Tag Archives: cooking

2023, March 2023

Chefs Conquer – Cooks Nourish

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By Kary Vannice

March is traditionally “The Women’s Issue” here at The Eye. And this year, the staff decided to focus the majority of our articles on Mexican women in the culinary industry. However, one unarguable fact comes up in every “Top Mexican Chef” Google search – the majority of chefs listed are men. How can this be in a country where women so clearly dominate the household kitchen? Why don’t more women rise up to the ranks of Top Chef in Mexico or even on the global stage?

María Canabal, a food journalist and founder of Parabere Forum, dedicated to promoting the work of women in restaurant kitchens around the world, put the numbers in perspective. Canabel points out that “93% of the people who cook at home are women. 48% of the graduates of culinary schools are women. 39% of the cooks in restaurants are women, but only 18% of the women in the industry are head chefs.”

In 2018, Kantar Worldpanel Mexico, a consumer behavior research center, reported that men do the majority of the cooking in only 8% of Mexican households, and yet 15 of the “Top 20 Chefs of Mexico” are men. Consistently, ranking after ranking, 80% of the most recognized and acclaimed Mexican chefs are male.

As María Canabal puts it, “Talent has no gender. Either you have it, or you don’t.” So why the gender gap in handing out accolades? Surely, with nearly 50% of culinary school graduates being female, there has to be more than 20% of female chefs with talent equal to that of male chefs. If culinary distinction is based on talent alone, the numbers just don’t add up.

Are there differences between the dishes prepared by a man and those by a woman? Is it even about the food? Perhaps it’s more about the industry of culinary arts and its history?

Research shows it’s actually a bit of all of the above.

Decades ago, many culinary schools admitted disproportionately fewer women than men, some admitting only 10% female students. Many of today’s Top Chefs are older males, so it could be said that this is a contributing factor. However, not all of the top recognized chefs are classically trained. Another major factor in becoming an acclaimed chef is one must have a place to showcase their talent, in other words, a restaurant. However, when female chefs approach investors for a startup restaurant, they are often turned away, whereas male chefs often get the backing they seek based on the belief that men are better in business than women.

Not only does one need a well-backed restaurant, chefs who want to be recognized also need to be active in mainstream and online social media. Rising culinary stars must become comfortable in the limelight, spending time in front of a camera and giving interviews for print and television, all of which take time. Female chefs with families often have less time to dedicate to PR than single male chefs do. And the industry takes note of chefs the media is “buzzing” about. When asked about the role media plays in “making it” in the industry, one chef put it this way, “It’s hard to know which comes first – great food that attracts media attention, or great PR that attracts media attention pushing you to be a better chef.”

In today’s world, to be considered for high-profile awards or high-profile media coverage in the culinary world, you have to be a chef capable of presenting a certain kind of narrative. So, it could be said that both history and the industry have stacked the decks against female chefs, but what about the question of whether there are differences between the dishes that a man prepares and those of a woman?

From a purely culinary perspective, the answer is “no.” However, look deeper into the motivation, inspiration, and intent behind the dishes prepared and the answer may be “yes.” Men, it could be said, picked up the ladle for a very different reason than did women. They aspired not to nourish, but to create and conquer.

French chef Hèlène Darroze said of the difference between men and women chefs, “They want to teach their techniques, show something new, be the first. We cook to generate an experience, to care, and this is a very different approach.”

Traditionally, in the world of haute cuisine, more daring and avant garde cooking is more rewarded and awarded than traditional methods of cooking. “Women don’t usually do extreme cooking because they don’t seek to assert themselves through the act of cooking. For them food is nutrition long before stupor, supremacy, jealousy or envy,” Italian chef Licia Granello says of female chefs.

Could this be the ultimate differentiating factor? Men simply approach the job differently, with a different aim in mind and, thus, seek recognition more than women because they are driven by a different ambition?

French chef Olivier Roellinger certainly agrees. He is famously quoted as saying, “All kitchens in the world are feminine, they were created by grandmothers and mothers. But Spanish cuisine only began to be talked about when men began to cook.” Regardless of the reason, the fact remains that women are disproportionately under represented in the upper echelons of culinary culture. Whether it’s industry, history, or ego, women have a long way to go before they gain equality in the world’s top kitchens.

The online news outlet Chefs 4 Estaciones published a beautifully written article on this topic in Spanish noting that forty years ago, our books were the cookbooks of our grandmothers, mothers, great-aunts, and aunts. Without women in gastronomy, there would be no roots, no inheritance, no tradition in the kitchen. Definitely, much of what culinary cooks know today is thanks to women. They deserve our thanks and our tribute. And an equal place in the world of the professional restaurant.

March 2023

In Search of Diana Kennedy’s Huachinango Veracruzana

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

In 1979, seven years after British-born Diana Kennedy published The Cuisines of Mexico, I went to Veracruz, both the city and the state. I thought the food was extraordinary.

The culinary website Serious Eats describes “Jarocho” (the colloquial term for being native to Veracruz) cuisine as “one of Mexico’s simplest,” but “one of its richest.” It was on the shore of Veracruz where Hernán Cortés first set foot, and Spanish cooking – already Mediterranean and Moroccan in its heritage – was quickly adopted and adapted to Jarocho ingredients and techniques, followed by West African influences. (Cortés brought the first six African slaves to Mexico; eventually, over 200,000 Africans came through the port of Veracruz, to be sold in the town of Antigua, about 28 km [±17 miles] west of the port).

The food of coastal Veracruz thus offers all kinds of fish and seafood, cooked in all kinds of ways, served with all kinds of sauces – and Huachinango Veracruzana – Red Snapper a la Veracruz – was the queen of all the dishes I tasted there.

On returning to the States, I went out and bought the Sunset Mexican Cookbook. My copy was from 1977, and was subtitled Simplifed Techniques, 155 Classic Recipes. The American palate of the 1970s was not yet familiar with Mexican cooking, but the Sunset Mexican cookbook sold over a million copies, through 20 printings, with at least five updates between 1969 and 1983.

And one of its recipes, from Diana Kennedy but adapted to American ingredients, was “Snapper Veracruz (Huachinango a la Veracruzana).”

Loved that recipe. Loved especially the green olives, orange juice, golden raisins, cinnamon, and capers. After six moves to three states, I lost my Sunset Mexican cookbook – not that I don’t have others, but none has that exact recipe. That, according to Diana Kennedy, is because the recipe is anything but exact!

The Woman Who Wrote My Remembered Recipe

Culinary anthropologist, cookbook author, chef by default, Diana Southwood was born a hundred years ago (March 3, 1923), in the town of Loughton, England, about 20 miles north of London. The daughter of a kindergarten teacher and a salesman, she lived to be 99, dying at her home in Heroica Zitácuaro, Michoacán, on July 24, 2022. In her twenties, she was a “Lumber Jill” with the Women’s Timber Corps, replacing the men who had gone to fight in WW II, and a housing manager in Scotland, working with mining families. When she was 30, she emigrated to Canada and worked in a film library and sold Wedgewood fine china. She loved to travel, and loved to explore new cuisines; from Canada she started visiting the Caribbean.

On a 1956 trip to the Caribbean, she stopped over in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on her way home. Staying in the same hotel was American journalist Paul P. Kennedy, the New York Times chief correspondent for Latin America. Kennedy was covering civil unrest in Haiti, where the people were using strikes and demonstrations to force their dictatorial president, Paul Magloire, out of office. She was 33, he was 51 – apparently the attraction was instantaneous; Diana described it as un flechazo, an arrow “shot straight to the heart.” She followed Paul and his “half-promise of matrimony” to his home base, Mexico City; they were married within the year.

The ever-versatile Diana Kennedy took up Spanish and worked as a typist at the British consulate in Mexico City. The Kennedys were popular in the English-speaking community in Mexico City, entertaining and being entertained on a frequent basis; when they ate dinner at the homes of friends, Kennedy as usual was taken with foods they were served. When she asked her hostess (this was the 1950s, people) about a dish, they usually replied that the maid or the cook knew about it.

When she asked the maid or the cook, they replied they made it the way they did it back home in their village. Off Kennedy would go to find out just how they did it back home in the village. This was the process that became Diana Kennedy’s hallmark in researching Mexican cuisine in all its regional variations: ask about the recipe, go to where it came from, ask questions, and learn how to make it with authenticity. All her recipes identified who made them and where they made them.

Her trekking about the rural villages also led her to the cookbooks of Josefina Velásquez de Léon (1899-1968), who had visited church groups in the countryside to document regional cooking. (One might call Velásquez de Léon the first celebrity chef – she cooked on radio in the 1940s and television in the 1950s, published cookbooks, opened a cooking school, and set up her own cookbook publishing house; her papers are in several archive collections, but one of them is the Special Collections of the University of Texas at San Antonio, alongside those of Diana Kennedy.)

One of the Kennedys’ guests in Mexico City was Craig Claiborne, who had joined the New York Times in 1957 as its food editor and off-and-on restaurant critic. When Diana offered to buy him a Mexican cookbook, he is supposed to have said “Not until you have written one!”

Diana Kennedy in New York

But the cookbooks came later, and Craig Claiborne would have a hand in that. Paul Kennedy fell victim to cancer, aggressive prostate cancer. In 1966, the couple drove North to New York City for his treatment. In Nothing Fancy, one of Kennedy’s most personal cookbooks (1984) and a 2019 documentary of the same title by filmmaker Elizabeth Carroll, Kennedy tells a story of that last trip. Eating takeout in some motel somewhere in Texas, “Paul laid his knife and fork down soon after he had started his meal. ‘I don’t know whether to thank you or not,’ he bellowed. ‘Most of my life I could eat anything anywhere, but now look what you have done to me. This damned rubbish!’ and pushed his plate back in disgust.”

Paul Kennedy died on February 2, 1967. Diana was left alone in their apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan. Although all the apartment offered was a galley kitchen, Claiborne had featured Diana’s work on regional Mexican cuisine in the New York Times, and suggested that she could teach authentic Mexican cooking classes. Word got out that Diana’s classes were great, and when Frances McCullough, a poetry editor at Harper & Row, took a class, she told Kennedy that a cookbook was in order. Not that Diana Kennedy knew how to write, but McCullough shepherded her through the process and Kennedy’s first cookbook, The Cuisines of Mexico, came to life in 1972.

It was a struggle to get it published as a quality cookbook, however – Harper & Row thought it would never sell, said they had no money to print it with pictures, and sent a cover design that featured a sombrero sitting on a cactus. Kennedy was furious but McCullough said, “OK, Diana, let’s invite them to lunch. We’ll give them a great meal and lots of margaritas.” It worked. After the publishing executive finished, they started looking at Diana’s slides of the dishes they’d been served, and started saying, “Well, we have to have THAT one … and THAT one,” and so on. “I ended up with a great designer,” Diana recalled.

McCullough would edit the next five cookbooks Kennedy wrote, and remained a friend for life.

Diana Kennedy Moves to Michoacán

Diana went back to Mexico repeatedly to gather the recipes in Cuisines of Mexico, but continued working professionally in the various cooking schools popping up in the U.S., returning to Mexico to hunt up more authentic recipes and culinary techniques in the summer. It took until 1976 to leave New York permanently. According to Kennedy, she told herself, “My God, I’ve got to get out. What am I doing with all these smells, the doggie odors, the exhaust from the restaurants in my face? It’s all so artificial.”

The contrast of authentic and artificial would epitomize the rest of Diana Kennedy’s life. When she went back to Mexico in 1976, she stayed; in 1980, she bought three hectares (just under 7½ acres) about 130 km (about 80 miles) west of Mexico City in Michoacán. There she designed and built Quinta (country house) Diana, her Mexican home and culinary research center. Quinta Diana was supposed to be just a little food museum for Diana’s collection of cooking tools, but the idea that museums were of “dead things” was anathema to Kennedy. She hired an architect and ecological engineer and started a house that incorporated large boulders on the site, rambling up and down a steep hillside, amply graced with perforated walls to encourage fresh breezes through the house. Down the slope is her eco-garden full of local Mexican herbs and vegetables and home to a motley collection of livestock and bees. Quinta Diana is mostly off the grid; Kennedy eventually used it to establish the Diana Kennedy Center, a place for research, teaching, and sustainable living – with sustainable native foods at its heart.

For fifty years or so, Kennedy led a busy professional life from Quinta Diana. She wrote more cookbooks; before leaving New York, she produced her second, The Tortilla Book, in 1975. The rest included Recipes from the Regional Cooks of Mexico (1978), Nothing Fancy: Recipes and Recollections of Soul-Satisfying Food (1984), The Art of Mexican Cooking (1989), My Mexico (1998), From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients (2003), and Oaxaca al Gusto: An Infinite Gastronomy (2010).

She taught cooking classes and participated in events devoted to international cuisine. She won awards – from the James Beard Foundation, from Mexico (Order of the Aztec Eagle), from Britain (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire).

The Perils of Authenticity

Always a stickler for doing things in just the right way, all the time, Diana Kennedy has had her detractors. There are those who think that cuisine changes and adapts over time, that it was not a “fly preserved in amber.” Kennedy has even castigated the Mexican cooks who took her recipes and evolved them.

There were those who feel her insistence on using lard and lots of crema is unhealthy, and her notion that you should read all the explanations and notes before attempting a recipe – a recipe that might take five days to make all the salsas and bases – is antiquated. Kennedy, on the other hand, says “It’s difficult to educate a whole public … Americans were raised to expect that horrible combination plate – the quick cheap fix.”

Tejal Rao, a New York Times restaurant critic and food writer, believes that Diana Kennedy “changed the way millions of people perceived Mexican Food.” On the other hand, when Kennedy taught Martha Stewart to make Oaxacan tamales de frijol on television, “Wasn’t something lost?” Kennedy would say no, but Tejal Rao pointed out that perhaps a Zapotec cook should have been serving as the expert on her own tamales. Rao also faulted Kennedy for never backing down “from her ludicrous position of dismissing Tex-Mex, California Mexican food and all of the rich, regional cuisines that grew from the Mexican diaspora.”

Nonetheless, after spending more than half her lifetime in grass-roots scholarship across the kitchens of rural Mexico, bouncing around in a beat-up pickup truck with a revolver in the glove compartment, Diana Kennedy made an immeasurable contribution to our understanding of and appreciation for Mexican gastronomy. With her attention to regional differences in Mexican dishes, she laid much of the foundation for the United Nations’ designation of Mexican cuisine as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Will I still look for the “right” recipe for Huachinango Veracruzana? Even though Diana Kennedy told me that it’s more likely made with orange juice and raisins in the mountains of Veracruz, maybe in Jalapa? Of course I will.

2021, August 2021

Editor’s Letter

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By Jane Bauer

“From my earliest memory, times of crisis seemed to end up with women in the kitchen preparing food for men.”
Barbara Kingsolver

To say that I regard food as important is an understatement. For me food is a religion and I try to make choices that reflect my values the same way we do when picking our sins.

Although throughout the past year, the world has been struggling with random closures and socially-distanced dining, I have had some very memorable food moments. Here are my top 5 in chronological order.

  1. Blue Corn Tortilla with Quesillo in San Jose del Pacifico, after spending the morning participating in a mushroom ceremony led by a Shaman. Even without the drugs I’m pretty sure the tortilla made with heirloom corn, warm off the comal, would have been one of the year’s food highlights.
  2. Sea Bream in Athens. First off, it was wondrous to be in Athens sitting in a restaurant on a pedestrian street in what is known as the ‘anarchist’ neighbourhood. The fish was served with garlic potatoes, tzatziki and a glass of crisp white wine. Plus, I was sharing the meal with my Huatulco neighbor half-way around the world.
  3. Raclette with Chorizo and Pineapple. Eating raclette with Mexicans in Switzerland is a different affair than how my German father prepared it. I was skeptical at first but was soon won over by the tanginess of the pineapple with the chorizo and cheese.
  4. Rabbit Biryani. I made this dish using a mixture of different recipes- which is something I often do. I added slivered almonds, dried apricots and dates. The fragrant scents of cinnamon, ginger and turmeric that filled my kitchen were a delight.
  5. Chacales in Copalita. The taste of home. Similar to crawfish, fried in garlic butter and served with crispy tostadas, black beans and a tangy mayonnaise onion dip. Absolutely finger licking!

We hope you enjoy our Food Issue.
Thanks for reading,

Jane

2021, August 2021

Lemons and Limes

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By Brooke Gazer

North of the border, we assign a specific name to each of these tangy citrus fruits, but in Mexico they are all called limones (lee-MOH-ness), regardless of size, shape, or color.

There are several varieties of lemons, but in north America, the Eureka lemon is the most common. This bright yellow citrus fruit was propagated in California in the mid-nineteenth century. It is slightly oblong, with a pointed tip on one end. Lemons have a sour flavor, but are considered sweeter and less acidic than the citrus fruit we call limes. The “lemon” type of limón is occasionally sold in Mexico, but is more expensive than limes.

There are two common varieties of limes. Persian limes (Citrus latifolia) are shaped like lemons, with a slightly smaller nub on the end. The small round ones are key limes (Citrus aurantifolia). These are usually bright green, because it is easier to ship and store the hard unripe fruit. But when this tiny lime ripens, the skin turns yellow. It also becomes softer, juicer, sweeter, and less acidic. Mexicans tend to prefer them green, but if you have access to a tree, leave some to turn yellow – the ripe ones make the best lemonade.

In the sixteenth century, the Spaniards introduced this little citrus fruit from Malaysia into the USA and Mexico. It was a commercial crop in the Florida Keys, until a hurricane in the 1920’s decimated the trees. After that, growers substituted the larger, hardier, Persian variety. Key limes still grow in Florida, but most small round limes in your grocery store originated from Mexico.

Mexico exports over $500 million dollars’ worth of limes annually. In the 1990s, NAFTA played a huge role in this economic windfall, as 90% of limes imported into the USA are from Mexico. These little green juice balls are beginning to be labeled “Mexican Limes”, and, were it not for the famous pie, the designation “key lime” might disappear altogether.

Regardless of its huge export potential, Mexico maintains a good portion of their limes for domestic use. This country devours 1.9 million tons per year and is rated as the world’s third largest consumer of limes. This citrus fruit, which is as indispensable as chilies in Mexican kitchens, plays an integral role in Mexican cuisine. Locals use both kind of limes but show a slight preference for the smaller round variety in savory dishes. These are slightly more acidic, which would be essential in a dish like ceviche.

Persian limes are seedless and, as they are larger, you can use a regular citrus juicer to make lime juice. The tiny ones require a hand-held apparatus resembling a garlic press. Key limes have a thin leathery rind, but Persian lime peel is closer in texture to a lemon. This makes it easier to grate and due to its size, it yields more zest. This is an important feature for baking because the zest packs a lot of flavor. For either lemon or lime, half a teaspoon of zest is equal to about a tablespoon of juice.

This may seem like sacrilege, but for the reasons mentioned above, I use Persian Limes to make Key Lime Pie. I’m including my recipe in this issue, adapted for the Huatulco grocery scene, along with a couple of simple alternatives.

Brooke Gazer operates Agua Azul la villa, an ocean-view B&B in Huatulco: http://www.bbaguaazul.com.

October 2020

Octopus: Intelligent and Agile, But Also Tasty and Nutritional

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By Alvin Starkman, M.A., J.D.

Octopus (pulpo) is a boon for the economy of Mexico. The country is the third largest producer worldwide, with most of the boneless invertebrate mollusk shipped to Spain, Japan and Italy. While there are about 300 species of octopus, most of the Mexican fisheries harvest only two types; Maya (red) and Vulgaris (patón). Almost all (±95%) the nation’s octopi (plural is also octopuses and octopodes) comes from three states – Baja California, Campeche and Yucatán, the latter boasting over 65% of the nation’s production. It’s no wonder that pulpo is such a popular menu item throughout the country.

Inhabiting every ocean, the octopus is really quite a fascinating sea creature, so much so that I occasionally question whether or not I should allow it to continue to be my go-to restaurant dish in high-end eateries. But my taste buds typically trump all.

Octopi are the most intelligent of all invertebrates. Some scientists believe they actually have individual personalities. We know for certain that they are predominantly solitary animals, with uncanny problem solving and survival mechanisms that would make Darwin proud, yet their lifespan is no more than five years, and at times as short as six months.

Octopuses have been known to play with toys, unscrew lids, solve puzzles, interact with human caretakers, display different temperaments including opinions about people, build dens out of rocks for inhabiting, and even place a rock on the entranceway once safely at home to preclude entry by predators (e.g., depending on the particular oceanic region, they include seals, eels, halibut, other fish and even larger octopodes).

While octopi are deaf, their other senses are finely honed. Its head (mantle) contains all vital organs including three hearts, one of which pumps the blue blood through the entire body, and the other two through the gills. The suckers on its arms move independently of one another, enabling the mollusk to grip, taste, smell and manipulate. Each arm is therefore akin to an army of brains. The octopus jet-propels itself seemingly backwards head-first through the water, at a speed of up to 25 MPH. This allows it to easily both avoid predators and catch its meal (crabs, shrimp, young small octopi and other mollusks).

While the octopus is an invertebrate, it possesses a hard beak capable of breaking through the shells of its prey. The octopus’ soft body enables it to contort itself so much so that it can hide in between seemingly inaccessible areas of rock crevices, serving it well as both as hunter, ready to pounce, and hunted, out of sight sound and smell.

Octopuses are venomous, though almost none of the species are so much so that they can be fatal to human beings. However, the venom does serve an important purpose. The venom is contained in its ink; when the octopus is avoiding predators or seeking prey, its release of the dark liquid provides a smoke screen and temporarily freezes the predator/prey.

While everything about the octopus is impressive, its ability to camouflage is perhaps its most incredible feature. On the turn of a dime, the mollusk uses its sharp eyes to match the patterns, colors and textures of its surroundings. Given that it is colorblind, this ability is even more mystifying.

For the seafood aficionado, pulpo contains a large amount of protein, is a rich source of vitamins B3 and B12, and is packed with with potassium, iodine, selenium, calcium, sodium and phosphorus.

We tend to relish the opportunity to steam lobster and spice up our lives frying up a plethora of shrimp recipes, but typically omit pulpo from our repertoires that impress house guests. Despite the attributes of octopi noted above, perhaps it’s time to try your hand at a recipe. While pulpo is usually rather expensive in restaurants, it’s much less so if prepared on a grill at home.

RECIPE FOR GRILLED OCTOPUS

For those residing close to the coast, of course it’s advisable to buy your octopus fresh from the fisherman. Do try to get him to clean it because it’s messy and time consuming doing it yourself. Mexican seafood retailers tend to sell them cleaned, frozen and ready to cook. This recipe assumes you are using a cleaned, frozen octopus.

1. Defrost, slowly in the fridge if possible.
2. In a large pot of boiling water, while holding onto the head dunk the body (arms) into the water three times before then fully submerging it and leaving to boil about 40 minutes (theoretically, that makes the tentacles curl up restaurant-style). You can add herbs, spices and/or salt to the water, but it’s not necessary because (a) it’s salty by nature, and (b) seasoning will subsequently be added.
3. Allow to cool for up to a couple of hours.
4. Cut off the arms where they meet the body.
5. Separately cut off the upper portion to close to where it meets the head, and cut into pieces an inch or two in size.
6. Marinate for an hour or so in olive oil, fresh minced garlic, salt, pepper and fresh chopped parsley.
7. Clean and oil the grill (use olive oil), and pre-heat to a high temperature.
8. Turn down the grill to 50% heat and immediately place each piece on it, in the case of the arms for 3 – 4 minutes each side, longer for the upper body portions.
9. Place the nicely grilled pieces on serving dishes, sprinkled with salt, pepper and chopped parsley, then lightly drizzled with olive oil.

Try it this way the first time, then for subsequent preparation experiment with different herbs and spices to taste.

Alvin Starkman operates Mezcal Educational Excursions of Oaxaca
(www.mezcaleducationaltours.com).

2020, August 2020

A Brief History of Cooking

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By Randy Jackson

Today, perhaps more than any other time in human history, food has been elevated on a cultural pedestal of reverence. The depth of knowledge and appreciation for a wide variety of cuisines among so many people seems to be a cultural characteristic of our times. Celebrity chefs, food shows and food networks, never mind food pictures posted on Instagram, are only a few of the many indicators of this interest. The term “foodie” was first coined in the 1980s and is now in common use. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a foodie as “a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food and who eats food not only out of hunger but due to their interest or hobby.” Travel, immigration, and the abundance of food and ingredients from all over the world have all had a hand in this current cultural obsession with food and cooking. However, today’s modern hipsters of cuisine are only the most recent green sprig of growth in the long history of cooking.

Our evolutionary record shows the harnessing of fire coincided with the growth of the human brain relative to body size. This development took place roughly 1.9 million years ago. Harnessing fire had multiple benefits to humans, but chief among them was that it allowed the cooking of food. Cooking food increases the caloric value and reduces the energy required to digest it. Cooking food also enabled early humans to eat certain tubers and roots that were otherwise inedible.

I think it safe to assume that grilling was the first cooking method. Studies of primitive tribes, even today, show how an animal is cooked (it’s estimated that there are more than a hundred “uncontacted peoples” worldwide, half of them in the Amazonian jungle). The entire carcass is thrown onto the open fire. The fire, along with some scraping, removes the fur. Then as bits of the animal are deemed cooked, they are cut or torn from the carcass and consumed. It’s easy to see the direct lineage of this form of cooking to the tossing of a piece of meat onto the barbeque today.

The earliest dishes beyond grilling were probably soups and stews. There is some evidence from Japan dating back 10,000 years of a type of stew made by putting flesh and water into an animal’s paunch and boiling it over a fire. No doubt soups and stews were being made much earlier than this. Once mankind had figured out how to cook in a container of some sort, it only made sense they began boiling up bits of almost anything they could find.

There is an ancient tradition in Oaxaca – still practiced – of making “stone soup.” National Geographic has a documentary showing this
(https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/intelligent-travel/2010/10/04/mexicos_stone_soup/). The cooking method consists of putting water, vegetables, and fish into a smooth rounded depression in the rocky ground. Then a stone is heated on a fire before dropping it into this natural cauldron, and the soup is cooked. It’s easy to imagine how different flavors were discovered by experimentation or by chance when something new was added to the soup or stew.

Let’s not forget about bread. Archaeologists in Jordan have found the remains of flatbread made with wild barley and plant roots – about 14,000 years old, it predates agricultural practices by thousands of years. Societies all over the world have independently found ways to make bread. Mash up grains, add water to make a paste, fry on a hot rock – and presto! For example, the original inhabitants of what is now California developed a complex procedure to make flour for flatbread out of acorns. Source material for bread was everywhere once man learned to harness fire.

Harnessing fire and cooking required greater social organization and division of duties – there had to be fire tenders, wood gatherers, hunters, etc. A central fire also brought people together for longer periods, especially at night, which increased social complexity and likely helped in the evolution of language.

2020, August 2020

The Cheeses of Mexico

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By Marcia Chaiken and Jan Chaiken

The United States in the mid-20th century was not a place where children developed a palate for cheese. Our families’ forays into cheese-tasting extended not much further than Philadelphia cream cheese, which was liberally smeared on bagels, and some soft substance called American cheese that was grilled between two slices of white bread. When well-travelled cousins introduced us to exotic cheeses imported from France, or even just purchased in Wisconsin, we quickly created the name “stinky cheese” for them.

Although in the following decades small US dairies began experimenting with and producing some wonderful cheeses, by savoring them, or visiting France and Italy, we still weren’t fully prepared for the varieties and differences of the cheeses we learned to love while living in Mexico. Even the mass-produced cheeses that one finds in the supermercados are wonderful for snacking or cooking. Our weekly supermarket shopping in Mexico is never complete until we toss into our basket a block of manchego, a ball of Oaxaca cheese, and a round package of panela. And, in the enormous Chedraui near our favorite condo in the Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City, the huge cheese department tempts us with varieties from virtually every state in Mexico and beyond.

But in our opinion the very best cheeses are found in small specialty stores or from sellers in outdoor markets. One such store was in La Crucecita in Huatulco, Oaxaca, and offered a wide selection of cheeses: La Cremería Costa del Pacifico. Unfortunately, the shop recently closed due, in part, to the economic effects of the pandemic. Last March, the owner, Rebeca Barboza, was gracious enough to discuss their cheeses with us.

Most of the cheeses available at such specialty cheese stores are made from cow’s milk, but each type has a distinctive taste and properties. Fresh, crumbly Ranchero, made in the State of Mexico, is a great addition to salads. Panela, also fresh from the State of Mexico, is the delight of nutritionists since it contains no fat or salt. We sometimes grill panela, and since it has no fat, it softens into a spreadable consistency but doesn’t melt.

Quesillo, the pride of Oaxaca, is also a fresh cheese made without salt. But because of its fat content quesillo can melt. If we don’t immediately snarf it down, we use it in omelets or other dishes calling for a taste of melted cheese. An alternative to quesillo for cooking is Mexican mozzarella made using the same process as mozzarella in Italy – but the Italian process uses buffalo milk while mozzarella in Mexico is made from cow’s milk. While mozzarella is traditional on pizza, quesillo is everyone’s favorite on the Oaxacan alternative to pizza, the delicious tlayuda.

The manchego that was available in La Cremería Costa del Pacifico came from Guadalajara after being aged two or three months. Originally made in Spain from sheep milk, it is perhaps the most versatile of cheeses. Whether from specialty stores or supermarkets, we grate manchego for a variety of dishes, melt it for others including queso fundido which sometimes is served with tortillas or vegetables for dipping, or sometimes we simply cut up the manchego into cubes for a snack. The best cheddar (yes Mexican not Wisconsin cheddar) is aged 12 months and comes from the mountains of Jalisco where, according to Senora Barboza, “milk is cheaper than water.”

Both specialty stores and supermarkets also carry goat cheeses. One of the best is the crumbly feta that is made in Guanajuato. And our favorite queso de cabra is spreadable and is sold in many stores in small logs, often covered with black ash which gives the cheese a delicious smoky flavor.

For the very freshest of cheeses we head to the organic market which is held outdoors on selected Saturdays in Santa Cruz Huatulco. According to the cheese seller, Isabel Ramos, all their cheeses are made from cow’s milk the day before the market on a ranch located twenty minutes north of Puerto Escondido. The organic designation requires that no chemicals be used in the cheese preparation, just milk from free-range cows.

We can heartfully recommend all their cheeses. The queso de prensa is firm enough to slice. Chiles and epazote are integral to the queso botanero and different batches range from mildly tasty to moderately picante. The queso ranchero and quesillo are on a par with the same types of cheeses found in specialty cheese shops – but we like buying local and knowing that the cows producing the milk were free to wander around pastures. The requesón is sold under the name of ricotta since foreign frequenters of the organic market are more familiar with that term. But whether one calls the cheese ricotta or requesón, it is great heaped on toasted bagels with tomato slices – much better than cream cheese.

While at the organic market, it is worthwhile searching for the vendor who sells Gouda cheese from Quesería La Pradera in Tilzapotla, Morelos. The cheese maker is originally from Holland. More information about the production of this Gouda can be found at
https://www.facebook.com/queseria.la.pradera/.

During these weeks of sheltering in place to avoid COVID19, we miss our friends and our wonderful view of the ocean in Huatulco. We also miss the cheeses. We will miss La Cremería and hope that the owners and staff of the other little shops and market tables that sell our favorites are safely weathering the earthquakes and the virus. Provecho!