Cooking with a Pro

Oriana and I wanted to learn how to make tortillas by hand. We asked Filiberto’s wife, Maria Elena, if she would be so kind as to teach us. The day came—and we asked if we could go to the market with her. The market in Antigua is a pretty intimidating place. I guess, at first, most markets are somewhat hard to take in—especially when one is used to grocery shopping in a super store. Maria Elena said that she’d be going to the market at 6:00 am. When Filiberto came by to tell us what time to be ready—he said that we could go at 7 am. We said we wanted to do things the way she normally does them—and we compromised and set off at 6:30 AM.

We were buying things to make a dish called pepian. Pepian usually includes chicken, a very yummy spiced sauce, and rice with veggies. First of all, going to the market at 6:30 am makes it a lot easier to get around. All the other times we’d been to the market—it had been between 10 am and 3 pm—the busiest times. Maria Elena explained that it’s much easier to get around the market when the stands are just starting to set up, there are far fewer people, everything is fresh and hasn’t been sitting out all day. So, like two novices, we followed her around the market to pick up our ingredients. We picked up a local type of zucchini then tomatoes, cilantro, rice, potatoes, string beans, mil tomatoes (very tiny green tomatoes) and a few other things.

The best part about going to the market with Maria Elena was that we saw parts of the market that tourists would never find, and I think that the locals don’t want the tourists to ruin. There is an entire outdoor section where the owners/farmers set up shop and the produce is often better and cheaper than at the regular stands. Everywhere we turned, someone would ask “Que va a llevar, Chula?”—this basically means “What are you going to buy, honey?”

Maria Elena is a pro when it comes to shopping at the market. Folks know her and she knows that she has to pinch centavos (a centavo is worth less than a penny) to feed her family of 13, actually 15 if her daughter and kids eats with them.

When we left the market and Oriana and I realized we didn’t buy any chicken we were a little nervous. There are always chickens running around the Salazar household, but we feared we would be slaughtering one of them to make our meal. This was especially disturbing because when I was interviewing Maria Benita, Maria Elena’s thirteen year old daughter for the As Green As It Gets website, she listed as one of her skills that she can kill and pluck a chicken in less than ten minutes. So, I voiced this concern on the walk back to the bus—and Maria Elena laughed really hard. She said we’d be buying chicken in San Miguel Escobar (where we live) because it’s fresh and cheap there—and no, we wouldn’t be learning to kill chickens today. Thank goodness.

So, we got back to the house—and we ate breakfast—beans, tortillas, and coffee. The beans were so yummy, and of course, so was the coffee, it’s Filiberto’s.

Maria Elena told us about when she used to sell in the market—and how that was a tough way to try and make your money. They used to sell sweet potatoes, carrots, beans, corn, amongst other things. Now that all of their fields are filled with coffee she said, they don’t have to sell other food items in the market.

Then once breakfast was over—it’s not even 8 am yet, the fun begins. We roast tomatoes, onions, and a couple different types of chile on the comal (cast iron skillet) on an open fire. The fire is made at first with wood. Eventually, we’ve got so many pots, etc. going, that one of the kids brings out a huge basket of dried corn cobs—no corn left—that end up being pretty good tinder.

Then we cut up the veggies. Then Maria Elena hacks apart the chicken, purchased next door, with tremendous force. Chickens here are sold, by weight, and typically with all the internal organs. The last time I purchased chicken, from a different coffee farmer’s wife, Amalia, I politely told her that I would pay what everything weighed, but would she please cut off all the gross stuff for me. Amalia is Miguel’s wife. They used to be in the chicken business—and did well for a long time. Since Tyson chicken has been in town, they have slowly but surely had to switch gears and pay more attention to growing their coffee business.

Maria Elena gives us an internal tour of the chicken carcass—the liver, entrails, heart, amongst other things I didn’t look at very long. The meat and bones got thrown into a giant pot with seasoned water.

Then we took roasted veggies and blended them together. Added that mixture to the seasoned broth, added potatoes. Meanwhile veggies and rice were combined in a separate pot. Then one of the cooler tricks I’ve seen before—Maria Elena didn’t have a lid for the rice pot. She took a piece of plastic trash bag and laid it overtop. The thing melted itself into an almost perfect seal. Now, I know that there are all kinds of fumes, etc. that can come from doing this trick—however, it was pretty cool.

Then the last part was taking corn that had been plucked off the cob upto the grinder. On this trip Maria Benita (13 year old) came with us. She carried her corn on top of her head—she held it there, but most women here can balance it on their head without holding on. So, we arrive at the grinding place and wait in line. There is a younger single woman with jeans on, a mom with multiple kids, a traditionally-dressed grandmom with one baby strapped to her back and two other kids, and one other young looking woman but in traditional dress. So, here’s how this works. There’s a guy that operates the grinder, he pours your corn in and then the machine adds water and out comes masa (ground corn plus water). Masa is a sticky type of dough that is what folks actually use to make their corn tortillas.

I am standing and watching, as the mixture starts to spit out of the dispenser at the bottom, each women has to bend over to collect her masa into a ball. Then once your corn is through, then there’s a moment where you collect up all the little bits, put the giant pile of masa in your tub, and pay the guy manning the grinder. It’s only about 2 Quetzales (about 25 cents US) but I think the price depends on how much you grind.

Anyhow. We walk the masa back to the Salazar house and then things are really rolling. We start to make tortillas. We watched Maria Elena make hers. Hers were round, about the size of your entire hand, and thin. Mine were not quite round, fatter, and about the size of my palm. Eventually, I got a little better. But let’s remember I’m comparing myself to an unreachable standard. Maria Elena has been making tortillas since she was five. Since I don’t know how old she is—Filiberto is 56—I’m going to guess that means there’s 40-50 years of tortilla-making experience that I’m up against. The more upsetting thing was that I dropped three handfulls—those ended up a special treat for the ducks and chickens. Apparently the ducks and chickens know what’s going on when you start making tortillas—they were hovering like vultures over a dead carcass. We had to ask one of their grandchildren, he’s three, to shoo them away. He is very good at his job—even though he often tries to kick them.

While we ate, the older boys joked that they got one of my tortillas. I smiled graciously and mentioned that if they made tortillas they’d probably be worse than mine. The whole family thought that was hysterical.

All in all, the food was fantastic. We ended up serving as the cook’s assistant, than cooks. After folks had eaten, Maria Elena started to tell us about her childhood. This is particularly amazing because Guatemalans don’t really volunteer information. You generally have to ask about thirty questions before they start responding with multiple sentence answers.

Her parents separated and both remarried, she and her sister decided to live with their father, but he couldn’t afford to keep them. When she was 8 or 9, they went to live with a richer family. From what I can tell, they were like live-in maids. She recalled that the mother asked her when her birthday was—she responded with the appropriate date. Low and behold, on her thirteenth birthday, she came into the kitchen to see all types of preparations for a party. She thought to herself, great, they are having a party, I’ll have to clean up after them. Later in the day, the mother called her to the kitchen, Maria Elena thought she was in trouble, and there were children, a cake, and jacks—her favorite game. The group started to sing and she started to cry tears of joy. No one had ever celebrated her birthday before. As she retold this part of the story, tears started to well up in her eyes.

She continued to explain that her childhood was hard and that now she counsels her children before they decide who to marry (2 or 3 are already married) that this is someone you should be spending a lifetime with—and when you have children—you need to make sure you can take responsibility for them. Maria Elena repeats this part again—she never wants her grandchildren to have to grow up the way she did—virtually without parents.

Maria Elena’s childhood, rough even by Guatemalan standards, seems to have made her into a force of a mother, grandmother, and wife. Cut from the same cloth as my great grandmother, Maria Elena is a superwoman in her own right.

It was a real pleasure to spend the day with Maria Elena—and it seems she had fun too. She asked when we could do this again, because she has more to teach us.