling, make the filling. Finely chop the prawns- you can do this in a food processor if you like- then add to a bowl with the rest of the filling ingredients. Mix well.

4. Add all the sauce ingredients to a blender and blitz until completely smooth.

5. Transfer the cooled peppers to a plate. Pour the chipotle-coconut sauce into the baking tray. Fill each pepper with some of the rice mix, then arrange in the sauce spaced apart.

NB There’s absolutely no need to remove the skin or seeds from the peppers before filling them, it’s all perfectly edible!

6. Drizzle the peppers with a little olive oil and bake for 20 mins. Remove, baste the peppers with the sauce, then return to the oven for another 10 minutes. Baste once more, then bake for a final 5 mins, until the rice is crispy on top and cooked through.
(ie a total cooking time of 35 mins, basting after 20 and 30 mins).

7. Finish with a good squeeze of lime juice and a drizzle of chilli oil. Serve with fresh coriander, sliced raw onion and more lime.