So Far, So Good
Cooking With a Guatemalan Couple
By Lindsay Sterling
I met a young Guatemalan couple at
the grocery store. The young man, E., was fair-skinned and dark-haired. The
young woman, D., was exceptionally short and had the brown skin of indigenous
Mayans. I asked E. and D. if they’d teach me how to cook their favorite
Guatemalan meal from home. To my delight, they said yes.
They grew up living in wooden huts on
subsistence farms about ten miles from each other in the mountains of El Quiché,
raising chickens, cows, and goats, and growing vegetables. From the age of two
or three, D. worked with her mother to form tortillas by hand. They made the dough
out of corn that they had grown, cut off the cob, soaked in lime, hulled, rinsed,
and ground. By the age of 11, D. was cooking the tortillas for her family by
herself on the comal, a round flat
griddle. Now, at the age of 24, her hands move as fast as a hummingbird’s wings
as she turns and pats each ball of dough into a disc. She guesses she can make
about 60 tortillas an hour. Each tortilla is amazingly perfect: round, flat, smooth,
a quarter of an inch thick, and soft.
But why would you need that many
tortillas? I wonder. E. explains that typically about twenty family members
gathered for each meal. In his case there were ten siblings, his parents, and
many nephews and nieces. They ate tortillas as part of breakfast, lunch, and
dinner. Their tortillas were usually purple, not cream colored, because they
were made out of a purple variety of corn. If each member of the family had
three tortillas per meal, I realize, the family cook would be making 180
tortillas per day.
In my kitchen, while D. is filling
up a basket of steaming tortillas, E. is sharpening my knives using a technique
his father had taught him. Then he breaks down a whole chicken with ease,
whacking through the bones with graceful authority. Three hours later, an
appetizer emerges: fried tortillas topped with a grated beet salad, diced green
beans, slices of hard-boiled egg, and chilmol,
a red sauce made of boiled and blended fresh chilis and tomatoes, onions and
chicken broth. Next they serve giant bowls of country-style soup with large
chunks of bone-in chicken, carrots, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, and chopped
herbs. To go with the soup they serve a spicy mash of cooked fresh tomato and
chili pepper; lime wedges, and of course, tortillas. E. rips two into pieces and
submerges them in his soup.
Three years ago, E. and D. had a
baby in Guatemala. It became apparent that they needed a home of their own.
They estimated that they’d need 80,000 quetzals (about $10,400) to buy land and
build a humble house in their area, which was getting more and more developed. The
only job E. could find was chauffeuring. Working morning to night, he would
earn the equivalent of $7 or $8 dollars per day. A cousin living in the United
States suggested they work in the U.S., make what they needed, and go back
home. E. and D. decided to try it. They left their son with E.’s parents, walked
for 45 days from Guatemala into Texas, surviving 21 days in the desert with only
water – no food. They rode a bus to his cousin, who helped him get a job as a
cook in a restaurant. E. and D. miss their son dearly, but – so far, so good – they
are saving money for a home.
Click the previous posts listed at right for the recipes.
Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2015
