Category Archives: Oaxaca

Talking perseverance, sisterhood and Tlacolula’s gastronomy with Oaxacan Cocinera Tradicional, Catalina Chávez

I met up with Catalina Chávez at a gas station in Tlacolula, Oaxaca, where she and her husband picked me up in a tuktuk and immediately took me to eat ice cream. The day only went up from there. Catalina is a cocinera tradicional, which means she’s part of a group of women who are passing down the ancestral cooking traditions from Oaxaca’s eight regions. At the recent “encuentro” where women from all over entered their ceremonial dishes into a competition, Catalina won third prize with her mole enchiladas. Celia Florian, the organizer of the cocineras, introduced me to her when I asked to interview a cocinera not far from Oaxaca city. 

After enjoying a cone of leche quemada and tuna ice cream (a staple here), we followed the sweet scent of a fresh bread where she insisted I take a bag of Tlacolula’s pan de yema home. Fairly quickly we were out of the town center and climbing up a dirt road, Catalina with the kind of grace that allowed her to sway and bump in the back while holding her posture and a cone of melting ice cream perfectly upright. 

She lives in Colonia Tres Piedras (three rocks), marked by three Flinstone-looking boulders. At the time her comedor was still under construction, so we sat in the shell of the dining room and Catalina told me about her life. We talked for about two hours: about her sister’s passing to cancer, embracing life as a cocinera, motherhood, and yes, about food. Here’s an abbreviated version. At the end she fed me a plate of mole negro, glistening over a pile of white rice. It was perfect.

How did you learn to cook?

I’m the third generation of cooks in my family. This chef asked me once if I went to culinary school and I said yes, I studied at the best school possible: because when you mess up you get a slap on the head! With an onion, with a chile, with whatever is in the kitchen.

My mom had a strong personality. She became a widow when I was 11-years-old. My dad was an alcoholic. She said that all she thought about was how to get food on the table for her kids. Imagine: you have an alcoholic husband, you have to get food on the table, you have to take care of your kids, you have to clean, and all that pressure falls on you and you don’t have any way to let off steam.

I told my mom in the end that I understand. My grandmother was a widow too. You understand eventually that they had to figure out how to do what they needed to do and that shaped them. It shaped me too, because I saw that if you work hard at a job you can provide for what you need in life.

It seems like you see cooking as more than a job — do you think being a cocinera tradicional has always been valued by Oaxacan society?

Since I was a girl helping my mom in Tlacolula, I remember the cook leaving the kitchen: dirty, sweaty and dead tired, everyone turns around and looks. No one values that you just fed 300 or 500 people. I was embarrassed to say I was a cook.

One time this woman asked me who I was and she said, “Oh the cook” with a negative tone when I told her my mother’s name. I remember it. I saw her a while later and she said, “so you became a cook too.” And I said yes, and I’m proud of it. I like it. I’m passionate about it, I love representing the gastronomy of my town. And also— I’d like one of you to try and do one single thing that I do. And she had no words.

How does your husband support your work?

One time my husband got upset because I came home from cooking really late. He said if I didn’t stop going like I was going he would leave. I told him, I don’t need you and I will continue with or without you. From that point on, he got it and has been supportive. I wasn’t changing. It’s complicated to be a mom, wife and worker. But everything is possible— it’s tiring but it’s possible. We as women have to work harder. 

Why be part of the cocineras tradicionales?

This really is a project for women. I admire Cecilia [Celia Florian], she could be very comfortable living her life without doing anything else. But she’s doing something beautiful for us. There are women cooking in more isolated areas who need ways to make income. So we need more projects that support our work as cooks. It’s women supporting women.

Apart from that, they are also trying to rescue a diet of unprocessed foods. Maseca is taking over, but when we were little my grandpa and my dad would bring in sacks of corn— it’s such an amazing flavor to eat corn straight from the field. People aren’t growing agriculture like they used to here, and people eat so differently now. That’s why the cocineras tradicionales is important: so many of the diseases we deal with now are because we are hurried and eating fast food. 

What’s the difference between your mom’s food and yours?

My grandmother and my mom have the same recipes, but they do change a little when they are passed down. Everything is still made artisanally and by hand, but I think the “sazon” that we have is different. My grandmother is 97 but she still notices details when they’re off according to her. 

You represent Tlacolula with your cooking, what kind of dishes should people try here if they want the real deal?

Tlacolula has an intense gastronomy. We are known for our moles: coloradito, amarillo, verde, negro. In Tlacolula we have the custom that when someone dies we make mole de luto, a chichilo mole. Higaditos are also very traditional, with chicken, onion, tomato, miltomate, chicken stock. Just when the vegetables are boiling you add eggs, but if the eggs hit the bottom it doesn’t work so you have to very careful. Also, barbacoa is typical at important events too.

What about the rest of your family, are your siblings cooks too?

My siblings all crossed [the border]. I remember one night my sister said she was going to leave, but I told her I wouldn’t leave my mom. That night my mom came home and my sister was gone. She was 16 years old, I was 13. She’s still there 27 years later. She said she was going to build a house here and she did, it’s beautiful but she’s never returned. I stayed to work with my mom. There was one day when she said “we’re doing ok, you could go back to study”, but I said no, I liked my work. And since then doors have opened. I have an 18 year old in college and a 14 year old as well. And thanks to the cocineras tradicionales, I got a 10 year visa. Imagine that. 

Find Catalina Chavez in Tlacolula at:

MO-KALLI Restaurante

Donají 48, San Isidro, 70400 Tlacolula de Matamoros, Oax.

01 951 294 1249

A night in San José del Pacífico

Where to eat, sleep and get some peace in Oaxaca’s magic mushroom town

Between Oaxaca city and the pacific coast there is a notoriously precarious road through the mountains. Midway through the journey is a town called San José del Pacífico, which is known for its cabins tucked into dense pine tree forests, and the only species of magic mushrooms endemic to Mexico. There is also a tattoo artist here who inks hummingbirds and cactus flowers and triangles into constellations. In the same studio you can find his wife’s apothecary: body oils and serums that smell like the warm breeze outside their family cabin in the woods. There is also a roadside restaurant where chilacayote lounges on the porch outside, and the cook inside makes a silky yellow mole that put to shame any version I had in Oaxaca city. The town is strewn across the highway about 8,000 feet above sea level, so if you come just remember to bundle up and let the mist or the hallucinogens roll over you. 

Thanks to Omar (Oaxacking) for taking me on this adventure. 

Where to eat:

Restaurante Lupita

At this restaurant you’ll find a crop of watermelon shaped squash called chilacayote guarding the door, a nursery’s worth of cactus plants for sale, and ponchos and yarn tchotchkes hanging inside like Christmas tinsel. As with a lot of places to eat on the side of the road anywhere, the menu is told to you with a few options for the day. I was torn between the chicken soup and beef with yellow mole. The later satisfied my yearning for a good mole. It was earthy with subtle heat and tender hunks of beef, potatoes and carrots. If there is a more perfect drink to have in the mountains than atole with panela, please send it my way (and yes, mezcal is pretty good too except that the altitude will get you much more drunk than you thought you were gonna be which I learned when I slithered from the bathroom floor to bed later that night). 

San Mateo Rio Hondo

Down the road a ways there is another town, called San Mateo Rio Hondo, where vines grow out of an abandoned church wall, the stairs still there but leading to nowhere. The town feels plugged into the hillside, the red dirt sprouting tall purple and red flowers. 

There’s a juice bar up a little from the basketball court with the retro turquoise blender and cherry red orange juice squeezer of hipster dreams. Also, baskets of jicamas, carrots and beets. I got a papaya and orange juice and she makes a good chocomilk too. 

Up the hill a little is Comedor las Amapolas (which means poppies), the name handpainted two different ways outside the building and drawn in old English on the wood panels inside. To a local the sight of a comal with a pot of beans and fried eggs starting to bubble might be as common as butter on toast in the U.S., but in my mind that’s an extraordinary start to the day. When the pile of peppers and onions began to mingle sweetly with the smells of carne asada, and she asked if we wanted a sopita then the morning was officially won.

Beans, eggs and rice was all I wanted, the sopa de fideos and delicate but spicy salad of radishes, chiles and cilantro were the extra points. 

Also, in this town if you ask for propsero or Posada Yegoyoxi there is a gringo-Mexican family with Italian roots and the son and father have a pig ranch, you can grab some sausages to take home. This also doesn’t look like a bad place to spend the night. 

Where to stay

There are a number of options here, but Omar took us to Cabañas La Puesta del Sol. Simple but comfortable wood cabins face the mountains, the patios outside equipped with lounge chairs and benches for meditative forest gazing. There’s a fireplace and you can request extra blankets to stay cozy. The grounds are strewn with hanging plants from trees, crawling agaves and flowers. At night if you bring candles (to make out the shadows of your mezcal bottles) there’s not much else besides your friends’ beautiful faces and the stars to look at. In the mornings the birds will sing back and forth and the sun will wrestle the morning clouds for a little more sky.

What about those mushrooms tho…?

Apparently July through October is mushroom season. Otherwise you can find them dried but everyone said it’s worth it to get them fresh.