A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

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Day 5 - Part 1 - Mexican Home Cooking School
2/15/06

Seven things I learned in cooking class:

1. I don't like to stand for 3 hours straight. Corollary: I'm pathetic.

2. Smashing garlic with the giant scary knife is cool. Though I'd seen this done on America's Test Kitchen on PBS, the greatest cooking show ever, I had never done it myself. Do they keep fresh garlic in the banana section of the grocery store? I'll have to check that out.

3. You can use pureed tomatillo juice as a leavening agent. Yet I still have no idea what a "leavening agent" is.

4. There is such a thing as a "pastry tube" which looks like it could be part of an ammunition tooling workshop. Instead of bullets, we produced Gaznates, delectable fried (of course) pastry rolls stuffed with pastry cream and sprinkled with powdered sugar. As with the bunuelos the day before, the Gaznates contained the three major Mexican food groups as described by Jon: sugar, grease and white flour.

5. You can cook those big poblano chiles over the open flame of your gas stove. Wow, who knew? this was learned on our first day, and it was an eye-opener. Dona Estela just flipped those babies back and forth until they were tender and black and ready for peeling. I have serious doubts about how this process will work on my electric stove. Or the microwave, for that matter, since that's the only other appliance other than the fridge and the coffeemaker that gets a regular workout in my kitchen.

6. A cannot be trusted with the Serranos. In our preparation of our Pipian Sauce (or Green Mole as it is called in Oaxaca), she was tasked with doing the usual blender "puree" cycle on the many ingredients. For safety's sake (the safety of one's throat) it is recommended that you toss a couple in, taste for "heat", then add more as needed. A, with the feeble excuse that she didn't hear the directions, tossed them all in at once, giving Mom no end of trepidation about lunch. Much as I hate to admit it, however, the sauce turned out perfectly. Don't tell A I said that.

7. And speaking of the blender, I never imagined it was such a useful contraption. I had always thought of the blender as "the Margarita machine" or perhaps "the frozen Daquiri machine" or possibly "the smoothie machine" in more healthful moments (confession: I've never made a smoothie). In fact, once I found out that Margaritas on the rocks were so much easier and just as tasty, I never took the blender out again. Never did I imagine that you could puree up a few chiles, a potato and some spices, throw it into some chicken stock and have yourself a delicious soup or sauce or whatever. Actual meals resulting from blender activity - I never would have imagined it was possible.


Obviously cooking class was very educational. The payoff was great, too -- on our second day of cooking we made Squash Blossom Soup, Pipian Verde con Bistec en Relleno (Stuffed beef rolls in green Pipian sauce), Pork in Chile Pasilla sauce, Red Rice (super easy), and the previously mentioned Gaznates Rellenos. Gotta love that Mexican deep-fried desert action. And it was a good thing we filled up at lunch, as I had a very strenuous afternoon schedule (part 2) planned for my victims . . . er, my family, I mean.

Other cooking photos:


posted by Katy at 9:06 AM