Cooking tortillas on the comal (Credit: Carol Antman)
Oaxaca is the kind of place where people celebrate every occasion with a parade. You might come upon several in a day: brides and grooms sashaying out of churches surrounded by marching bands, twirling dancers in colorful skirts and giant puppets. There are vibrant murals of playful skeletons painted on houses, streets strung with cut paper banners and thriving artisan traditions that stretch back centuries.
Oaxaca, Mexico is also famous for its cuisine which has roots in pre-Hispanic Zapotec culture. Fascinated by the flavors and unfamiliar ingredients, Mark and I booked a day to cook with Chef Miguel Alvarez at Quinta Brava. He’d returned to his home town to start this cooking school after working in several restaurants around the world. “I decided to go back home and continue learning about my heritage and about proper Oaxacan cooking cuisine like in my grandmother’s cooking. I traveled around the state of Oaxaca to learn about techniques, flavors, and procedures to try to go back to the roots of…ancient Oaxacan cuisine cooked like in the villages in generations before.”
His large compound, just outside of town, has been in his family for generations. Next to his house are gardens of fresh herbs, goats, chickens and a fat pig named Bacon. Dogs roll in the grass. There is an indoor kitchen with an electric stove and an outdoor kitchen with fire pits topped by comals (huge flat griddles). Shelves are stacked with tortilla presses and walls are full of hanging utensils. We joined ten other visitors at a shady table and talked about what we hoped to cook. Miguel took notes and sent us off to the neighborhood market to shop.
Tables overflowed with a kaleidoscope of colorful vegetables and fruits: varieties of bananas in shades of yellow, huge green cactus leaves and orange and red tomatoes. We gathered up bunches of cilantro, tomatoes, garlic and several kinds of chili, peanuts, plantains, limes, quesillo cheese and squash blossoms. We asked the vendors about pitayas, a red fruit with a spiny skin, dared each other to try the chapulines (grasshoppers) and bought handfuls of pale yellow sugar mangoes to take back to the hotel. We learned that the white limestone rocks that were piled on tables are used to soak corn kernels to make them digestible before they’re ground.
When we returned, wood fires were burning. First we learned how to grind the corn into masa on a flat stone called a metate. It’s a tricky technique that looks simple when the Mexicans do it. Then the masa was formed into tortillas in a wooden press and laid on the very hot comal. “Flip it once to seal in the water and a second time to puff it up,” we were told. We stuffed our tortillas with squash blossoms and cheese. They looked like art projects.
Chef Miguel Alvarez explaining the sauces we are going to make (Credit: Carol Antman)
“Mole is a sauce… it was an offering for the Gods in pre-Hispanic time,” Miguel explained as he pointed out the ten little bowls stretched along a table. Each was for a different mole or salsa we were going to make so we divided into small groups and proceeded according to his instructions. My group had an unusual assortment of peanuts, sesame seeds, tomatoes, onion and a variety of peppers and spices. He showed us how to toast the spices and then the nuts very quickly in a hot pan. We charred the tomatoes by putting them right onto coals in the fire. “The kind of wood you use becomes part of the recipe,” Miguel said. Once that was done, we boiled everything in a pot with some broth and then blended it until smooth.
We used the moles and salsas to top the tamales and tacos we made. We also made pozole which turned out to be the class’ favorite. It’s a rich soup made from prepared corn and a variety of peppers, broth and spices. It took hours to make and eat the wonderful feast. But there was still a dessert made from mashed plantains and bread crumbs along with our choices of nuts, chocolate, coconut and cinnamon, rolled into balls and deep fried.
Quite full and happy, we poured toasts of mezcal and relaxed in the lovely garden. A few days later Miguel sent us the recipes. I’ll do my best to replicate them but without the colorful town of Oaxaca surrounding my kitchen they may not taste the same.
For more photos, please see www.peaksandpotholes.blogspot.com.
Quinta Brava (Credit: Carol Antman)