The Dinner Goddess

What we can learn
By Lila Shaw Lash

For all the good chefs and food historians, there are still a handful of the true greats.

They are the preservers of a culinary history that might have been forgotten, the ones responsible for introducing the rest of us to completely new ways to eat, the ones who remind us with their humanity and their character, that we all have so much to learn and to discover. As a chef and foodie, I am always watching for these chances to learn, to absorb, to revolutionize how I cook and why I cook.

For me, there is something incredibly soul-satisfying about the true Mexican cuisine—the diversity across regions, the celebratory gathering around immense feasts, the absence of pretension and abundance of authenticity, the melding of indigenous and European influences. The great chroniclers of this cuisine have much to share, and taking the time to hear what they have to say and to celebrate our local culinary heritage is a gift and a blessing. Once in a blue moon, I happen to be at the right place at the right time and, this past week, I was.


To begin with, to celebrate Mexican cuisine is to celebrate a simple cuisine based on perfect ingredients—the perfect crema, the perfect melting cheese, the perfect corn kernel. When you take away the elaborate layers of French cuisine or the modern inventiveness of nouvelle Spanish or American cuisine, what you have left relies even more heavily on the perfection of the tomato or the ripeness of the queso cotija. These ingredients are sacred and should be treated accordingly. Smell and touch everything, pick things that are produced locally and are made with the highest quality ingredients, and when it doesn’t meet your standards—grow it or make it yourself. Mexico is the perfect place for this as open-air markets and small farms are still easy enough to find. We could all learn a thing or two and culture our own cremas, without fillers or artificial thickeners—kind of like your grandmother’s sourdough starter in the back of the refrigerator. Try to make your own tortillas by hand, with masa ground from corn, and taste the difference—you’ll never be content with the ones made by machine again. Let your palate develop and don’t be afraid to be picky—we can only hope to hold each other to much higher standards.

In doing so, we must also begin to hold our relationship with the planet to a higher standard. Mexico struggles with regional water shortages, polluted oceans and rivers and thick smog in many of the major metropolitan areas, yet Mexicans recycle more than you imagine. Plastic bags are never used once, the cold beer bought at a tiendita is exchanged with empty bottles and pieces of aluminum are always saved; nevertheless we all continue to play a role in the drastic changes taking place on our planet. Start by turning off the lights when you leave a room and composting your organic waste; then maybe you can build your new homes with solar energy, rainwater collection and a kitchen garden. We all play a role, so we have to begin to see our food through the eyes of our planet and take some action.

In truth, the Mexican cuisine is regional and beautifully diversified, so push yourself to explore a little bit. When you travel around Mexico to the Pacific coast or the Michoacan Highlands, to the Yucatan or down to Oaxaca or Chiapas, seek out the regional specialties and do your part to preserve this beautiful art. For a guide, I recommend anything written by the dueña herself, Diana Kennedy—Cuisines of Mexico, My Mexico, From My Mexican Kitchen. She is part chef, part anthropologist, part planet-steward. We have much to be thankful for with her 50+ years of preservation and conservation. I shudder to think what we would all be eating if she hadn’t sat down and chronicled the regional cuisines of Mexico. I remember my mother making us a cazuela of pechugas con rajas from the first edition of Cuisines of Mexico. I remember my extended family’s repeated holiday request for Sra Kennedy’s budin de elote, made popular at the Austin establishment, Fonda San Miguel.

These are the things that I will always be grateful for—my generation is getting its chance to enjoy this cuisine, the regional foods are still thriving, and I have been able to learn a little more about my role in keeping alive one of the planet’s rich culinary traditions. Gracias por todos.

Lila Shaw Lash is a chef involved with The Dinner Goddess, a personal chef and catering business for clients in San Miguel de Allende. For more information, write to lila@dinnergoddess.com  or visit www.dinnergoddess.com.