Fried Eggs with Hoja Santa

Hoja Santa leaves cooking in olive oil

Fried Eggs with Hoja Santa

Fried Eggs With Hoja Santa

by Victoria Challancin

OK.  I know.  This dish is humble.  It's no beauty either.  But it is delicious--absolutely delicious.  Ever since I hauled an hoja santa plant back to San Miguel de Allende from Oaxaca, in the south of Mexico, I have looked for new ways to serve it.  I even wrote an article for the local newspaper about it.  One of my favorite local restaurants, Posada Corazon, makes their signature egg dish with hoja santa as a wrapping for fried eggs--lovely.  Because my plant is in a pot, however, the leaves are small, not large enough for wrapping more than a disk of goat's cheese for grilling.   But as a simple base for cooked eggs or fish, the leaves from my plant work just fine.

Sometimes simplicity is best.  Sautéd in a tiny bit of olive oil, these leaves really shine.  The unusual root beer flavor jumps out with just a hint of heat.  Sauté the leaves for about 30 seconds, drain on paper towels, plate, and top with fried or poached eggs, salt and pepper.  What could be easier?  Or better.

A Recipe: Quinoa Salad with Arugula and some nice Kudos

A Recipe:
Quinoa Salad with Arugula
...and some nice kudos

We all hate to toot our own horns. Truly, most of us do. Hate it. But the lovely review of a recent talk/cooking class I gave to the San Miguel Garden Club just begs to be shared. I was so touched by the words of President Leigh Gersnoviez in the Garden Club's monthly newsletter, that I asked if I could use it on both my blog and my newsletter. Thank you to all of the Garden Club Members.

The Sazón Cooking School with its specialized kitchen complete with overhead mirrors and closed circuit TVs provided the perfect setting for our program on the art of preparing perky recipes with pungent plants. Victoria Challancin introduced as “fascinating and charming” and in other glowing terms…, is a well-known expert and teacher of food preparation, specializing in the use of herbs and other plants. She maintains a newsletter and blog named Flavors of the Sun to which all of us are invited to subscribe and use and is a trip organizer
to exotic places.


Victoria began with a fascinating history lesson on the nasturtium and then taught us to love its colors (yellow to red), versatility (pestos and salad to simple adornment), health benefits (natural antibiotic) and flavor (pungent to spicy). Since the group expressed such interest in the medicinal qualities, Victoria gave us recipes for both an elixir and tincture of the leaves for use as a fast-acting antibiotic which does not kill the flora in the intestines. It was obvious from this informative and lively discussion that Victoria is a history and academics buff who is coincidentally fascinated by botany, loves cooking and can translate all that into unusual and flavorful dishes thus bringing all her
loves together in the kitchen.


She pointed out how beneficial and underused are the whole family of salad greens and how our health could be vastly improved by their inclusion in our diets. Arugula, now growing wild in the campo as well as being available in our organic markets, has forty known medicinal uses and is now being studied in universities as a treatment for stomach ulcers and is thought to be is a tremendous cancer fighter. Its [flower] leaves form the shape of a cross and [for this reason the members of the Crucifer/Brassiasceae are] sometimes called the “plants that serve man”. Victoria continued her green plant discussion with examples of the actual plants being passed among us so we could touch, taste and smell them.

Watercress is an acquatic plant which is high in sulphur content and used as a strong diuretic as well for pulmonary and kidney problems. It is a blood purifier that also contains high levels of iodine, potassium and vitamins. [Quinoa} is a round-seeded grain full of all essential amino acids and therefore very healthy. Victoria is so well-informed and gives such an entertaining stream of conversation that we could have spent the entire day listening and watching her prepare dishes…


She stressed the need to support the local organic farmers and to change our diet to include these tasty and healthy foods. Many thanks
to Victoria for her fun and informative commentary, the shared dishes to
taste and the “perky” recipes.

And here is one of those "perky" recipes:

Quinoa Salad with Arugula

(Recipe by Victoria Challancin)

Serves 4 to 6

Note: Toasting the quinoa before cooking in water, either in oil or in a dry skillet, brings out its nutty flavor. I also tossed cubes of raw yellow crookneck squash into the salad, just because I had one begging to be eaten.

1 1/2 cups quinoa, well-washed and drained
1/4 cup olive oil
3 cups water
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1 small bunch arugula, stemmed and cut into julienne
1/4 cup basil or mint leaves, cut into julienne
1 small red onion, very thinly sliced
2 tomatoes, seeded and diced
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced
1 bell pepper (yellow gives a nice contrasting color), seeded,
deveined, and diced
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Quinoa needs to be washed before cooking to get rid of bitter saponins. Even though most quinoa is pre-washed, it is best to put it into a fine-mesh sieve and rinse well under cold water for at least 1 minute. Allow it to drain for 2 or 3 minutes.

Heat a skillet with a lid over medium-high heat and add 1 tablespoon olive oil. When oil is hot, add quinoa. Cook, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes or until quinoa smells toasted. Add 3 cups water and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Bring mixture to a boil, cover pan, and reduce the heat to low. Cook for 15 minutes or until water is absorbed. Allow to cool if using for a salad.

Combine the vinegar and remaining 3 tablespoons oil in a large bowl. Add the arugula, basil, red onion, tomato, cucumber, and bell pepper. Season the vegetables with additional salt and black pepper to taste. Add the quinoa and mix gently. Serve over a bed of baby lettuces. Add cheese, cooked chicken or shrimp—this recipe is extremely flexible.

Hoja Santa: The Root Beer Plant

Hoja Santa: The Root Beer Plant
by Victoria Challancin

I’ve heard it said that hoja santa (Piper auritum) tastes like anise with hints of tarragon, black pepper, nutmeg, and sassafras thrown in. Perhaps. But to me, the name given to the plant in the Southern United States says it all: Root Beer Plant. Crush one of the velvety, heart-shaped leaves in your hand, and you’ll know what I mean. Root Beer. Pure and simple. And it’s hard to imagine that one plant could capture so complex a flavor, but Hoja Santa does just that.

Indigenous to Mesoamerica, where it grows wild, the plant is common in the cooking of Central America and the Caribbean. On one trip to the Mexican state of Oaxaca, I was amazed to find that almost every house had its own cultivated hoja santa plant growing nearby. So enchanted was I when I attended a class on tamales, taught by the knowledgeable Zapotec cooking teacher, Reyna Mendoza, a native of the village of Teotitlan del Valle, that I was given a plant to take with me. A four-foot plant with a large ball of roots and clinging dirt. It was placed it in a plastic market bag for me, and the smiling gardener was sure that I would have no problem returning with it by bus to San Miguel de Allende, where I live in the more northern state of Guanajuato. I have often wondered what the women who cleaned my beautiful room at La Noria in Oaxaca thought when they found trimmed hoja santa limbs and extra soil tidily piled in my bathroom as I attempted to pare my prize to a portable size. Guiltily, I left a nice tip.

Well, lug it home I did. Through four bus stations and in two taxis, I schlumped along with my precious cargo. Determined to have a constant source of this surprising plant, I finally made it home. And although I must protect it in the winter and baby it in the summer, it is a thriving source of culinary wonder.

A Little History
Mexico is a land of legends and the story of how Hoja Santa, or Holy Leaf, got its name is among the most charming. When the Virgin Mary needed a place to dry the diapers of baby Jesus, what better spot than atop an hoja santa plant, which would not only serve as a clothesline, but also impart a very pleasant aroma? Charming and practical. The Mexican way.

As with many much-used plants, the name varies in Mexico. I may know it as hoja santa, but others call it acuyo, yerba santa, hierba santa, hoja de anís, and anisillo. In English it is often referred to as “Mexican pepperleaf” or “root beer plant.” The Aztecs called it tlanapaquelite. Botanically, it is sometimes confused with kava kava (Piper methysticum) and for that reason is also sometimes called “false kava.”

One internet source whose material I can’t vouch for, gives its medicinal properties, according to Aztec use as: stimulant, analgesic, and stomachic. It was said to be used by the Aztecs for asthma, bronchitis, laryngitis, and apnia. Other sources in Spanish reveal that these properties are still considered valid today and that it is used topically for skin irritations as well as for placing the alcohol-soaked leaves on the breasts of lactating women to increase milk-production. As an infusion, it is drunk to stimulate digestion and to calm colic. It is said to have diuretic and anesthetic properties as well. And a homeopathic tincture of hoja santa is often employed for bronchial infections and asthma.

In the United States, the FDA has been less kind. Because, like sassafras, it contains the essential oil safrole, which is known to be carcinogenic in animals, some sources consider it to be toxic. As an ingredient, safrole was banned in the 1960s and the making of root beer extract now uses artificial flavorings. However, Wikipedia refers to an article that states “toxicological studies show that humans do not process safrole into its carcinogenic metabolite.” Dangerous or not, hoja santa is used extensively in the cooking of Mexico, particularly in salsas, stews, and tamales.


Although the leaves can be chopped and added to dishes, a more common method involves using the leaves as a wrapper, much like corn husks. I have added it to mole verde, Oaxacan-style, to serve over fish, ground it into hot chocolate, and served it as a base or “plate” for both fish and eggs. The beautiful and tranquil Posada Corazon in San Miguel, serves its signature egg dish, Huevos Enojados ("angry eggs"), in a wrapping of hoja santa.

When I first introduced the leaves to Mexican students in my Mexican cooking classes here in San Miguel, they had never cooked with, but only knew of its existence. Now I have a fairly consistent stream of people asking to borrow a few leaves or a cutting of the plant.

Below is a picture of an appetizer we made in class from the beautiful cookbook Antojería Mexicana by Patricia Quintana. The hoja santa leaves, which are softened first in boiling water, are used as a wrapper for goat cheese and then macerated in a vinaigrette made from allspice berries.

Hoja Santa-Wrapped Goat Cheese in a Vinaigrette of Allspice Berries and Balsamic Reduction

Queso de Cabra a la Hoja Santa con Vinagreta de Pimienta Gorda

Striped Bass in Corn Husks with Hoja Santa and Green Mole Sauce (from a recipe by Robert Del Grande from Café Annie, Houston, Texas

Mojarro en Hojas de Maiz con Hoja Santa y Mole Verde

If you are lucky enough to have an hoja santa plant growing in your garden, try introducing it into your cooking as a guaranteed surprise for your guests. Elusive, indescribable, and delicate, the aroma is sure to haunt.

This is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, the helpful and fascinating event begun in 2005 by Kalyn Denny of Kalyn's Kitchen and hosted this week by Kelly of Sounding My Barbaric Gulp. Check out both of these sites for tons of recipes and interesting articles including Kalyn's and Kelly's own recipes as well as those from bloggers all over the world.