Then we'd go home and cook. Lupita would do almost everything while we looked on and took notes. Our lessons included making a chicken soup with garbanzo beans and vegetables, Caldo Churipo (a beef stew), enchiladas, mojarra dorada (a fish dish), posole (the quick version with maiz from a can), Tarascan soup, salsa verde and salsa rojo with ingredients ground in a molcajete, and various aguas (pineapple, guayaba, hibiscus and tamarind) as well as horchata.
We loved going to the market with a local person, seeing where she went to buy what, noticing how she evaluated the food, and gaining some insight into how much things should generally cost. Having the opportunity to practice Spanish names for the various types of ingredients and cooking processes was a bonus. At the end of the lessons, we had some great food to enjoy over the next several days, because Lupita always made plenty.
The food we learned to make is not gourmet fare, but rather the kind of home cooking carried out daily by local folks in Patzcuaro. It gave us a solid knowledge base to build on as we explore cooking in our own Mexican kitchen. Gar wrote down all the recipes, so in the future we'll be able to make the dishes on our own. If I had had my wits about me, I would have taken more photos than the few I took. It would be fun to make up a cookbook to give friends and family (and to have for ourselves!)...Something to amend in our future lessons!
A few things to note:
Lupita speaks only Spanish, but if non Spanish speakers want classes, then our bilingual friend Leticia Alcalá is available to translate and facilitate. Both Lupita and Lety are willing to negotiate prices and schedules that would be doable for all concerned.
Our lessons lasted from 2 to 3 hours. Some of the more complicated dishes like mole or posole (the from-scratch version) would take longer, or could be done over two shorter days of lessons.
Lupita has two little girls, Paola (about 6 years old) and Brisia (3), that she brings with her. They are calm children, but they do need to be entertained a little. I bought them some crayons and coloring books and Gar let them watch kids' movies on his computer. In our opinion, it was worth the extra effort to have them around; making their acquaintance added to our experience.
We didn't have the time to arrange it this visit, but Leticia's mother can also give cooking classes. It would be interesting to gain an older cook's perspective and to see what types of variations she might make in preparing the local dishes.
We decided to buy a molcajete, a blender and a pressure cooker in order to fix food the local way.
Contact info for Lupita: 434-107-7650
Contact info for Lety: 434-115-5957 or leticia@ecopatzcuaro.com
Gar and I are back in Denver now, for a few months, but I want to pass on some information about a pastime that we greatly enjoyed during our recent two month stay in Patzcuaro. We took weekly cooking lessons from a young woman named Lupita Pineda, who lives off the Libramiento near the bus station. Lupita is a young woman who started cooking at a young age with her mother, and who continues to make the meals she learned from her mother for her husband and children. She would come over to our house, which is near the mercado, and we'd go out to buy ingredients for whatever we were preparing that day.
