Mexico | Gherkins & Tomatoes

Food, Life’s Magical Bottom Line

August 23, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

There’s something magical about food, fire, and cooking. Actually, primeval describes it better. After all, without food, I wouldn’t be sitting here staring at a computer screen and neither would you. There’d be only a barren wasteland, a moonscape of craters and crevices, instead of the Earth we love. Food is the magical bottom line of life. I’ve thought that for a long time. As a twenty-year-old student, I once stood on a street corner outside Mexico City’s colossal 5514-stall […]

Categories: Food writing, Mexico, Photography • Tags: Chocolat, Epiphanies, La Merced Market, Like Water for Chocolate, Magical realism, Mexico City, Saint Brighid, Zao Jun

December 12: The Virgin of Guadalupe

December 10, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Patron Saint of Mexico and the Americas Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once said that “…one may no longer consider himself a Christian, but you cannot truly be considered a Mexican unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe.” Apocryphal or not, the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe makes fascinating reading. And the food’s pretty good, too, like most feast-day food tends to be. But first a little history. An Aztec convert, Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin*, first saw the Virgin […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Mexico • Tags: Atole, Cooking, Culinary History, Food, Food History, France, French Cooking, Mexico, Recipes, Saints' Days, Virgen de Guadalupe, Virgin of Guadalupe

In the Kitchen with Barbara Kingsolver: I

December 8, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I’m going to bed every night now with Barbara Kingsolver’s latest book, The Lacuna: A Novel, about Mexico, politics, art, El Norte, and — best of all — cooks. After her last book (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Year of Food Life), Kingsolver still finds food a fascinating part of life. In The Lacuna, here’s how she describes the cook who works for the chief protagonist’s family: When Leandro came he would push the fire to the sides, keeping the heat […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Books, Cooking, Latin America, Lit & Food, Mexico, United States • Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, Cooking, Cooks, Mexico, The Lacuna

Halloween: Art

October 31, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! For more on the Day of the Dead in Mexico, see my previous post: Día de los Muertos (Todos Santos)/ Day of the Dead Food-Laden Altars .

Categories: Art, Halloween, Mexico • Tags: All Souls' Day, Art, Day of the Dead, Halloween, Mexico, Skull

Idylls of Cuisine, #35

October 25, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Halloween, Mexico • Tags: All Souls' Day, Bread of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Halloween, Mexico, Pan de Muertos

Deep Roots: A Love Note to the Lowly Carrot

August 11, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A dish of carrot hastily cooked may still have soil uncleaned off the vegetable. ~~ Chinese Proverb Except for the feathery grey braids poking out from under the rebozo, she looked like a child washing dishes. But she wasn’t a child and she wasn’t washing dishes. Rinsing the large carrot— one about the size of a zucchini zonked on steroids at the end of a scorching mid-western summer — in her impromptu sink, the old Indian woman leaned over a […]

Categories: Afghanistan, Beef, Carrots, Lamb, Mexico, Recipes, Rice • Tags: Afghanistan, Beef, Carrots, Chicken, Lamb, M. M. Vilmorin-Andrieux, Qabili Pilau, Recipes, Rice, The Vegetable Garden

Slapdown Corner: For the Love of Food!

July 22, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Like a pot of water heating on the fire, the “meaning of foodie” conversations percolating out there come to boil at times. And at times the heat gets turned off and things simmer down.* Until the next finger-pointing pundit comes flying out of the air. Frankly, it gets tiresome when people exercise their index fingers and sneer out the word “foodie” as if you were a secret sinner, hoarding peccadillos like so many bags of rice. Which was for all […]

Categories: Editorials, Mexico • Tags: Foodies, Ibn Majah, Mexico

Diana Kennedy’s Menu for Charles, Prince of Wales

July 20, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In 2002, Diana Kennedy, well-known author of Mexican cookbooks, served the following menu to the man who would be king, Charles, Prince of Wales:* Cocktails & Appetizers Tequila Apéritifs Fresh Tortillas Small Pumpkin Seeds Toasted and Ground with Roasted Habanero Chilies Guacamole Enhanced with Grapes and Pomegranate Seeds Meal Cream-of-Squash-Flower Soup Pork Loin Baked in Banana Leaves Cactus and Fresh Young Peas in Green Chile Sauce Dessert Guavas Stuffed with Coconut Mango Sorbet Topped with Tequila-Soaked Strips of Mango Green […]

Categories: Menus, Mexico, Pumpkin, Recipes, Soup, White House • Tags: Cooks, Diana Kennedy, Menus, Mexican Cooking, Mexico, Prince of Wales, Pumpkin, Recipes, Squash, White House

Nachos: Etymology of a Food Word

February 2, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) provides many food writers with the tools to plot out the history of certain foods. But just how do those intrepid word researchers find their information? What’s their go-to source? Adriana P. Orr served as a researcher for OED for 25 years. At one point later in her career, she received the assignment of determining the etymology of the word “nacho” as applied to tortilla chips covered with cheese or other topping, then coming into […]

Categories: American Cooking, Mexico, Tortillas • Tags: Food, Food History, Nachos, Word History

Las Posadas and Christmas in Mexico (Part 2)

December 24, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

(Continued from December 23, 2008 …) What a feast lay there on the other side of the heavy wooden door, spread out before us on a long refectory table that used to be in one of Puebla’s convents! Tia had covered her table with an antique white-lace tablecloth. Shrimp cocktails, cold meat platters, seafood, pork tamales, tasty bits like tuna-stuffed pickled jalapeños, jicama like the street vendors sold, gleaming crystal glasses, colorful chins plates, and blazing candles covered every inch […]

Categories: Christmas, Mexico • Tags: Christmas, Cooking, Food, Mexico, Posadas, Recipes

Las Posadas and Christmas in Mexico

December 23, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

After the Day of the Dead, the weeks flew by, disappearing into the ether, gone without a trace. A certain insidious spirit suffused the streets, as if smoke kept seeping out of an old chimney. Life took on a somewhat sepia-like look. In other words, it was that magical, mystical time leading up to Christmas. Nacimiento, or crêche, scenes popped up in every street vendor’s stall. Even the Scroogy newspaper kiosk owner smiled when I bought the Mexican equivalent of […]

Categories: Christmas, Mexico, Soup • Tags: Christmas, Cooking, Food, Mexico, Posadas, Recipes

Día de los Muertos (Todos Santos)/ Day of the Dead Food-Laden Altars

October 31, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

(Note: The italicized portion of the following article is an excerpt from something I wrote for an encyclopedia on the history of dining and entertaining, Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl, Greenwood Press, 2008.) In Mexico, the Día de los Muertos (Todos Santos) (Day of the Dead/All Saints’ Day) resembles the norteamericano Halloween only superficially. Mexico is deeply, profoundly Catholic. And Mexico is also deeply, profoundly Aztec. Or at least traces of indigenous religions color the Catholic festivals […]

Categories: Bread, Halloween, Mexico, Pork, Recipes • Tags: Bibliographies, Calaveras, Cooking, Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, Food, Halloween, Mexican Cooking, Mexico, Pork Chile Verde, Todos santos

What’s True About Mexico

August 4, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Ever think about how a map of Mexico looks a little bit like Italy, only reversed? Mexico’s equivalent of the Italian boot of Puglia is the Yucatan, sticking out into the Gulf of Mexico like a big stubbed toe. The thirty-one states of Mexico, plus the federal district, hint at a culinary diversity that you’ll find only in places like Italy, where mountains and rivers and desert-like terrain prohibited easy hopping about from place to place.

Categories: Mexico, Recipes, Shellfish • Tags: Avocado, Food, Hot Peppers, Mexico, Recipes, Shrimp

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