A Sonoran-Style Sports Drink from Kansas City
Courtesy of a James Beard-winning bakery
Last fall, I decided that I wanted to run 10% of Kansas City. I’ve been tracking my progress on a no-frills website called CityStrides, which logs my runs and tells me what percentage of the streets in each city I’ve finished. It’s gamified my running to the extent that I hardly see the point in a three-mile loop around the neighborhood anymore.
The pursuit of new streets has kept me going through drizzly winter mornings and increasingly sweaty spring afternoons, and it’s helped me get to know a new city. Most bike trails and running paths don’t count as streets, and if they do, they only count once, so I’ve had reasons to explore the oldest parts of downtown, the industrial areas where truck drivers swerve away when they see me (most of the time), and miles upon miles upon miles of almost identical mid-century suburban cul-de-sacs that I would never have seen otherwise.
It’s also introduced me to the agua de tamarindo at Yoli Tortilleria, which I’ve been picking up to drink after my runs. When I tried Yoli’s take on a classic Mexican refresher for the first time last year, after stumbling into the bakery one fall Saturday morning, I realized that it was something special—and especially refreshing.
There’s a lot more to Yoli than the agua fresca. Widely considered one of the best Sonoran-style tortillerias this side of the border, Yoli was the only business between the coasts to win a national James Beard Restaurant and Chef Award last year.
In an area with a deeply rooted Mexican-American community, dating back to the nineteenth-century heyday of the Santa Fe Trail and boosted by railroad recruiting in rural Mexico in the early twentieth century, Yoli is making the kind of thin, supple northern Mexican flour tortilla that most Midwesterners could only dream of a generation or so ago.
“Sonora and Kansas City have some things in common,” says Yoli co-founder and owner Marissa Gencarelli, a native of Ciudad Obregón, Sonora. “In Sonora, we’re also big on cattle. And we’re seen as a little bit of a stepchild to the rest of the country—you know, like a flyover state. I think there’s a similar sense of, you know, trying to prove people wrong and show that, hey, we have a lot of great things, too.”
Like everything else at Yoli, Gencarelli’s agua de tamarindo is better than it needs to be. It’s a fusion of at least two traditions, she says—sweetened with the spice-infused syrup that she uses for her cafe de olla, which is itself inspired by the flavors of the Middle East and India.
“For a while, I was traveling to India a lot,” she says. “That’s how I learned that the chai we get in the United States is nothing like what you get in India, and I started blending my own. I fell in love with the spices.” She layers warming spices and citrus over the dark caramel flavor of piloncillo, an unrefined cane sugar, for a refreshing drink that suggests a summery mulled cider—and, for us runners, electrolytes.
It’s more than a sports drink, of course. But I’m craving it more than ever as temperatures are rising and I’m trying to increase my mileage again—and cover more ground. Not to big-time you, but I’m CityStrides’ number-one runner in Kansas City right now, with 552 streets completed out of 3,161, or about 17.5%. Fueled by tamarind and piloncillo, I might make be able to get half the city by the end of the year.
Agua de Tamarindo
From Marissa Gencarelli, Yoli Tortilleria, Kansas City, Missouri
Makes 2 quarts, or 8 1-cup servings
At Yoli, we love agua de tamarindo on its own or as a mixer for mezcal. While you can buy whole tamarind pods, crack them, and remove the flesh yourself, I prefer the blocks of tamarind pulp that can be found at any Asian market.
Ingredients
⅓ cup seedless tamarind pulp (110g)
1 recipe Cafe de Olla Syrup (below)
Preparation
Add tamarind pulp to a heat-resistant pitcher or another large (at least 2.5-quart) container. Heat 8 cups water to a bare simmer in a saucepan or kettle over high heat. Pour hot water over tamarind and let sit for 5 minutes. Once tamarind has softened, whisk vigorously to mix the pulp into the water. Pass through a fine-mesh strainer to remove any seeds (you’ll probably see some, even though the pulp is “seedless”), then add the spiced syrup. Let cool to room temperature, chill in the refrigerator, and enjoy over ice.
Cafe de Olla Syrup
From Marissa Gencarelli, Yoli Tortilleria, Kansas City, Missouri
Makes about 1¼ cups
Ingredients
6 cinnamon sticks
2 whole cloves
2 green cardamom pods
2 juniper berries
2 allspice berries
1 star anise pod
Scant ½ cup granulated sugar (100g)
1 cone piloncillo (255g)
Peel of ½ orange
Preparation
Place a saucepan over medium-high heat. Once warm, add cinnamon and toast for 1 minute. Then, add juniper, allspice, cardamom, and cloves and toast for 1 more minute. Remove and reserve spices.
Add ⅔ cup water and granulated sugar to saucepan. Stir to combine. Add piloncillo. Bring to a boil, then add spices and orange peel. Reduce heat to low and cook at a low simmer until piloncillo has dissolved, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon and breaking the softened piloncillo cone into smaller pieces as it softens, about 10 minutes. Continue cooking at a low simmer for 5 more minutes, then pass through a fine-mesh strainer and cool to room temperature.