It’s the smell of hand-made tortillas filling the street, the intoxicating smell of jalapeños roasting on the comal, and the seductive smoke and spice mystically coming from a homemade grill while the family gathers and gossips with micholidas in hand.  Food cooked well….well, it’s an expertise like no other.  Where better to experience it than Mexico?  There, one finds an amazing wealth of knowledge passed down from generation to generation.  Everyone has their job in the kitchen and I eagerly volunteer to learn and experience what living in Mexico is all about.  

It is Saturday morning and I have been awakened by the obnoxious rooster outside my window.  Secretly, I hope that he is part of tonight’s dinner menu!   In the kitchen, there is no sign of real coffee. No Starbucks breakfast blend, no Italian dark roast, just Nescafé and the clink-clink sound of spoons stirring instant brew in individual coffee mugs.

Weary eyed, I can easily see that everyone is preparing something to sell.  It’s a shared effort by some of the hardest working and most loving people I know, my husband’s family. Coming into this traditional Mexican household, I’m viewed as an American woman not expected to work hard; not expected to know my way around the kitchen. 

To their surprise, I volunteered to prepare the chickens for the rotisserie.  I inquired about every ingredient.  I tasted everything and better yet I learned what cooking well is all about. It’s the grandma who stands on her feet all day dictating where, what and how everything needs to be prepared. It’s the aunts and uncles who are hard working, honest individuals who open up their homes to sell chickens, tamales, tacos, carne asada and antojitos to support their families.  It’s the teenager who starts preparing menudo while studying for her final exams, and the eight year old girl who prepares salsa far superior to any I’ve ever tasted in the best restaurants back home.  I’ve learned that cooking well has nothing to do with purchasing organic food or using ingredients from specialty markets; but rather it’s a family that works together, laughs together, and eats together in utter enjoyment after a hard days work.  It’s cooking well because taste matters, because it’s survival and earning a living, because tradition is not taken for granted, and because there is competition on every corner.  It’s because cooking well it is a way of life. This learned talented is passed down from generation to generation of hard workers making a living and caring for their families. 

I’m a changed woman who holds these friends, family, and some complete strangers in my heart forever. It’s the family in Guadalajara, the toothless man that cooks birra, and the old lady who taught me the secrets of homemade tortillas. They have opened my eyes to the culinary world and given me knowledge I would never have learned from an elite cooking school.  I am the Whitexican who cooks well through the knowledge gained from others.

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