Mexican Fiesta!
Wednesday, January 10
Today we learned all about Mexican cuisine and ingredients, cooked numerous authentic dishes, and had a Mexican fiesta at the end of the class, complete with the room decorated in the Mexican theme, special plates and music, and a drink to our health in Mexican before our meal, made with a special fresh juices and tequilla (this was at the end of class of course). One of our teachers, Sue, is an expert in Mexican cuisine, used to be head chef at one of the oldest and most popular vegetarian restaurants in town called Angelica's Kitchen, and has been taking groups of people to Mexico for years to take cooking classes right from the local kitchens and women that make it (apparently men can't be seen to cook in the kitchens as it looks too feminine though they learn from an early age about cooking from their mothers and are good at it, which explains why there are so many excellent Mexican male cooks working in the kitchens in NYC and one of the reasons they are not working in Mexico), and also continues to takes classes herself from these women in different small communities to enhance her skills and recipes. When she comes back to NYC, she adapts the recipes for vegetarians and vegans, and to be more healthful if possible. She also takes groups to other countries such as southern Italy. Her company is called To Grandmother's House we Go Cooking Tours http://tograndmothershousewego.com/. To get us into the spirit of Mexican cuisine, she spent a lot of time showing us pictures of the local women making the cuisine and different local ingredients and how they are used, from the numerous chili peppers (good peppers should be flexible, not crumbly, and you need to remove the seeds, toast them quickly and reconstitute them before using), chocolates, cactus plants, tomatillos, avocado leaves (used like a bay leaf), to dried worms and crickets. There was a worm put into one of the tequilla drinks for good luck and fertility, however the person who got it couldn't stomach drinking the worm as well, or perhaps it was the fertile part he was worried about. In addition, she showed us how to use different equipment such as tortilla presses to shape tortillas (used mostly outside of Mexico) and a metate (lava rock three-legged mortar bowl used with a pestle to grind chiles and spices for sauces). During the cooking, our teacher put a typical frilly apron Mexican women in the kitchen on each of us, so it was fun seeing everyone with these serious white chef's outfits and hats and the frilly aprons on top, male and female. I don't think they would do this at Cordon Bleu do you? Mais, non!
So, we made an incredible amount of dishes that were beautiful, authentic and delicious. There were four small teams and our team made grilled seitan in a rich mole sauce called Mole Negro, a refreshing jicama lime chili salad, refried black beans, freshly made tortillas that were pressed and grilled, and we created one dish that was fried plantains and pineapples with a raspberry, chocolate chili sauce. The other dishes were:
- Tamales in corn husks or banana leaves and tied
- Mamelas
- Lentejas con pina y plantano (lentils with pineapple and plaintain)
- Salsa verde
- Salsa chipotle
- Roasted corn with chipotle mayonnaise (delicious)
- Beet and pineapple juice
- Grilled nopales (large cactus leaves)
- Chile relleno (peppers stuffed with chile poblano) and fried (yum)
- Cocolate chipotle truffles (very good)
- Poblano sauce
- Chiles en escabeche (chiles with carrot mixture)
It was quite the meal and celebration. How fun! We were stuffed and happy from the class, one of our best cooking classes to date. The chef said that they made it this way to make a special and fun meal for us near the end of our studies. I guess we couldn't be drinking tequilla drinks every day at the end of our classes, or drinks from other cultures, could we? That would be bar tending school and not chef's school and could be a recipe for disaster...
The other chef classes today were making bread and fish, which seemed like such a long time ago now. So, off to finish a Food and Healing take home exam and study for a nutrition exam tomorrow to balance all the fun. So Sue, today's chef, will be cooking for us for our graduation dinner on January 19 so there is more good food and times to come...
Today we learned all about Mexican cuisine and ingredients, cooked numerous authentic dishes, and had a Mexican fiesta at the end of the class, complete with the room decorated in the Mexican theme, special plates and music, and a drink to our health in Mexican before our meal, made with a special fresh juices and tequilla (this was at the end of class of course). One of our teachers, Sue, is an expert in Mexican cuisine, used to be head chef at one of the oldest and most popular vegetarian restaurants in town called Angelica's Kitchen, and has been taking groups of people to Mexico for years to take cooking classes right from the local kitchens and women that make it (apparently men can't be seen to cook in the kitchens as it looks too feminine though they learn from an early age about cooking from their mothers and are good at it, which explains why there are so many excellent Mexican male cooks working in the kitchens in NYC and one of the reasons they are not working in Mexico), and also continues to takes classes herself from these women in different small communities to enhance her skills and recipes. When she comes back to NYC, she adapts the recipes for vegetarians and vegans, and to be more healthful if possible. She also takes groups to other countries such as southern Italy. Her company is called To Grandmother's House we Go Cooking Tours http://tograndmothershousewego.com/. To get us into the spirit of Mexican cuisine, she spent a lot of time showing us pictures of the local women making the cuisine and different local ingredients and how they are used, from the numerous chili peppers (good peppers should be flexible, not crumbly, and you need to remove the seeds, toast them quickly and reconstitute them before using), chocolates, cactus plants, tomatillos, avocado leaves (used like a bay leaf), to dried worms and crickets. There was a worm put into one of the tequilla drinks for good luck and fertility, however the person who got it couldn't stomach drinking the worm as well, or perhaps it was the fertile part he was worried about. In addition, she showed us how to use different equipment such as tortilla presses to shape tortillas (used mostly outside of Mexico) and a metate (lava rock three-legged mortar bowl used with a pestle to grind chiles and spices for sauces). During the cooking, our teacher put a typical frilly apron Mexican women in the kitchen on each of us, so it was fun seeing everyone with these serious white chef's outfits and hats and the frilly aprons on top, male and female. I don't think they would do this at Cordon Bleu do you? Mais, non!
So, we made an incredible amount of dishes that were beautiful, authentic and delicious. There were four small teams and our team made grilled seitan in a rich mole sauce called Mole Negro, a refreshing jicama lime chili salad, refried black beans, freshly made tortillas that were pressed and grilled, and we created one dish that was fried plantains and pineapples with a raspberry, chocolate chili sauce. The other dishes were:
- Tamales in corn husks or banana leaves and tied
- Mamelas
- Lentejas con pina y plantano (lentils with pineapple and plaintain)
- Salsa verde
- Salsa chipotle
- Roasted corn with chipotle mayonnaise (delicious)
- Beet and pineapple juice
- Grilled nopales (large cactus leaves)
- Chile relleno (peppers stuffed with chile poblano) and fried (yum)
- Cocolate chipotle truffles (very good)
- Poblano sauce
- Chiles en escabeche (chiles with carrot mixture)
It was quite the meal and celebration. How fun! We were stuffed and happy from the class, one of our best cooking classes to date. The chef said that they made it this way to make a special and fun meal for us near the end of our studies. I guess we couldn't be drinking tequilla drinks every day at the end of our classes, or drinks from other cultures, could we? That would be bar tending school and not chef's school and could be a recipe for disaster...
The other chef classes today were making bread and fish, which seemed like such a long time ago now. So, off to finish a Food and Healing take home exam and study for a nutrition exam tomorrow to balance all the fun. So Sue, today's chef, will be cooking for us for our graduation dinner on January 19 so there is more good food and times to come...
posted by Caroline at 3:53 PM
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