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Cuernavaca cooking school

cantdog

cantdog

Waybac machine
Joined
Apr 24, 2004
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http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/IMG_0119.jpg

This was how things were in Maine, the day we left. My wife and I had signed up for a cooking school, a week-long affair, in Cuernavaca. We cook. I was dubious, though.

Going to México had never been on my list of things to do. I knew no Mexicans whom I could ask advice of; in fact, I guess I knew no Mexicans at all. There's a cool guy from Colombia, and a close friend out of Costa Rica, but this is central Maine. Hardly anyone wishes to live here as it is. Thoreau had his reasons, but you notice he went to stay in civilized places, where his respectable neighbors kept oxen. Mexicans seem to have more sense than to come up here much, maybe. So I went looking through books, kept an ear out, that kind of thing, to learn what I could in advance.

I formed the impression that I wanted to avoid México City. Coming as a tourist, it seemed to me, the relationship one has with the people of a city is an exploitative one. There's nothing personal about it; it's business. Now that's what the wise guys say when they are gonna break your face: nothing personal, just business. My previous stints in the third world were not business and not exploitative, really. I felt miscast as a tourist.

And besides, a person can become truly lost in la Ciudad de México. They not only don't know how many people live in it, nor where they are; they don't even have all the wheres catalogued. There's a team of guys who go around trying to map all the streets, and they can't keep up. There's no complete map of the place. They estimate possibly twenty-five millions in the city. A person can vanish completely among such a throng until someone reports his corpse because of its inconvenience to the neighborhood.

We were not going to México City, but the 'plane came in at its airport.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/chefanagarcia.jpg
This is Ana García, the chef who runs Reposado and gives the classes.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/ourroom-viewofcathedralBradyhouse.jpg
Looking out of our room's window.
 
One exits the terminal and boards the Pullman bus, which then takes interstate Route 95 into Morelos state and the pleasant city of Cuernavaca. The airport lies east-northeast of México City, and Cuernavaca south of it, so that we passed through a lengthy section across the city, but, as on a lot of highways, what one mostly sees on 95 is highway. I can't report the flavor of México City very well, in consequence. Some parts were like Syracuse, some like Providence, some like La Romana or Santo Domingo. Drivers do not allow a lot of space to exist around one's vehicle, but are comfortable to be close. The signs are green with white letters, much like those on Interstate 95 in the northeast of my own country.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/mexicodoorway.jpg

México is the kind of place where a person should have a camera.
 
How refreshing! I love Mexico. Based only on your first two posts, not to mention the photos, I'd buy an armchair travel type book from you. Please keep posting. And talk lots about the food. :)

Gracias, Gru
 
Chef Ana García runs a restaurant and cocktail called Reposado in the building. There are rooms also, so that it is an inn. She says the house dates to the 16th century, and it could easily be so.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/cathedral-04.jpg

Certainly the neighborhood is sixteenth century. The Cuernavaca Cathedral, set on a hill overlooking the city, was an important and historic Franciscan monastery. The church is noted for its arcaded 16th century "open" chapel. It was explained to us that the enclosed nave was traditional for the Spanish, but the open one answered to the native ideas of the sacred, outside. The building's walls formed the end of our block, across the street. We could see its tower from our room.

Franciscans from México, largely, evangelized the Philippines and Asia. The most famous of these Philip of Jesus, the first Mexican martyr and saint. Crucified with 26 other religious by the Japanese Emperor Hideyoshi in 1596, San Felipe is memorialized in Cuernavaca Cathedral by a spectacular cycle of nave murals, only uncovered during renovation of the cathedral some years ago.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/cathedral-05.jpg

Elegantly drawn and richly colored in a Japanese-inspired style, possibly by an artist from the orient, these gigantic early 17th century frescoes recount in detail the story of S. Felipe's capture and execution. You see them still emerging from the blank stucco, since the restoration is still going on.

If you go to the cathedral end of our block and turn right, the Palacio de Cortés stands two blocks down. Cortés had his palace here, rather than in México. Altogether a pretty good neighborhood. Just beyond the cathedral is the place the Emperor Maximilian had when he lived here.

Our room was more modest. It was still an outstanding room.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/ourroom-fireplaceside.jpg
 
They call Cuernavaca the city of eternal spring. It had been selected by Cortés as his own encomiendo. The temperature fell from the low seventies to maybe sixty, Fahrenheit (from twenty-two to sixteen for the rest of the world). Everyone told us it keeps to that range all year 'round.

In the rainy season, it rains only at night, even though it does rain hard: from eight to eight, say. In the morning the air is fresh and there is sun. We were there in the dry season, during which, in an ordinary way, it doesn't rain at all.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/balcon.jpg
Anomalously, though, it had actually rained a little in the evening, and the breeze was damp and cool. The woman I met in the courtyard of the restaurant remarked ¡Es frío!, but we didn't find it so. The little lights in the courtyard reflected off the flags of the patio a bit better, maybe. But in the morning, the clear air revealed another bonus, from the balcony space outside our room.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/popobirdfoto.jpg

One could look out across the roofscape to Popocatepetl, the Smoking Mountain.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/poposunsetcloseupfoto.jpg
 
Wow, those pictures are phenomenal. Shown me a whole new side to Mexico that I never knew existed. I love the last one, it's so atmospheric. Good job!
 
Monday, we hit the marketplace. That's a rather amazing place; I was glad of my camera. The Municipal Market is housed in a large, barrel-roofed building across the barranca from the downtown, with additional shop kiosks extending up the hillside behind and to the sides. The central building holds an enormous variety of fresh produce, meats and fish, herbs and dry goods.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/marketoutside4.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/marketoutside5.jpg

The kiosks and storefronts that surround it concentrate more on clothing, shoes, plastics and pottery, flowers, kitcheware and miscellanous household goods.

The flower market section was awe-inspiring. Cool, intermittently shady, and fragrant. The vegetables or fruits arrayed in bunches and piles, the herbs, all were beautifully arranged and brilliant in color, as they were constantly being cleaned and dressed anew. Besides the booth-style establishments, vendors moved along the aisles with more goods, calling them: ¡Nopales! they sang, or ¡Pepitas!
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/marketunderroof0.jpg

Nopales are the paddles of prickly pear cacti, and Ana bought some, as well as pepitas, the seeds of squashes. We were to cook with both of them. We also obtained tortilla presses, cast of what I took to be potmetal of some sort, and a mortar-and-pestle of prehistoric design, made of pumice rock, which she called the molcajete.

Molcajetes are round bowls on three stout legs, each with a pestle the size of a small juice bottle. Both bowl and pestle are pieces of carven pumice. During the first part of our first class, we learned (by doing) how to "cure" a molcajete. One places a half-palmful of white rice in it together with a little water, and one grinds. That's about it.

You do that, and the rice turns gray. Then you rinse out the mess, and do it again, and then again, until the rice stays white. You never have to cure it again. The larger irregularities of the surfaces of both parts are filled with white, after this, because you have packed rice flour paste into them with great force.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/marketunderroof3.jpg
 
Thanks, Seamus, grushenka! It was my only trip to the country, but we were not in "tourist México" for most of the trip, which was largely about the cooking. Things were cheap, people didn't seem to be there solely to rip us off. I understand the beach towns like Acapulco and Cabo are not the same.
 
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/backcourtyard-mainhouse.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/backcourtyard-awaitingbreakfast.jpg
We awaited breakfast in the back courtyard every morning. Behind the charming people you see here is a table, set with white linen. It was the breakfast at which we planned our day. Some days we went to the market, other days, not, but every day until Friday we spent a few hours in the kitchen.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/reposadokitchen-stove.jpg

Ana does the classes in the same kitchen which fills orders in the restaurant. It's roomy and all in tiles, lighted by skylights, with plenty of counter space, refrigerator space, ovens and stovetop space.

By three, Monday afternoon, we had been to the market and to Izcalli (long story) and completed Module 1-- Introduction to Chiles, Salsas, and How to Cure a Molcajete-- and Module 2, Tortillas, Quesadillas, Flor de Calabaza, Huitlacoche, Chicharrón en Salsa Verde, Frijoles and finally Guayabas en Syrup. By 4:30, our lunch table was being cleared in the garden courtyard. Lunch each day was the bunch of us eating what we'd prepared through the morning's class.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/mexico-backcourtyard-lunchtableset.jpg

She kicked us politely out and began work, then, because on an ordinary day, Reposado opened by seven. The kitchen was needed for its usual purpose, which left us free in the evening. About half the days, there were optional planned excursions into the town and into the area of central México.
 
cantdog said:
Thanks, Seamus, grushenka! It was my only trip to the country, but we were not in "tourist México" for most of the trip, which was largely about the cooking. Things were cheap, people didn't seem to be there solely to rip us off. I understand the beach towns like Acapulco and Cabo are not the same.
Click to expand...
You are right and I avoided resort towns and such, though I spent some time in La Ciudad for the art and museos. I too try to avoid being an exploitative tourista but it does come with the territory. Waiting to hear about the food... :)
 
A note about the dog.

When a person in México is named Jesus, most of the time his friends call him Chuy. Ana and Robb liked the sound of the name, and so the three-quarters Golden is named Chuy.

When Ana's dad met the puppy, he looked sad and disappointed in his daughter.

"You did not give the dog the Name of Our Lord, did you?"

So they told him no, it was Chewie-- from Chewbacca.
 
Wow, cant! Thanks for sharing the pix/commentary!

I wish my ass was half as yummy as those mannequins' though. *sigh*
 
I tried to take a picture of the skylight in the kitchen, but what I got was these two.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/reposadokitchen-skylight1.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/reposadokitchen-skylight2.jpg

I hope they give you an idea. Here's more of the kitchen, taken when it was a mess. Ten cakes, 150 crème brulée, and a whole bunch of other stuff, for a wedding which was to take place Saturday in that amazing courtyard.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/reposadokitchen-island.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/reposadokitchen-fromdoor.jpg
 
Sometimes, all we were doing was exploring the neighborhood, in which many of Cuernavaca’s sources of civic pride were located. Besides the nearby cathedral, and Diego Rivera’s mural painting at Cortés’s palace with its associated museum (about pre-Hispanic cultures and the Revolution), diagonally across the street from us was one of the city’s gems, the Robert Brady house.

You may hear Brady’s story and still be unprepared for the quirky place entirely. Brady’s dad was filthy rich, a transportation magnate. Young Robert went to school for art; he became a painter and especially a collector, but he guided his purchases by his own skewed tastes. He bought and sold art all his life, going all over the world. He came to Cuernavaca because it was a liberal city, a tolerant city, and for the same reasons we enjoyed it there. His photos show him a ridiculously handsome man, looking very hollywood, a sort of playboy of the western world. He had a flair for interior decor, and the colors are outrageous. For some reason, he died childless, and he endowed a foundation to preserve the house and the collection as it sits, gardens and all.

His house, too, is 16th century, having once been, most of it, the bishop’s residence. It is cluttered, covered, crammed with art. Clearly the man hung with Siqueiros, Rivera, Kahlo, and that group of people, but there is folk art acquired in Asia, Africa, everywhere. I have a couple of pictures. One’s the kitchen, one a sort of patio room, three-walled and open to the back courtyard, but there is room after rambling room! The bathrooms alone are worth the trip, or the room Josephine Baker stayed in, or the dining room whose walls are almost clotted with hagiographic images of a saint who was a cook and who had been discovered in ecstasy, levitating, in his kitchen one day. Words can’t set you up for this delightful place.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/RobertBradyhouse.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/RobertBradyhouse--kitchen.jpg

He may have been a little bit metro...
 
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/IMG_0174.jpg

Meanwhile we ground salsas and made green mole and mole colorado, flan, arroz con leche, chiles rellenos and chiles en nogada, natilla, tamales, and so on, eating very well indeed and learning new stuff. It was a good group of people to work with.

Señor Robb took us to the Gellman Museum early in the week. A good amount of the work of Orozco, Francisco Toledo, Siqueiros, Kahlo, and Rivera is in the collection of Jacques and Natasha Gellman. Jacques Gellman made films in Mexico, and one may see several portraits of him by these people, and especially also of Natasha, in this museum, along with hundreds of other works of collage, sculpture, and painting. Not all the collection is in Mexico, of course. Much of it is on loan to museums all over the world. Pretty cool place, and with a lot of pages from sketchbooks. I think sketchbooks are very revealing things, myself.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/kahlo-12.jpg
Natasha Gellman painted by Kahlo

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/natasha.jpg
Natasha Gellman by Diego Rivera

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/tamayo-02.jpg
and by Tamayo

The Gellman Museum is pretty obscure, but the other places we drove to appear in most listings of places to have a look at near Cuernavaca, with perhaps the exception of Hacienda Cocoyoc.
 
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/cocoyoc001.jpg

Morelos state is Zapata country. During the Revolution, many of the haciendas were destroyed. At Cocoyoc, the house of the landlord was utterly gone, but the old sugar mill, while gutted, still stood. The place had been acquired by entrepreneurs and had become a hotel, restaurant, resort, and country club. The colonial era sugar mill and aqueduct were still there, along with some old walls and other outbuildings, including a church, but all had been incorporated into a modern complex for the country club. I took a few photos there, too. Gorgeous old place.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/cocoyoc002.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/cocoyoc004.jpg
 
The one part of Mexico I'd had an interest in before we left Bangor was very intense. In Belize, we had been able to spend an afternoon at a Mayan city complex, and I was looking forward to another such experience. The pictures don't convey it. We went to Xochicalco.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/IMG_0183.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/IMG_0186.jpg


Our guide, in common with a lot of the people we met, understood quite a bit of Nahuatl. Méxicanos still eat pre-hispanic food; the pre-hispanic languages persist. Things are not yet settled, in México, but it seems crystal clear that it is not at heart a Spanish country so much as an Aztec one, and that makes places like Xochicalco very meaningful, and not just as an academic thing, either. The places contain pointers to the national mythos.

In the nineteen-seventies, there was a movement, he told us, and many of the stones, the carved ones, from the site are now scattered among the towns we could see from the hilltop. They figured they were as Aztec as the next person, and they had as much right to them, surely, as some museum. You see them in people's gardens, now, in the little towns. There's still plenty for the museum, which at Xochicalco is a very good one, and the investigation of the site from a scientific standpoint is still progressing. Much of the story of the city is becoming clear, now.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/IMG_0184.jpg
 
The centerpiece of the city is the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. But it has rooms and apartments and much else. It is one of the largest and most informative of the old cities, though it was ruined when the Spanish arrived. It seems to have been built by Olmecs, who were an offshoot of the classical Maya, and to have hit its heyday when the Toltecs ran the joint. The fall of Teotihuacan and the classical world occasioned the peopling of this high, fortified place by Toltecs. The barbarian waves of looting and conquest eventually cut it off from its supporting agricultural towns and the high city was burned about 900.

It didn't look like it does now; the rubble-built walls were stuccoed over, and painted in white and red, along with other colors. The Feathered Serpent was once painted, too.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/IMG_0190.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/IMG_0201.jpg
You see the carved reliefs. They covered the entire building, outside.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/IMG_0202.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/Mexico/IMG_0205.jpg
 
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