"Tablecloth stainer?" Dona Elena simmers a pot of manchamanteles,
a tropical mole of fruits and chiles.
Martha, Mario and all you other Food Network mavens—make way for Dona Maria Elena Serena. She is cheerful and rotund, nearly as wide as she is tall, with a perfect command of her recipes and kitchen techniques. Alhough she has never given a cooking lesson before today, she is such a natural that, if the cameras were rolling, audiences everywhere would be swept away. The Maria Elena Show would need subtitles, I guess, but that's a just a small concession for a program that would have the foodie universe riveted to the screen.
Susana, Deborah, Liliana (our guide) and I are collapsed around the dining table in the immaculate front room of Maria Elena Serena’s house in Coatepec, a beautiful colonial suburb of Jalapa. The TV is tuned to the Food Network and at the moment, Anthony Bourdain is lapping up an exquisite meal at a small luxury hotel at Macchu Picchu in Peru. (When I was there, the menu consisted of dried cod and freeze-dried potatoes from the cellar.)
We have eaten a ridiculous amount of Dona Elena’s delicious food, beginning with a delicate sopa de calabacitas and ending with an intensely flavored coffee flan. Now she is urging us to try her homemade coffee ice cream with a slice of chocolate cake. It doesn’t take a lot of convincing--I have secretly unzipped my jeans—and the ice cream is everything coffee ice cream should be and never is, with the pure, strong flavor of dark roasted beans.
I should explain that we arrived five hours late for our cooking lesson —this is becoming our regular modus operandi—after an endless drive from the beach town of Tecolutla, down the Gulf coast, inland to Jalapa, the capital of the state of Veracruz. Naturally we stopped along the way to buy luscious local honey and conch shells, naturally we paused at a popular highway restaurant for sopa de mariscos, naturally we got seriously lost…
That would be enough to drive most cooks into a fury. But Dona Elena greets us with complete aplomb and only the most casual comment: “I was wondering if you were coming.” Instead of crashing crockery and barring the door against us, this thrifty, industrious cook, who also rents rooms to local university students, whiled away the afternoon cooking every dish she had prepped for us—and then prepped each one all over again so we could learn how she did it.
The five of us squeezed into Dona Elena’s narrow outside kitchen, which has a sloping roof and looks out on a tropical garden with gorgeous orchids. This is where the real cooking takes place, especially anything that is messy or smelly. (There is a second indoor kitchen for finishing dishes before they go to the table.) The shelves are stacked with a battery of turquoise enamel pots and pans: I notice that Dona Elena’s checked apron is also turquoise and white, and just outside the door, the gas tank has been painted a similar bright hue. The kitchen has all the essentials: a small stove, a sink and a modicum of counter space. It is as spotless and well-organized as a yacht’s galley, everything within arm’s reach of the head cook.
Maria Elena stirs squash blossoms into sopa de calbacitas,
a delicate soup of squash, corn and onion.
Like all accomplished TV chefs, Dona Elena readies each dish for the stove or oven and immediately whips out a finished version to show us. “And here it is!” she exclaims with a flourish, displaying an ensalada de nopales or that wonderful coffee flan. Here’s what she cooked and what we're eating:
Sopa de calabacita (squash soup); Also known as sopa de milpa, or soup of the cornfield. An exquisitely simple soup of squash and its blossoms, onion, fresh corn and the herb epazote. Its delicate flavor suggests fresh picked vegetables simmered in a pot at the edge of the field.
Manchamanteles (literally “tablecloth stainer”): A light, very fruity tropical mole served over cooked chicken. Pears, apples, peaches and pineapple are simmered in a rich paste made of guajillo chiles, onion, garlic, cinnamon and seared tomatoes. “This is good for energy,” advises Dona Elena. “Lots of natural sugar and protein.”
Ensalada de nopales (cactus salad): Slivered nopal cactus pads cooked in water and salt, then mixed with fresh chopped cilantro, tomato, onion and olive oil. When I ask if she’s going to add a green jalapeno pepper, she fixes me with a steely gaze. “ I’m not making pico de gallo.”
Two salsas: The first made of charred tomatoes and jalapenos, ground in a molcajete or mortar with fresh garlic and onion; the other, the classic chipotle sauce, made of 1/4 kilo chiles chipotles, sautéed one at a time, blended with cloves from a whole head of garlic that have been fried until golden.
Two guisos (stews): Guiso de pipian: A vegetarian “stew” of toasted pepitas or pumpkin seeds, blended with guajillo chiles, onion, garlic, and roasted tomatoes, simmered with vegetables such as string beans. Guiso pascal: Blanched almonds, pecans, sunflower seeds, and pepitas, ground with charred tomatoes; served with chicken or pork. Dona Elena scoops up a few nuts that have fallen: "Never eat anything off the floor," she says sternly.
Coffee flan: Made with raw sugar and a special instant Nescafe, Golden Selection Tueste Intenso, as well as sweetened condensed and evaporated milk. “When you cover it with aluminum foil, never put the dull side down because it will turn the flan dark.” She shows us how to unmold the flan by running a knife around the edge, then letting it sit in hot water momentarily before inverting it on a plate.
Before we leave, I ask Dona Elena if she watches a lot of shows on the Food Network. ‘Oh yes,” she says with a big smile. “I like all the chefs. Sometimes I don’t know what they’re saying, so I just make up my own recipes.” Now those would be worth tasting.