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Mexican Lifestyles Food & Dining Culinary Delights Of Yesteryear | Culinary Delights Of Yesteryear |
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| Written by JOHN PINT | |
| Saturday, 15 September 2007 | |
 'Maru Toledo teaches courses in prehispanic cooking at a school near the pyramids of Teuchitlan. She released her 11th cookbook last week. ' - Photo By J. Pint The compact disk also contains interviews with old-timers, as does the book. A most interesting interview is hidden away between the recipe for Panile de Semilla (Pumpkin Seed Powder) and Agua de Durazno (Peach Juice Drink) and doesn't even appear on the contents page. In this interview, 80-year-old Don Isidro talks about meeting Emiliano Zapata and describes the nearly impossible life of the campesinos before the Revolution. As a 17-year-old, he was required to rise at two or three in the morning and walk 12 kilometers to bring in and feed the oxen with which he had to plow the fields at first light. "And if one of us didn't appear at sunrise, he got no food for all the rest of the week ... and what was he going to eat? What was he going to eat? We hated the hacendados (hacienda owners) with a great hate ... and then one day the government (under Zapata) arrived and opened the stores, which were brimming with corn. 'Come on, ladies, take what you need,' shouted the Federales ... and they forced the hacendados to give us ejidos, plows, yokes, carts, everything we needed, and after that, life was beautiful because now all the people could work for themselves." Of course, this unusual cookbook also has plenty of recipes, each of which, as you might expect, is accompanied by charming memoirs of bygone days. For example, to make oatmeal cookies you need: 260 grams of butter 175 grams of sugar 3 eggs 250 grams of flour 1 teaspoon of baking powder 200 grams of oatmeal In the course of explaining what to do with these ingredients, we meet Maru's Aunt Rosaura, whose lovely cat must have learned all the cooking secrets of the house while spying on the kitchen from up in the attic. We also learn all about her aunt's bedroom where a long-dead pretender, still in love with her, would come to sit on her bed at night to caress her tenderly. Next to the bed was a "ridiculous white bathtub with twisted legs," and above it, a curious shower. Pulling on one of two chains would bring down a spray of hot or cold water which Maru "always dreamed of using" but never got a chance to try. And the cookies? "The first thing we did was to beat the butter with the sugar until it became creamy. Then we added the eggs one by one, always continuing to beat the mixture. After that, we added the flour strained with the baking powder. Finally, we added the oatmeal. We put blobs of dough on the greased trays and pushed them into the oven." Besides recipes and folklore, La Comida en Casas de Techos Altos also contains the first chapter of a novel which, as you might suspect, has much to do with an old hacienda, a book of recipes, and Aunt Eugenia, after whom, it appears, a commercial brand of butter (recommended by Maru) was named. It should also be mentioned that this cookbook comes with an enormous collection of photos and drawings showing colonial kitchens, cooking implements and techniques (like the "nixtamalization" process) and even a picture of Aunt Rosaura's cat. At the book launching, several original melodies were played on the panpipes by Maru's colleague, Godofredo Oseguera, co-director of the research center. If you are interested in taking a cooking class taught by Maru and Godofredo themselves, you may want to contact their school in Teuchitlan, the Jardin Mestizo, which has been specializing in prehispanic gastronomy for over nine years. Just call Maru at 044-333-839-9941 (cellphone) or send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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