Like Water for Choclate uses Magical Realism to capture the transformative qualities of everyday food and drink into something more. Also consider reading (and enjoying) Joanne Harris' amazing Chocolat.
The first decade of a new century is the perfect time to launch change and embrace the future. And no European city has done that better than historic Madrid, Spain’s classic and captivating capital.
Working with the members’ of ASEPI, which include the best of the best among Spain’s universities, manufacturers, computer experts and skilled installers, the very new iPavement tiles have been laid in Madrid’s main square, la Puerta del Sol.
Each digital tile enables those in the Square to connect with the Internet and receive information about hotels, restaurants and culinary events in Madridand beyond. Now in place, this new technology has brought this historic Square forward into a future where the cities of tomorrow will become dynamic digital habitats, not merely residential domains.
The ancient Romanswho came to Spain in 214BC (and fell in love with the country as so many have) understood that roads were really about commerce.
Without smooth stone roads, Roman wagons full of goods could not move. Trade stopped.
Today the Internet is the new road of commerce. The insightful members of the ASEPI consortium understand that fact and so have laid new stones, using the innovative iPavement, to create a pathway to the future that can, for those with imagination, includes us all.
These amazing ‘stones of the future’ enable hotels and restaurants to move beyond traditional marketing beginning now. Their application points are nearly endless.
Many Americans are surprised when they learn that a beloved U.S. holiday, the Cinco de Mayo, is rarely celebrated in Mexico.
This can be a startling awareness as this fifth of May holiday is linked, in a somewhat confusing manner, to two separate events in Mexican history.
First off, the Cinco de Mayo holiday does NOT celebrate Mexico's independence from Spain. That event occurs on the sixteenth of September when the nation remembers Father Miguel Hidalgo who bravely rang his church bell and asked his fellow townspeople to claim their freedom from colonial control. His courage sparked the revolution that finally set Mexico free in 1821.
The beloved American Cinco de Mayo holiday honors a different event where Mexico once again for her independence from foreign powers. And herein lays an amazing tale of commerce, history, beach songs and creative marketing.
After Spain lost her hold on Mexico in 1821, many other European powers sought to replace her and control the rich resources of the nation, especially France.
This was supported by many of Mexico’s great landowners, who holding vast colonial land grants, feared change under the new constitution.
As the powers that be struggled to form a new and more just Mexico, France’s Napoleon III approached a young (and recently unemployed) Austrian Archduke Maximilian and his beautiful (and very talented) wife Carlota, asking if they would like to be the emperor and empress of Mexico.
There was only one big problem – no one asked the people of Mexico if they wanted an emperor and empress instead of elected officials. When the imposed, though naïve, new rulers arrived on Mexican soil with a supporting army, Mexican troops defended them initially in the Battle of Puebla on, you guessed it, May 5, 1862.
But France was determined that their expansive new foreign would be a success, including within it the southern American states when the Confederacy hopefully won the Civil War then raging to the north. To protect their plans, vast new numbers of French were sent to occupy Mexico.
The young Maximilian and his lovely wife believed they could bring enlightenment to Mexico and begin to issue rulings that angered their hard line conservative supporters who thought they would return colonial benefits, not overturn them.
Without their support, Napoleon III saw his dreams of an empire in the New World evaporating and quietly withdrew his supportive troops. The result was Maximilian was executed and beautiful Carlota went mad.
Mexico returned to its internal struggle for freedom and let the years of French occupation fade into history.
Sadly, freedom does not come easy for any nation whether it is America in the 1700s or Egypt today. There are always those who seek to take advantage of the disorder that change creates. One such individual in Mexican history was Porfirio Diaz, who had fought as a young general at the Battle of Pueblo against the French.
He levered his battlefield fame into a dictatorship that lasted from 1876 to 1911which provided some internal stability but limited political freedoms. Finally when the people could stand the oppression no longer, they rose up in a rebellion against the priviledged and favored that lasted for 10 bloody years.
Because of the violence, many Mexicansimmigrated to the United States, especially California. In seeking to express their heritage in a new country that had previously largely ignored its own internal hispanic legacy, they searched for an appropriate holiday.
As they had left Mexico while she was still fighting for freedom against the entitled and endowed, they could hardly select the 16th of September as a day of celebration. Sp why not celebrate the Cinco de Mayo instead?
And so a California ethnic holiday was created, but not a national one. That would only occur in the 1980s when the Mexican beer company Corona began exporting beer to the U.S. in 1979.
At first the product was not successful but after conducting marketing focus groups with male college students, they changed their image to embrace the Cinco de Mayo date as a day of fun, not the memory of a battle.
They supported this theme to include tropical Mexican beaches as captured in the songs of their new spokesperson, Jimmy Buffett of “Margaritaville” fame.
And the rest, as they say, is history – an American holiday with a history as rich and varied as the population of America. Hopefully this Cinco de Mayo this wealth of diversity, in both people and cuisine, will be remembered and honored by all as a treasure and never a libility.
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012
It’s Mardi Gras all over the world right now and no food says “Carnival!” quite like a bowl gumbo from a warm Louisiana kitchen. And no food better represents the diversity that is critical to the culinary world that we all enjoy each and every day.
American gumbo owes its first conception to the French settlers who colonized the southern region of the Mississippi River for King Louis XIV, hence the name "Louis-iana", in 1682. Being on a great river and near the Gulf of Mexico, they adapted their beloved bouillabaisse fish stew from the French port city of Marseille to include the local ingredients that were then available.
Home cooks who lived near the region's various waterways enriched their sea stew with crawfish, catfish, oysters, crab and shrimp. Those cooks who lived further inland added instead wild birds, deer, duck, squirrel, goose and boar instead – all flowing with the season’s availability.
The resulting hunting trips and journeys along the area’s many bayous and streams, led to the French colonists encountering the region’s first inhabitants, members of the Choctaw Indian nation. The tribe’s resourceful cooks shared their knowledge of file’ - a unique flavorful powder created from ground sassafras tree leaves, with the newly arrived Europeans. Everyone agreed the resulting difference in the stew was simply amazing.
As Louisiana expanded and grew in wealth, its cuisine continued to develope, embracing in a unique way all the influences that made it then and now one of America’s truly great cities.
Spanish influences added the tomato, still considered a poisonous fruit in the northern English colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut, as well as bell peppers, celery and onions.
Black slaves were soon brought from Africa to work in the vast landed cotton plantations and rice fields of the South in one of the darkest periods of American history. And though enslaved, many still remembered their homeland and added okra to flavor and thicken the stew. In fact, it is the Africa word for okra that gives gumbo its present name.
Many of the freed black slaves of New Orleans (yes, there were freed black slaves in the city and many ran very successful businesses) were known as outstanding cooks. Many spoke French and ran restaurants, bakeries and taverns – all adding to the elegance and flare that is still the hallmark of Mardi Gras today.
That unique style can be seen in how the freed black women of New Orleans worked around a restrictive and oppressive law that required all freed female slaves to wear a scarf or fabric tie around their head instead of the fashionable hats worn daily by the elegant white ladies of the City.
Working again with the ingredients at hand and their rich African heritage, these remarkable women created wrapped head turbans, called tignon, that were works of art and far more stunning than any milliner’s creation.
Today those head wraps form the basis of many of the much more elaborate head pieces worn in Mardi Gras paradesin Rio de Janeiro and around the world.
Similarly when file’ and okra were not available, these cooks reread their vaulued French cookbooks and created a roux of flour browned in pork lard that added color, texture and taste to the now legendary gumbo of Louisiana.
Later additions would include cayenne peppers, Tabasco and other hot seasonings, but to this day, the purist among southern cooks adds NO additional spices and depend on the essence of the base ingredients (along with the mandatory roux, okra or file’) to do the job.
Perhaps that simplicity is a lesson to us all as well as a reminder to do the simple with such flair and style that our efforts become as unique and as unforgettable as la belle New Orleans herself.
Laissez le Bon Temp Rouler! Longue vie Carnival!
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012
All things Spanish will only get hotter with the premiere of DreamWorks new movie Puss in Boots, starring Antonio Banderas as the elegant voice of the utterly unforgettable feline purrr-fect hero.
With lines like "I smell something familiar. Something dangerous. Something - breakfasty" and "I hate Mondays", what chef can't relate to this noble gato?
Add in magic beans and golden eggs and, well, this movie is sure to be a big hit worldwide with everyone be they child, parent or chef.
That said, innovative chefs everywhere know a great theme when they see it. And this year (and next), it is going to be all things Spanishbut with flare and surprise (Puss would so approve).
And speaking of breakfast and golden eggs, why not create exactly that with the amazing edible food spray from The Deli Garage. Applied with style (oh so Spanish), it's sure to create a never to be forgotten a la Ferran meal worthy of any chef's knowing smile.
Shouldn't we all then say "Ole!" and tip our hats to a great (and very funny) new DreamWorks film. Just don't forget your toque and BOOTS!
Post Note, October 28, 2011: Here are several additional great lines fromPuss in Boots that are truly worth of Chef and supportive staff...
"Is it hot in here? Or is just ME?"
"Fear me, if you dare."
"You made the cat (substitute the word 'chef' here) angry. You do not want to make the cat (chef) angry." - followed by a swip by something sharp and great personal embarrassment.
Post Note, October 30, 2011: If you still doubt that things Hispanic will be a hot trend in the coming year, check out the well dressed Japanese business men dancing their away across Mexico in Genki Sudo's World Order viral music video. The tightly choreographed moves are almost equal to any performed by the staff of a well run kitchen. Bravo gentlemen!
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2011
Our profession is not a mere job, done for dollars. Rather it is a journey about life’s meaning learned along the way every day.
Now there is an outstanding new movie, The Way, starringMartin Sheen and directed by his own son, Emilio Estevez shares that experience step by step, frame by frame.
Sheen plays a busy corporate father - too busy to be a father. On learning that his only son has died while walking the pilgrims’ path on Spain’s famed Camino de Compostela, Sheen’s character Tom decides to complete the journey to honor his lost son’s memory.
Among the way, among the welcoming plates and glasses of Spanish food and wine that he’s offered, the grieving father finds more the past, he finds the very ingredients of meaning that are sadly missing in his own life.
Those of us who have spent a lifetime within the industry know that what we do is about more than mere profit or product produced.
It is about an alchemy that involves our very lives, the meaning of our days well spent – a magic made from the everyday, dish by dish, choice by choice. Like the pilgrims in the movie The Way, we also walk a path of discovery, a journey of exploration that in the end is about who we have chosen to become through the amazing medium of our profession.
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2011
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at 1:57PM 
The ancient Romans who came to Spain in 214BC (and fell in love with the country as so many have) understood that roads were really about commerce.
