Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Food Time Machine

Grandmas are the best cooks in the world. Seriously, just ask anyone and they'll tell you how their Grandma cooked the best this or best that. And if I were a betting man, which I am (so degenerate I bet the coin flip at the last Super Bowl...and won), I'd wager you that one of your favorite meals or fondest food memories involves Grandma preparing an old family recipe; something so simple, yet profound, that when you have the same kind of food now, you tell a story about how your Grandma cooked the same thing when you were a kid and how great it was and you go on to tell the story of that day with incredible detail- not just the food, but the weather, who was with you, where you were, etc. Such is the power of Grandma and her food.


I was having a conversation about food with a reporter recently and had the revelation as I was rambling and thinking out loud (revelation for myself at least, because I'm sure "bigger & better" writers have articulated this before me and much better); that food can be a form of storytelling. But when Grandma tells a story with food, it is so much more than that. It's like traveling back through the generations to the first instance of that now "famous family recipe" ever being prepared.



I can tell you now, that my Grandma was the best cook ever. I mean, I know yours is too, but I'm talking about mine right now. She was my Dad's Mom and she lived in the city of Irapuato, Mexico in the state of Guanajuato. Here it is on the map, because I know people always ask where that is:


(As you can see, it is basically smack dab in the middle of Mexico)

It was always a big deal when Mama Elena, or Mamalena as we actually said it, would come up and visit. She would generally visit in the spring for a couple of months and stay with my family for a about two weeks before going off to stay with my Aunts in Woodland (and yes, if you're Mexican, you do have relatives in Woodland or Fresno...I didn't make up the rules, I just live by them). The two weeks she did stay with us were two weeks of classic, authentic, down home Mexican Soul Food. She was a force of nature in the kitchen.

Our Grandmas probably looked a lot alike, except mine was tiny, brown and wiry with a mane of white hair and more energy than you and I combined. In Mexico, she'd walk in the mornings from her house, to one of the churches in the center of Irapuato to pray. And when she did get on her knees to pray, she literally got on her knees on the hard, stone floor- no fancy padded praying knee guards like we have in churches up here. I mean, even my knees would hurt after five or ten minutes when I was with her at church in Irapuato. My Grandma didn't mess around. When she visited she'd be up at 6 in the morning to pray. Then she would begin planning and preparing for the food to be made later that day. She'd stalk the refrigerator and pantry, making a list of everything that would be needed for dinner; and after morning coffee, she would lead my Mom and Dad on missions to get the ingredients necessary to prepare the classics from her repetoire.

I always had two favorites: Her chiles rellenos and her potato pancakes.

I don't need to explain what chiles rellenos are, but the potato patties bear some explanation. My Grandma, odd as it may seem, cooked latkas...yes, as in the Slavic/Jewish latkas. I don't know why or how she learned to cook them, but she did.

Everything she made was good, but when she cooked these two things it was amazing. Her chiles rellenos were so good, that they were one of the few things she cooked that my Dad never ever attempted on his own. He would do the Mexican Latkas sometimes, but the chiles rellenos were a no-no.

I won't go into details about the food itself. I have no pics and there are no words. Suffice it to say that you just had to be there. The Food. The Stories. The Laughter. The Unity of Family...And I'm sure you'd tell me the same about your Grandma and her epic meals.

This post really isn't about the meal itself. I guess this whole thing centers around the Mexican Latkas.

I would watch my Grandma make them and my Dad make them. The recipe was a very simple one: boiled potatoes mashed and mixed with cheese formed into hamburger sized patties battered in flour and deep fried until crispy golden orange brown on the outside. Now, my Dad is a great cook in his own right, but my Grandma's Mexican Cheesy Latkas were just a little better than my Dad's.

Those Mexican Cheesy Latkas popped into my head as I was having the food conversation this week. My Dad learned them from his Mom who likely learned them from one of her parents and so on and so on. It never really occured to me that I was tasting the food from generations ago. And as I talked about it more, the questions started to pop into my mind: Who was the first in my family to make it? Where did they learn it? How long ago?

I will never see or talk to those who gave me my genetic code from hundreds of years ago- those whose blood flows inside of me, whose mannerisms I no doubt share, whose eyes and hair line I was born with, but everytime I have my Dad's cooking, I can share a meal with those faceless names from the past, without whom I would not be here today.

So next time Grandma cooks you the best meal in the world, cherish it and think about what message from hundreds of years ago is being sent to you in that meal. It may blow you away...

4 comments:

  1. Read about you in Bee. I have the Munchie Musings blog and keep a list of all Sacto food bloggers. we get together once in a while. send me your email and I'll add you to the Sac Food Bloggers group on yahoo. Catherine sacpchef@gmail.com

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  2. Read about your blog this morning in The Bee also. Had to come check it out. We were on Stockton Blvd last Friday night looking for some place to eat. It was 9ish and the only places we saw were the Seafood Buffets. It was too late for a big meal. Then driving through Oak Park was a little scarey. My husband loves Mexican food, me not so much. I can't have spicey food. Will be following your blog, maybe we'll have to try out places you go.

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  3. I'm on board too. Early 60's trips in to Mexico from Socal to surf, jungles of northern Thailand in the late 60's serving Uncle Sam. I'm german/dutch, wife's yugoslavian/french. To say I have a varied group of tastebuds would be an understatement. Your first in the door, we'll follow you. Rich O.

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  4. I read about your blog in The Bee and was completely intrigued. I love trying new (and authentic) restaurants in the Sacramento area. I really enjoyed the post about the latkes and lol'd about the Woodland comment, it's my hometown. :-) Keep up the good work!

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