Food Systems: Cooking Away!

Our colorful comida in Teotitlan

Food Systems has had a busy week!  Throughout all of this taste testing and trying new foods, not all of our digestive systems have been able to keep up...but with electrolytes and some amor, we’ve all powered through!

On Monday, we had a relaxed day and learned how to do sensory evaluation (look, smell, feel, taste).  Professor Cynthia brought in a bunch of typical Mexican snacks, and we tried them all.  We learned that the Jell-O cups that are very common here are high in protein and are mostly pure gelatin.  We tasted some papaya with lime juice on it, and that was really good.  In general, Monday was a pretty relaxed day.

Tuesday, we went to Teotitlan del Valle, a town about 30 minutes east of the city.  The town is famous for making rugs, however we went there to have some private cooking lessons from some women in the Vida Nueva cooperative that we visited earlier this semester.  Each of us went with a different women to their respective houses and each of us made a part of the meal.  Mateo went with Isabela and they made the mole amarillo, which is a kind of sauce, but we put chickpeas in it, which apparently is not very common.  Kate and Petrona made the salsas, and Vanessa and her teacher made some delicious rice con chepiche, which is a Mexican herb.  We all came together, afterwards, combining each dish to make for a great lunch. 

 Wednesday, we went back La Villada, which is the hotel that all of us UVM students stayed at in our first couple nights for orientation.  There we made a delicious mole estofado, which is a sauce like mole amarillo, but a lot more complex.  There are raisins, almonds, cloves, allspice, thyme, lots of lard, bread, tomatoes and obviously amor.  It was a complex process of dry roasting some ingredients, blending others, then combining them to boil together for about 30 minutes.  It was served with some fried rice and chicken, and was very delicious!

The finished product: estofado!

The piles of maguey fibers leftover after the Mezcal process

The comal where we learned to make tortillas and lunch.

Thursday we set out to a palenque in Miahuatlan to learn more about Mezcal production. Mezcal, while being one of the oldest drinks in Mexico, has only gained an official certification in 2005. Andrea, a former UVM alumni, TA of the program, and now manager at Mezcaloteca, guided us through the complete process of mezcal from agave growth, to cooking, mashing, fermenting, and distilling. We saw over 10 different types of maguey (agave) plants. We also got to cook with one of the families at the palenque. We started out in the outdoor kitchen by the comal, learning how to make tortillas from masa. In order for you to get the nutrients from the corn you need to break down the cellulose layer, so the corn needs to be soaked in cal, or limestone before it can be ground up to make the masa. We learned the technique of flattening the masa and laying them on the comal (tortillas). It’s much harder than it looks! Tia was pleasantly surprised to find out that Mateo made the best tortillas out of all of us!

Friday we wrapped up the week at the faculty apartment, synthesizing our experience week long experience and tasting more weird oaxacan specialties, including a very mucilagenous fruit. Now we get to work on translating and putting together our recipes from the week. Stay tuned for our blog post!

Saludos,

Mateo y Kate