Part 1: Preserving the Mexican Identity Through Prehispanic Cuisine, An Interview with Adriana Legaspi

There is a movement afoot in Mexico to preserve the traditions of its indigenous cuisine and the ancient knowledge of the use of curative herbs. It involves the rescue and preservation of the ingredients, methods, and utensils common in the pre-colombian past of Mesoamerica in the hopes that they do not flicker out of existence in our lifetime. With globalization and the proliferation of fast food franchises, it is no surprise that these ancient traditions are becoming a distant memory. In twenty-five years, who will know how to prepare tecorral tea, muicle, tlacoyos, or tamales de atepocate or know what they are, for that matter?

Enter Adriana Legaspi, founder of Gastrotour Prehispánico Malinalco, an anthropologist of the palate and a woman on a mission to preserve these traditions. She is neither the first nor the only person in Mexico bent on what Adriana calls "the ethnogastronomic rescue" but she certainly stands out with her passion and conviction.

A multi-faceted business woman who is not only proficient in the kitchen, Adriana also has degrees in communications, political science, and public affairs. Many years ago, she and her husband purchased a weekend home in the cobble-stoned mountain village of Malinalco outside of Mexico City. Adriana found herself in her element, naturally drawn to the wizened old 'doñas' in the ancient market of Malinalco, chatting, learning recipes and listening to their stories of old times and ways.

With encouragement from friends and with a penchant for social causes, Adriana founded a project which would direct her seemingly boundless energy toward two goals: to preserve the culture and identity of the region and to help the women with a much needed income. This was the genesis of the Gastrotour Prehispánico of Malinalco.  The tour consists of a hands-on cooking class on weekends, starting with a visit to the market in Malinalco to buy organic fruits, vegetables and herbs grown by the seller herself at zero kilometers. She invites her guests to observe the fauna and the flora depicted on a convent wall, thus ensuring a thorough understanding of the historical backdrop of the food they are preparing.

What follows is the first of a two-part interview with Adriana about her work to preserve the Mexican identity through its prehispanic cuisine:

When did you first become interested in cooking?

The truth is that I'm a product of a generation that did not hold cooking in high regard because it was associated with a lack of culture or professional status. I am the first generation of female college graduates in a family where the women had always considered marriage and the running of a household as the first priority.  My sisters and cousins began to take on minor professions in banks. The more professional we felt, the more we shunned the kitchen. Nevertheless, I'm a descendent of Italian immigrants to Mexico on my father's side for whom food and its preparation were of utmost importance in daily life. The quantity, the quality, freshness, uniqueness, and delectability for a traditional community in Northern Mexico where we lived, set us apart. As soon as I began my career in the hospitality industry, my own personal history became relevant as I found myself charged with the responsibility of organizing unique dining experiences at the empresarial level.

How did you come to get involved in the gastronomic tours of prehispanic cuisine in Malinalco?

This is a very long story whose chapters played out slowly starting from the first moment I arrived in Malinalco with my husband over 20 years ago. In spite of the enormous cultural offerings we enjoyed living in Mexico City, on weekends we spilled out of the city in search of open spaces and fresh air. That's how we ended up in Malinalco on many a weekend enjoying lunch in the subtropical climate of this town 88 kms from Mexico City.

We often ate at a restaurant called El Tecorral situated in a grand old house dating from the 17^th century where we took in the gardens, the climate, and the people. Soon we found ourselves buying a property in a place where every neighborhood had its Caocalli or Teocalli typical of Indian villages with a prehispanic past. The Augustin monks who arrived in Malinalco to evangelize in the 16^th century built the Convento de la Transfiguracieon del Señor and directed every barrio to have its own saint and chapel. Ours came with a chapel; we purchased it from a seller who still has a a Nahua surname: Donaciano de la Fuente Tecayahuatl.

Little by little I became involved in the life of the town, admiring its geography, its ecology, and naturally, its cuisine. I became aware of the strength of its indigenous origins and the pride in its traditions evident in daily life. Imagine a prehispanic market where you can find tlacoyos, a type of oval tortilla filled with fava bean paste or ricotta spiced with chilies, cooked on a clay comal by vendors like Doña Carmen. I started, then, to make a mental inventory of all that grabbed my attention to begin my ethnographic research. I began interviewing the elders, finding and documenting ingredients, looking for their existence in a precolombian past. The rest came naturally.

I felt the need to help the economic possibilities of the women of the market who rely on their own meager income. The weekend visitors were not necessarily buying their products; hence, the beginning of my classes: to teach my students the importance of this food, its contextualization, the value in its freshness, helping these students to understand who we are and why we eat as we do. Then, going home to turn the ingredients into a meal.

Why do you think it's important to get back to authentic roots in mexican cuisine?

First of all, because the Mesoamerican diet is healthy... and because to eat guided by prehispanic and Mesoamerican principles of when to eat something is healthy.  Eating guayabas before and during winter, for example, provides the body with the vitamin C necessary for the immunological system to withstand the freezing weather of the central high plains of Mexico.

What is the attitude and/or interest now of the professional (upper and middle) classes in Mexico regarding authentic prehispanic cuisine?

Well, in reality, I think there is growing interest throughout the world, among those who can afford it, to eat authentic and traditional food. The designation of Mexican food as a world heritage cuisine has made it stylish, and chefs throughout Mexico are recuperating the tastes and recipes, creating them with modern techniques and charging exhorbitant prices.

To be continued...


*Photos courtesy of Adriana Legaspi.

Our Pecan Tree

With the arrival of his firstborn daughter, a young father planted a nogal seedling.  The land was barren and stony but the nogal thrived.

Two more daughters were born and, over time, the three sisters grew to play in the shade of the tree's broad branches, climbing, jumping, and staining their clothes with its caramel-colored sap.  The girls gathered the tree's savory pecans, cracking them open and eating them as they played.

Pipian Verde with Guajolote (Turkey)

I appreciate Thanksgiving for the way in which the holiday brings together friends and family and reminds us to give thanks for each other and the goodness in life.  But I still often think about how Thanksgiving came about and the ways in which it misrepresents the relationship between America's first colonizers and its native people. (See our post about the origins of Thanksgiving here.)

Interestingly, none of the Hispanic countries (those colonized by Spain) of the Americas have such a holiday as far as I know. The Mexican mestizo soul is complex and opaque. Most Mexicans identify proudly with the indigenous people who blended with the Spanish colonizers to create the mestizo race. (However, don't be surprised to hear epithets hurled at either the indigenous culture or at their European ancestors when a little Tequila is going around. Mexicans know how to make light of these "problems of the psyche!")

This Thanksgiving, I thought it would be appropriate to give you a recipe that is quite possibly prehispanic and can be made with the native bird of the Americas and of this holiday: guajolote (nahuatl for turkey). I had to go through a stack of old handwritten recipes to find it. It's Tía Oralia's recipe for pipian verde, a kind of green mole, which is usually made for chicken. I see from my notes that she was dictating it to me and I was barely keeping up with my writing, but the essentials are here. It looks like my pipian sauce needed more broth, just add as you like to get the proper texture and serve this with a good white rice and warm corn tortillas.

To all those with a loved one who did not return from Iraq or Afghanistan, may your bounty of friends and relatives help dry your tears and  fill the void of the empty chair at your table.

Pipian Verde with Guajolote (Turkey)

Recipe Type: main, fowl, sauce, mole

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 30 mins

Cook time: 1 hour

Total time: 1 hour 30 mins

Serves: 4

Pipian verde goes perfectly on a bed of white rice, cooked Mexican style.

Ingredients:

• 1lb tomatillo
• 1 serrano chile
• ¾ cup raw, unsalted pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
• 2 cloves peeled garlic
• 1/2 onion
• 1 sprig epazote (optional)
• 3 green leaves, approximately, from radishes, swiss chard, kale, or collard greens
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup roughly chopped cilantro (without stems)
• 1 chicken cut up or 6 turkey drumsticks
• salt to taste
• 3 cups chicken or turkey broth

For broth:

• 3 carrots
• 2 sticks celery
• 1 onion
• salt to taste
• 1 cut up chicken or 6 turkey drumsticks

Instructions:

1. Bring water to a boil and place cut chicken pieces or turkey drumsticks, bringing the flame down to a low simmer.


2. After about ½ hour, place the vegetables in the skimmed broth and add salt.


3. Continue to cook at a low simmer for another 45 minutes, partially covered.


4. Set the broth aside when it's ready, strain it and pull out the chicken or drumsticks, placing them on a plate, to be used later.


5. Start preparing the pipian by browning the pumpkin seeds and the clove of garlic in half of the oil on a skillet for about 3 minutes, until they are puffy; take care not to burn them, as this will make them bitter; keep the flame low.


6. In the meantime, boil the de-husked tomatillos with the serrano pepper and onion for about 10 minutes. (You can also broil them if you prefer)


7. After this all cools, put the tomatillos, the serrano, the garlic, the sprig of epazote and the toasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas) in the blender with about a cup of the cooled broth, blending it until it's as smooth as possible.


8. Place this mixture on a skillet again with the last half of the oil and begin to cook it again, to amalgamate it for about 5 minutes.


9. Place the cilantro in the blender and the leaves of green along another cup of the cooled broth and blend together.


10. Add this to your mixture in the skillet and add remaining broth, slowly to get the consistency you want.


11. Add the pieces of chicken or turkey to your skillet and make sure you are able to turn the pieces so they can all be coated with the sauce.


12. Cover and cook for another 5 minutes at a very low flame, checking that nothing sticks or the sauce doesn't become too thick.


13. Arrange on a plate with a good white rice and warm corn tortillas.

3.1.09

Memory in a Soup - Dia de los Muertos

I have lived seven Novembers without him and somehow survived them in different ways.

We knew that November 2005 could be the last with our son, Alex. He was about to deploy to a raging battleground in Iraq for the second time. Our hearts were heavy and so he asked that we celebrate Thanksgiving twice, once on the Thursday and again on Friday. So we did. We went around the table articulating our thanks for special things in our lives. When it came to Alex, he looked at us and thanked us for having been his parents and loving him as we did. Then he left, and we would never again be blessed with seeing this child, this man, whom we loved so much.  We would never see him grow old, become a father, raise children and teach us things only our children can teach us. Our lives would change dramatically.

Last year I began to practice a remembrance of Alex through the Día de los Muertos tradition, finding comfort in the connection to this prehispanic ritual. I made pan de muertos and set up an altar with ofrendas arranged with things Alex might have liked. In fact, I have begun doing this with the children I teach. They also set up altares to their loved ones in my classroom, gaining a hands-on understanding of the spirituality of this day and the mystery of life.

This year I've made the usual things in remembrance: empanadas, hojarascas, capirotada, and pan de muertos. The empanadas, especially, are for my mother, who comforted me in this loss through her profound understanding of my sorrow. But today I'll post something that can't be put in an ofrenda: a soup I began to make for Alex after he started eating solid food as a baby.

Last night I ate this soup, savoring slowly the taste and texture of the alphabet-shaped pasta, the flavors of the vegetables, and I was transported back to those days that went by much too quickly.

Memory in a Soup - Dia de los Muertos

Recipe Type: Soup

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 40 mins

Serves: 4

The browning of the vegetables enhances the taste of the soup, but if you prefer not to have the additional olive oil in the soup, just skip this step and throw the vegetables directly into the boiling broth until they are soft.

Ingredients:

• 8 cups of chicken broth, either homemade (preferably) or commercial
• 3-4 carrots, minced
• 1 stick celery, minced
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3/4 cup alphabet pasta
• 1 onion minced as finely as possible
• cilantro or parsley for flavoring at the end
• 2 leaves of any greens like kale or escarole (chopped very finely)
• olive oil to coat the pasta and brown it in a pan (about 2 tablespoons)
• olive oil to soften the onion, carrot, celery, and green leaves, (about 2 tablespoons)
• Salt to taste
• Pepper grindings to taste
• Optional: one lime and a few crumbled totopos (corn tortilla that you fry yourself, don't bother buying any)

Instructions:

1. Brown the pasta with the oil in a thick pan at a low heat, about one minute, it will brown quickly.


2. Brown the peeled garlic, onion, celery, carrots, and green leaves separately in the other 2 tablespoons of oil with a low flame for about 5 minutes. Add a little oil if you need to.


3. Combine the pasta and the vegetables in a large pot with the broth already boiling and boil together for about 15 minutes.


4. Check for salt, add pepper grindings if you like, and garnish with cilantro or parsley.


5. Serve in a bowl for your child and add fried, crunchy corn tortilla, and a few drops of lime juice squeezed into the soup at the last minute.

3.1.09

Fall Harvest Rice

Fall is at its peak here in the mid-Atlantic. Autumn leaves are falling, each shimmering leaf a memory of the last year, bringing on a melancholy I wear like comfortable pajamas on lazy fall mornings. I look out the window with my hands wrapped around my coffee cup and think, We are the product of all the autumns we've lived.  We are hopefully wiser and stronger, more capable of understanding the mysteries of life, more able to withstand the coming winter.

I've gone to the farmer's market  here in Bethesda to forage for the last of the fall harvest: diminishing supplies of lima beans, lonely cobs of silver-white corn, a few forlorn Honey Crisp apples. I feel the start of cold weather—a hint of winter's magificent presence—and know I should fill my bag with sweet potatoes, pumpkins, turnips, maybe a pot of marigolds.

But the lima beans and corn are what I need to prepare an aromatic rice my friends love, down to the last toasted grain at the bottom of the pan.  The dish is a hybrid: part Mexican, part Spanish, perhaps only the tiniest bit like an Italian risotto. Powdered turmeric and pimentón de la vera (Spanish smoked paprika) gives the rice its yellow color and a healthy quantity  of cumin gives it a nuanced flavor. Also, I use a paella rice which is short grained, similar to risotto rice.

Fall Harvest Rice

Recipe Type: Side Dish

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 60 mins

Total time: 1 hour 15 mins

Serves: 8-10

Ingredients

• 2 cups short grained rice


• 8 tablespoons olive oil


• 1 onion minced finely


• 1/2 red bell pepper cut in thin strips


• 1 tablespoon powdered pimenton de la vera


• 1 tablespoon turmeric


• 1 tablespoon cumin


• 2 envelopes powdered chicken soup concentrate


• 1 cup lima beans


• scraped corn from one cob


• 6 cloves peeled garlic


• cilantro for garnish


• salt to taste


• 5 cups water (or chicken broth if you prefer not to use powdered soup)

Instructions

1. Rinse the rice and drain out the water as much as possible.


2. Put 5 tablespoons of the oil in a large heavy bottomed skillet and place the rice to brown.


3. Let it brown, at medium heat, moving it with a spoon for about 3 minutes.


4. Add the minced onion and stir until the the onion has softened, about 5 minutes.


5. In the meantime, place the strips of red bell pepper and the cloves of garlic in a pan with the other 3 tablespoons of oil and saute them, until softened and the garlic is golden.


6. Now, to the rice, add the 5 cups of water, the turmeric, the pimenton de la vera, the powdered chicken soup, the salt and the strips of bell pepper and garlic.


7. Bring to a boil uncovered, and after 5 minutes, add the lima beans and the corn.


8. Check for salt and bring the heat down to a very low simmer.


9. Cook for another half hour approximately and cover loosely for the last 10 minutes.


10. Garnish the top of the skillet with the cilantro or if you are serving it on a special dish, wait until it cools for 10 minutes.

3.1.09

Blue Corn Pozole

As I gathered the ingredients for this post, I thought about a woman my family once knew in Laredo.  Her name was Ana María.  She was born in Nuevo Laredo and moved to the U.S. side of the border after her marriage to a Laredoan. Ana María was an eccentric woman who made it clear in subtle and not so subtle ways that she belonged to Nuevo Laredo's well-connected families.  However, in Laredo, Ana María and her husband were as poor as church mice.  That is, until the 1980's when gas drilling along the Rio Grande made overnight millionaires out of ordinary people like Ana María and her husband.

My parents had become friends with Ana Maria and her husband some time after I left Laredo. But I remember many funny stories about her and how my mother tolerated some of her crazy ideas.  Finally, I met her during a trip to visit my parents. She was a natural beauty, albeit with a strong belief in heavy black eye liner and pitch-black hair dyed to match.  Within no time, she told me she knew all the "right" kind of eligible, young men from Nuevo Laredo for me to meet. She was truly from another time and place!

What brought Ana María to mind as I planned this recipe was how much she loved pozole.  She often invited my parents over for pozole--too often for my mother, who didn't care much for it. It's not a northern Mexican dish and my mother just didn't understand it. She would often describe how she had avoided another pozole dinner at Ana María's by offering to cook dinner at our home so that she could have some control over the menu. My mother had the nagging suspicion that  Ana María's real intention was to end up with a dinner invitation rather than have to cook.

I was always curious about the dish, never having tasted Ana María's famous pozole all those years. Later, during my trips to Mexico, I found many occasions to savor it. There are many versions of the hearty soup and, unlike my mother, I soon became a fan of pozole!

Last month, some friends from New Mexico brought me some dried blue corn kernels. I used them in this pozole recipe in place of canned hominy that is traditionally used. Normally, pozole is served with satellites of garnishes, little dishes of items that can be added to the soup: chopped white onion, sliced radishes, chopped cilantro, sliced limes, and thinly-sliced romaine lettuce. I like to add strips of fried tortilla as well.

Dried Chile Guajillo

My pozole recipe might be too spicy for little children who have not grown up with spicy food but it's substantial enough to serve as a main course. The flavors and textures are like few things I've ever had; the meat of the pork is tender, the corn kernels are chewy and the flavor of the chile guajillo cooked into this thick soup is deep and earthy.  And adding a squeeze of lime and the chopped cilantro creates a bright contrast with the savory flavors of the soup.

Blue Corn Pozole

Recipe Type: soup

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 1 hour

Cook time: 4 hours

Total time: 5 hours

Serves: 6

Fall and winter is the perfect time for a hearty soup like pozole.

Ingredients

• 6 or 7 guajillo chili pods, deveined and seeded


• 2 cups dried blue corn which has been soaked overnight


• 2 lbs pork shoulder cut into 1 inch cubes


• 10 cloves garlic roughly cut


• 1 1/2 tablespoons dry oregano


• 1 tablespoon cumin


• 4 bay leaves


• Garnish: finely chopped romaine lettuce or cabbage, minced white onion, limes, cilantro, radishes, and tostadas, or fried corn tortilla strips

Instructions

1. Soak the corn overnight and then add salt and boil it at a simmer, covered, for about two hours in about 1 quart of water or enough so that there is enough liquid to soften the corn; add more water if it begins to evaporate too fast.


2. While the corn is cooking, remove the seeds and stems and devein the guajillo chiles, then place them on a heavy skillet or a comal at low heat until they soften, about 5 minutes or less.


3. After the chilies are soft, place them in a pot of about 5 cups boiling water , set aside to soak, covered, in this water for about 20 minutes.


4. Place the cubes of pork in a large, heavy bottomed stock pot and brown for about 6 minutes on a medium to high flame.


5. For an additional 3 minutes and at a lower flame, add the cloves of garlic to sweat as the meat browns. Add salt.


6. Pour the boiled corn pozole along with its liquid into the stockpot with the seared pork and garlic cloves.


7. While this is cooking, place the chilies along with their liquid in the blender, and blend. Do this little by little so the blender lid doesn't pop off with the expansion of the liquid.


8. Add this red liquid into the stock pot and add the oregano, crumbled bay leaf and cumin.


9. Place the pot lid at a tilt, check for salt and cook at a simmer for about three hours. Check the liquid frequently to make sure the result is brothy.


10. Fill small plates with garnishes: minced white onion, chopped cilantro, thinly sliced radishes, sliced limes, thinly sliced romain lettuce, and fried strips of tortilla. 

Fall Pickling

A harvest moon will soon be hovering over the horizon, imbuing us with the golden, hazy memories of autumns past. We will sit by our bonfire, warming ourselves as every orange tongue of flame lights our faces and the images of years gone by come to life. Sitting around a fire in the fall with friends and family is a custom we never tire of. In this circle around the fire, gazing into those hypnotic flames, as surely it's happened since the beginning of time, we reflect, we laugh, sometimes we sing, and, certainly, we always eat.

This past weekend, with the hint of fall weather in the air, spectacular blue skies and crisp weather, we decided at the last minute, to have a carne asada for friends in the garden. There were salsas to prepare and grocery shopping to do.  Never backing away from further complicating my life, I decided to make pickled vegetables and serranos for us to nibble on while the fire got going. My parents always had jars of these things in Laredo. (Who would ever show up to our house without a jar of pickled peppers in hand?) My parents ate them in great quantities, plus you found them on every restaurant table in Nuevo Laredo, it was the equivalent of the ketchup bottle you would find here in a fast food restaurant. But it's not fast food, and it is something good to have in your refrigerator (or pantry if you trust your canning skills).

So, if you have a bounty of peppers, now is the time to put them in vinegar along with carrots, small onions, cloves of garlic, and marble sized potatoes, if you can find them.

Fall weather pickling

Recipe Type: appetiser

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 10 mins

Total time: 20 mins

Serves: 8

As you canning experts know, you can add or subtract any variety of vegetables to this, for example zucchini and pearl onions, etc.

Ingredients

• 4 cups marble sized potatoes


• 1 cup serrano or jalapeño chiles


• 6 cloves peeled garlic


• 5 carrots, cut into thick slices


• water to boil the vegetables


• white or apple cider vinegar to add to the boiled vegetables


• aromatic herbs: bay leaf, oregano, and thyme

Instructions

1. Place the potatoes, chiles, carrots, and garlic in a pot of boiling, salted water that is about one inch over the level of vegetables.


2. Cook slowly, uncovered with a low boil.


3. They should be cooked after about 10 minutes: check the carrots, or the potatoes for doneness.


4. Drain most of the water and add the vinegar. It should be approximately half water, half vinegar.


5. Cook for another 5 minutes, adding the bay leaf, sprigs of oregano and of thyme.


6. Pour into canning jars and store in your refrigerator after they've cooled.


7. Serve in bowls as an appetiser.