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.
“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 information please see Quita Brava