Recipes & Reflections on Latino Food & Culture
After a week's worth of splendid weather in San Miguel de Allende and festivities with family and friends leading up to Easter Sunday, getting back to the classroom has been, frankly, difficult. I love my job as a teacher and always delight in seeing my students after a long break. But I'm also thinking of my trip over Spring Break, the recent memories like the sun warming my back. … [Read more...]
At last Thursday's cooking class at Casa Carmen in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, I taught students how to make three salsas: basic, well-known, can't-do-without salsas. I decided on pico de gallo, salsa verde, (and its variation with avocado), and a dried chile salsa made with chile guajillo and chile cascabel. After all, what is basic to me may be exotic to others. In my childhood home in Laredo, fresh salsas were as common at the table as the salt and pepper. It was my job to make the salsa while my mother prepared breakfast. I remarked to my students about the ease of making these salsas, and how unnecessary it is to buy a commercial sauce, not to mention the fact that it's a totally different thing, with all kinds of additives, sometimes including corn syrup. (¡Dios mío!) Mexican food markets are an assault on the senses with their glorious colors, sounds and smells. As … [Read more...]
I've packed a set of handpainted cups from San Gimignano, a weathered cutting board, two old cork screws, a pair of mismatched dishtowels and assorted kitchen knick knacks no one wanted when my two sisters and I divided our mother's things after she passed away. My husband has packed his own treasures: his Pavoni coffee machine, his pizza peel and, of course, some basic tools. We've packed our hearts in these bags. I'm on the plane looking down below at Mexico's majestic mountains, at a land where we will eventually live. Squinting down at the winding roads below, I wonder how many times my family has been back and forth across this forsaken land, led by whatever heart wrenching forces drove them to first leave from north of the Rio Grande to travel south, then from south to north and now, in my case, from north to south once again. The spirits of the women in my family who preceded … [Read more...]
This past Columbus Day (also known as Día de la Raza in Latin America and Indigeneous People's Day in the United States) weekend I was back in San Miguel de Allende visiting friends and taking advantage of the long weekend. The weather was delicious with nightly rains quenching the hillsides and leaving the cobblestones glistening in the morning sun. The rains are also responsible for the abundance of huitlacoche, a corn fungus that Mexicans consider a delicacy. … [Read more...]
Last week, Mexico celebrated its 201st year of independence. In San Miguel de Allende, the conspirators Ignacio Allende and the Aldama brothers, hasta el copete (fed up) with the abuses of the Spanish colonial government, organized a revolt. On September 16, 1810, co-conspirator Father Hidalgo, a parish priest in nearby Dolores Hidalgos rang out the rallying cry (el grito), signaling the start of the bloody battle that would rage more than 10 years. When the war ended, Mexico emerged tattered and torn. There was a staggering national identity problem in a country of criollos (creoles), peninsulares (native-born Spaniards), mestizos (mixed race) and indigenous people. The stories of my ancestors who lived through those years are forever lost in time, though I can't help but imagine what the Mexico of those ten years must have been like. The complex society that emerged--with its … [Read more...]
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