The three of us—Susana, Deborah and myself—are standing around the island in Sylvia’s kitchen. There are two kilos—that’s four pounds, six and one-half ounces—of jaiba in a wide, shallow bowl placed between us. Jaiba is blue crab and the crabmeat in question is utterly sweet and luscious--at least it must be because the crabs were scuttling across the sea bottom just hours ago. But even though the meat has been plucked from the shells, it is riddled with tiny pieces of cartilage. We three are carefully picking through it, a teaspoon at a time, making little piles of translucent discards. It is slow, tedious work, but the promise of Chilpachole de Jaibas spurs us on.
The crabmeat is part of yesterday’s catch from Pescadoria Gandara. Our foray also netted an enormous bag of plump, gorgeous shrimp, each nearly as long as my hand, and a big negrillo or sea bass, which has been scaled, gutted, and cut into long thick fillets. As we sort though the cartilage, our minds are reeling at the sheer profligacy of the haul. At $30 or more per pound, most home cooks would only dream of buying so much crabmeat, but here in the port of Veracruz, we can have the crab, the shrimp and the negrillo for the price of a single entrée at Le Bernardin. Sylvia’s eyes widen when we tell her this. “Really?” she asks. “It costs so much?”
It is wonderful to have our cooking class in a private home. Professional kitchens are great--Susana’s has a powerful VitaMix blender, an outdoor oven, and lots of extra hands for prep and clean up--but to get a sense of how a recipe is going to work at home, where the burners don’t get as hot and there is never enough counter space, it’s good to navigate the quirks of a real family’s kitchen. When the stove and oven start to create a mini-inferno, we just open a door and let the breeze blow through.
Today Sylvia will teach us how to make four traditional Veracruz dishes from her family’s own recipes. There is Chilpachole de Jaibas, a light crab stew flavored with blackened tomatoes, onions and chiles; Camarones Enchipotlados, shrimp simmered in a sauce of smoky chipotle chiles and garlic; Negrillo, sea bass smothered in tomatillo salsa, wrapped in hoja santa and banana leaves; and Torta de Elote, a delicate cake made of fresh corn kernels, served with rich vanilla ice cream.
For the next four hours, we shell shrimp, peel garlic, cut corn off the cob, blacken chiles and tomatoes over a gas flame, stir sauces, whisk eggs, chop onions, peek in the oven to check the cake. We taste everything from the vibrant green tomatillo salsa poured over the sea bass to the incendiary chipotle sauce for the shrimp. We madly annotate our booklet of recipes, as Sylvia imparts some of her family’s culinary secrets. My favorite simple trick: Slice plaintains lengthwise very, very thinly and fry the long strips in canola oil until they are crisp, brown, and irresistible.
We are so busy that we do not notice that the late afternoon sun has become golden in the garden outside the kitchen door, but at last we are done. Sylvia’s parents, who have remained discreetly invisible for most of the day, invite us into the dining room. We sit, and enjoy the luxury of being served the food we have prepared.
And it is wonderful: the negrillo, bathed in the tart tomatillo salsa, emerges moist and tender from the banana leaves; the camarones, simmered in an earthenware cazuela, are burnished in the glow of the anise-scented chipotle sauce; the chilpachole de jaibas is delicately spiced; and the dense, sweet torta de elote really tastes of fresh corn.
The conversation is good too: we talk of children, dogs and orchids, and of the old Mocambo Hotel, a grand Veracruz pile where passengers embarking for Europe once stayed. Deborah, who is a weaver, promises to make red and silver ornaments for the family’s Christmas tree; Silvia’s father offers to get cigars from his favorite shop for my husband; Susana writes down the names of a dozen restaurants we must try during our travels. But first, we must have another serving of negrillo....
