Hoja santa

• hoja santa

  Spanish — Mexico

• acuyo

  Spanish — Veracruz and Tabasco

• tlanepaquelite

  Nahuatl

• momo

  Spanish — Chiapas

Sweet anise, sassafras, a little black pepper and a green vegetal body, and it is one of the most complex single-ingredient flavours in this catalogue. Cooked, it mellows towards eucalyptus and mint; raw and chopped it is sharper and more medicinal.

Anise and sassafras together, with something green and faintly medicinal underneath — the comparison to root beer is not a stretch but a chemical observation, since the compound responsible is the same one that flavoured it. Rubbing a leaf releases it immediately.

A deep matte green above and paler beneath, with a soft velvety surface and prominent veining.

Soft and velvety, and large enough to be a functional wrapper. Cooked it goes limp and is eaten with the parcel or discarded depending on the dish and the toughness of the leaf.

• Safrole — The dominant volatile and the source of the sassafras and root-beer character — the same compound that flavoured root beer before it was prohibited as a food additive in the United States. Its presence is the whole reason this leaf tastes as it does and is the subject of the safety note below.(what safrole is)
• Estragole and anethole — The anise notes over the sassafras base.(what estragole is, what anethole is)
• Eugenol and myristicin — Warm and slightly medicinal, contributing to the complexity that makes the leaf hard to describe.(what eugenol is, what myristicin is)

Decide whether the leaf is a wrapper or a flavouring, because the two uses ask different things of it. As a wrapper, use it whole and fresh, strip the thickest part of the central rib if the leaf is large, and let it do its work from outside the parcel. As a flavouring, tear or chop it and put it in early enough to simmer — a mole verde wants the leaf cooked into the sauce rather than stirred through at the end. Either way it is used in quantity by the standards of this catalogue: two or three whole leaves to a dish rather than a pinch.

The defining flavour of Oaxacan mole verde, and used to wrap and line tamales, to wrap fish and fresh cheese, and in soups and stews across southern Mexico. It works both as a flavouring stirred into a sauce and as a wrapper that perfumes what it encloses, which is a dual role almost nothing else in this catalogue has.

• boiling — Simmered into a mole verde or a green sauce, the leaf gives up its anise and sassafras into the liquid and the harsher notes soften. This is the technique behind the Oaxacan green moles.
• baking — Wrapped around fish, tamales or fresh cheese and steamed or baked, the leaf perfumes the contents from the outside in — the same principle as a banana leaf, with a flavour of its own attached.
• frying — Briefly in fat, chopped, it stays sharper and greener. Used this way in far smaller quantity.
• infusing — Steeped in a broth or a stock, it gives a clean anise note without the vegetal body of the whole leaf.

Rub a leaf and smell. Hoja santa announces itself immediately and unmistakably; a leaf that smells only faintly green is past useful.

• Browning or blackening at the edges
• No anise smell on rubbing
• Limpness and translucency

• Volatilisation of safrole and the anise fraction
• Dehydration and browning of the fresh leaf
• Mould on leaves kept damp

Fresh or not at all, if the dish is a wrapper dish. For a mole or a sauce the dried leaf will contribute an anise note and none of the complexity, which is worth having and is not the ingredient. This is one of the entries where the honest thing to tell a reader outside Mexico is that the dish they are cooking will be a version of itself.

• Fresh, from a Latin American grocer, or a plant — it grows readily in a frost-free spot and in a pot elsewhere.
• Whole undamaged leaves rather than torn ones, if the dish needs a wrapper.
• Mid-size leaves; the very largest are tougher and more bitter.
• An immediate anise-and-sassafras smell on rubbing.

Piperaceae

A fast-growing shrub or small tree to five metres, with soft velvety heart-shaped leaves that reach 30 cm across and sometimes more. It spreads by underground runners and is treated as an invasive plant in several countries outside its range.

Mesoamerica, from central Mexico south through Central America into northern South America.

• Mexico — origin. Veracruz, Oaxaca, Tabasco and Chiapas in particular.
• Guatemala — notable producer
• United States — notable producer. Grown in the Gulf states and in Texas, where it survives the winter.

Mature leaves picked individually. Young leaves are milder and the very large old ones can be tough and more bitter.

1. Cutting mature leaves — Leaves are cut individually when full size — commonly the width of two hands — and handled carefully, because a torn leaf cannot be used for wrapping, which is most of what it is for.Why: Size and integrity are the grading criteria here rather than aroma, which is unusual in this catalogue and follows from the leaf being a vessel as well as a seasoning.
2. Deveining — The thick central rib is cut out before the leaf is used to wrap, leaving two pliable halves.Why: The rib is fibrous and will not fold, and it carries proportionally more of the safrole-bearing oil, so removing it also moderates the medicinal note.
3. Wilting over heat — Leaves are passed briefly over a flame or a hot comal until they soften and darken slightly before being used as a wrapper.Why: Makes the leaf pliable enough to fold without cracking, and starts the aromatic release. The same step is used for banana leaf across Southeast Asia for the same mechanical reason.
4. Air-drying — Dried in shade and sold as large brittle sheets. The dried leaf keeps enough aroma to flavour a mole or a broth and is useless for wrapping.Why: Drying is a preservation of flavour at the cost of function, which is the reverse of the trade-off most dried spices make.

Grown as a perennial shrub and picked leaf by leaf as needed rather than harvested. Much of what is used is from a plant in a yard rather than from a farm.

Humid tropical and subtropical, with shade and plenty of water. It is frost-tender and dies back in anything approaching a cold winter.

Hoja santa is a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican seasoning that never entered the international spice trade, and the reason is entirely practical: its value is in a large fresh leaf, and a large fresh leaf could not be shipped anywhere in the sixteenth century. It remains a regional ingredient of southern Mexico five hundred years after contact, which is unusual for an ingredient this distinctive.

Essentially untraded. It reaches markets outside its range through diaspora supply and specialist growers, and the dried leaf is what most people outside Mexico will ever see.

A medicinal record across Mesoamerica, and the "holy leaf" name is generally attributed to a religious legend rather than to any recorded property. SpiceHQ makes no health claim.