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A Taste of Oaxaca: an interview with chef Susana Trilling
really, really hard to get some of the ingredients there,” says Trilling. “I did a version of a little bit of Mexican, a little bit of Texan, a little bit of Creole there. I also did some food consulting. Then, when I came over here [Mexico], I had to almost forget what I knew and just start over! For example, making a basic tortilla. I thought you just used masa, which is like a powder, and you add water to it. Well, here you actually learn how to plant the corn, take the corn off the cob and soak it, and learn how to make real tortillas out of real, dried corn. That was a major revelation for me.” Her husband and many of the locals of Oaxaca helped her gain knowledge in the area of actually growing the produce needed for many of her dishes. “I really learned a lot about that end of the food chain,” says Trilling. “I think that has really helped me a lot, too, in finding the origins and the history of the food and where things come from. It is just fascinating to me.” Trilling has now lived in Oaxaca for 15 years, after deciding she really didn’t want to live in the States. “I really wasn’t sure where I wanted to live,” she says. “I thought I might live in Thailand, but I kind of had this awakening one day that I should go to Mexico. I would be following my roots, it was a lot like Thailand but closer to home. It made more sense to me in a personal way. I had been to Oaxaca before and volunteered at a school for disabled kids. I decided to come back here and I ended up staying.” So what are her favorite dishes? She claims estofado de pollo (chicken stew) is her all-time favorite, along with mole, and masa. “I really enjoy working with the masa, making tortillas, making empañadas,” she says. “I also like, in a wider scope, grilling foods, making gumbo, making barbecue sauces! Making Texas barbecue. I still have a lot of those tastes from my past.” Speaking of the past, Trilling had a very humble start in Oaxaca learning to work the land and survive as a farmer with her husband on the ranch they named Rancho Aurora. “The locals were very nice,” recalls Trilling. “I’ve learned a tremendous amount from them. I have learned practically everything I know from them, including the language. I am totally grateful for that and I feel indebted to them. We have a lot of people working with us and supporting us and I think the local people saw that we were working very hard and that we built our own house and [cooking] school. They just saw the whole 15-year journey. Neither of us came here with money. We had to work and build up to this. With farming, it is both good and bad. Lots of things have happened. It’s the same with the school. Everybody is pretty nice, and without them I could never have done this.” As for the cooking school named Seasons of My Heart Cooking School, which she established in Oaxaca to supplement their farming income, it has grown from teaching a few local women to presenting traditional Oaxacan cooking techniques to people from all over the globe. “The Cooking School was started completely out of necessity,” explains Trilling who adds that the school offers one-day, weekend, and week-long courses. “It is really hard to live as a farmer and support yourself. I also had a son to support [she now has two sons]. I felt I really needed to start working again in food. So I started to teach. A friend of mine organized all of these people together for me to start teaching them. It went from just teaching local women who wanted to learn about pizza and brownies, barbecue, and things like that to teaching Mexican cooking. “There were some people staying with us who wanted to learn Mexican cooking. By that time, I had learned the language and enough about the food to be able to teach some dishes. As I taught, I realized that was the best way to learn. Then I started on the book. First, I started on a little book for an article I did for Chili Pepper Magazine, then we produced it into a book — I called it My Search for the Seventh Mole. |
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