How to Teach Your Child to Eat

A recipe for beans. Wines to make you cry. And my favorite thing in my kitchen.

Moving briskly through Merida’s bustling market my mother pounced on a shiny metal plate and cup. They were bright magenta. “Living with real Mexican people is going to be such a wonderful experience!” she cried as she paid for them. Next she sought out the hammock maker, where we purchased my new bed. Carrying our packages through the city’s dusty streets, we arrived at a small house. A skinny dog came out to greet us, followed by my new friend Rosita and her parents. Mom waved a cheery good-bye, called, “I’ll come to get you in a week,” and headed back to the hotel.

I was eight. My parents, big believers in the educational nature of travel, had taken me to the Yucatan for an instructive visit to the Mayan ruins. There they discovered, to their great joy, that our guide’s daughter was just my age. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, they thought, if I could experience Mexican life while they went on to Guatamala? I would learn Spanish! I would learn the culture! I would have a wonderful time! (Nobody, I might mention, consulted me about this splendid plan.)

Now, looking at my woebegone face, Rosita’s mother patted my shoulder and asked, “Tienes hambre?” She made little eating gestures with her fingers in front of her face. I nodded. ”Ven,” she said, taking my hand.

We went up the street to a small stand where a woman was constructing tacos. My temporary Mom handed me one and watched as I took the first bite of cochinita pibil, orange-marinated pork that had been steamed in banana leaves. I tasted the sweetness of the meat, felt the pulse of onion and the sharp zing of chiles and then the high clean notes of cilantro cutting through them to be tempered, finally, by the soothing sturdiness of the corn. Rosita and her mother, studying the way the flavors played across my face, erupted into smiles. In that moment I knew that I was going to be okay.

It was a long week. I missed my parents terribly. But I did learn some Spanish, and I did discover how other people lived. Mostly, however, I discovered the food of Mexico.

The meals we had been served in the hotel were bland tourist stuff -Continental cuisine whose sole intention was to offend the fewest number of people. In Rosita’s house we ate rice and beans, freshly laid eggs, racy stews and endless tortillas. But on the streets I truly tasted Mexico: In the roasted ears of corn, the carnitas, the paletas. While it was not the lesson my parents had intended, I learned that a country’s native culture won’t come looking for you in fine hotels and fancy restaurants. It is in the streets where you really experience a foreign land.

Last week, in San Miguel, I was acutely conscious of this. People took me to - or sent me to - many of the fancy restaurants that are all over this city. “Our restaurants are wonderful!” they cried.

Honestly, they were fine. Wonderful? Not so much. What was wonderful was the food I ate in the modest unassuming places that are everywhere in this city. My favorite was Carnitas Bautista.

It felt, in every way, anchored in this place, and in a world where Nobu, Jean-Georges and Ducasse own strings of restaurants stretching from New York and London to Shanghai and Sydney, upscale eating has turned into a kind of international monoculture. These are restaurants where the tables are covered with cloths from India and set with china from France, glass from Venice, pottery from Japan and flowers from Chile. The food arrives, by airfreight, from a dozen different countries. Given the similarity of these restaurants, those who are eager for a taste of authentic local flavor would be wise to turn to the streets.

Sadly, I did not become fluent in Spanish in my week with Rosita, but I did learn two things. One was Rosita’s favorite jump rope refrain: “Buenas dias, no hay tortillas. Buenas noches, no hay frijoles.” The other was how to make frijoles; a big pot of beans was always sitting on her mother’s stove, and we’d run in and out of the kitchen, scooping warm beans onto tortillas whenever hunger hit.

Rosita’s Mother’s Frijoles
Epazote
2 cups black beans
2 chopped onions
1 chile, sliced (optional)
4 tablespoons animal fat
Salt to taste
Unsweetened chocolate, grated (optional)

There are two essential elements here. The first is epazote, an herb that grows wild all over the Yucatan (and also in Manhattan’s Central Park). It has a musky, faintly oregano-like flavor, and is supposed to have a carminative effect; nobody around Merida ever made a pot of beans without throwing in a few sprigs. And the second is a healthy amount of lard; in Merida black beans were not a vegetarian delight.

Wash 2 cups of black beans and pick through them, discarding stones and broken beans. Put them in a pot (preferably a ceramic one), cover them with a few inches of water and leave them to soak overnight.

In the morning drain the water. Put the beans back in the pot with 6 cups of water and a few sprigs of epazote. Add a couple of chopped onions, a chile if you feel like it, and about 4 tablespoons of whatever kind of animal fat you have leftover from cooking. Pork or bacon fat is wonderful; duck fat is even better. Bring it to a boil, turn the heat down, cover loosely and let it burble happily to itself until the beans are soft. This can take anywhere from an hour to three, depend on the age of your beans. (Beans that have been sitting around the shelf gathering dust will be more reluctant to relax.)

When they’re done, add salt to taste. Rosita’s mother sometimes grated a little unsweetened chocolate in as well, and I’ve been known to add a bit of soy sauce or cream sherry as well..

These are great sprinkled with queso fresco and wrapped in warm corn tortillas.

I just came upon a whole trove of wine brochures from the early eighties, and I thought I’d share them with you. This first is from Draper and Esquin which was, at the time, San Francisco’s premier wine merchant; looking at the prices makes me want to weep!

I’m back in New York City for a while, and I have to admit that what I miss most about my Spencertown kitchen is my serpentine counter.

When I asked for marble counters, everyone told me I was crazy. "They will pit," they said, "they will stain."

But I didn't care. I'd always dreamed of marble counters to roll out my pie dough. I'd had granite before, and I didn't like it; such a cold, unforgiving stone. I love the soft warmth of marble - and I kind of liked the idea that it would show wear, change over time.

So I got my green marble. Or at least I thought I did. It's lovely stone, and it's great for rolling out pastry, or kneading bread, or making pasta. But I've had it more than twenty years - and despite slamming burning hot pots onto it, slicing with sharp knives and spilling endless foods from coffee to red wine to beet juice - it looks as new now as it did when it was installed.

Turns out it's not marble after all. It's Vermont green serpentine - and it is, without any doubt, my favorite thing about my kitchen.

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