Mexico City: Reading Circle, Friendship and Bacalao

Reed and I are fortunate to have been invited to join a Reading Circle that meets one Wednesday a month, led by one of Mexico's best known men of letters. In the spirit of the season, for December he selected El principito, "The Little Prince."

Mexico takes the Advent season, the four Sundays leading up to Christmas, very seriously. The Saint's Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Patron Saint of Mexico, is celebrated on December 12. Beginning December 16, Posadas, commemorating Joseph and Mary's Journey to Bethlehem, are held on the nine evenings preceding Christmas, during which devout families make a novena by reciting the rosary on each of the nine nights; in traditional communities, young people taking the role of Joseph and Mary knock on neighbors' doors and, rebuffed at every house, continue their search for an inn; all this is, of course, followed by neighborhood and family fiestas. Pastorelas are performed throughout Advent. Suffice it to say, not a whole heckuva lot gets done work-wise during the month of December in Mexico!

So it's not surprising that the five women members of the Reading Circle decided to get together the evening before the December meeting to prepare Bacalao, the dried cod stew that is Mexico's traditional Christmas Eve family dinner. What a pleasure for me to participate in a women's get-together!

Women Get Together in the Kitchen

As she greeted us, our hostess Ángeles handed us each a white chef's apron, and we got right to work. I learned how to roast tomatoes on the comal, the traditional Mexican skillet used to prepare tortillas. But I learned that the comal is also useful for roasting tomatoes and chiles poblano.

Comals toasting tortillas and a 'roast' of mushrooms, small onions and chiles.
Six-burner stove tops are not uncommon in Mexican kitchens.  
(Photo: © Alvin Starkman 2008, in
Authentic Mexican cuisine at Oaxaca's La Casa de los Sabores cooking school)

Roasting and skinning chiles poblano is a skill that has absolutely eluded me, so I was delighted to learn the tricks of the trade, as it were! Unfortunately, I was so engrossed with roasting tomatoes and peeling off their skins that I forgot to take a picture.  Fortunately, I found this photo of an identical, well-used comal on the Internet.

While I roasted and peeled tomatoes, Heidi set about dicing onions.

Heidi was born in Mexico, but her German parents immigrated to Mexico after World War II. Verónica, the young woman who befriended  and invited us to join the Reading Circle, is the granddaughter of a German immigrant. Our hostess, Ángeles, is Spanish-born and arrived in Mexico as the bride of her Mexican husband forty years ago.

The grandfather of our dear friend in Pátzcuaro, whose family roots are in Chihuahua, was a Mennonite from Switzerland. Two decades ago, my translator at Pemex who remains my friend, is Japanese-Mexican, whose grandfather immigrated to Mexico. Actually, now she's Japanese-Mexican-American, since she and her family live in Denver (her husband is a U.S. citizen by virtue of his New Jersey-born mother, who also came to Mexico as a bride and has now lived here for close to fifty years).

All of which reminds us not only that Mexico is itself quite a 'melting pot' but that national boundaries and ethnic identities are growing ever-more fluid.

Once the onions were sautéed and the tomatoes roasted, peeled and pressed through a sieve, they were added to the onions. 

Pureed tomatoes and onions simmer

While tomatoes and onions simmered gently, the other women set about picking apart the dried cod that our hostess had already soaked. Verónica and I undertook the task of dicing an entire bunch of flat-leafed parsley. The seriousness of this task is not to be underestimated. 

When I showed Ángeles my first attempt, she gave me a stern look, "Más fino," she ordered. When Verónica's first attempt received the same stern judgment, I offered to take over parsley-chopping to Verónica's evident relief. I found that by making four passes—turning the chopping board 90-degrees after each pass—the final result passed Ángeles' exacting standard. 

Dried Cod ready to be picked apart

As the photo shows, the meticulous work of picking apart dried cod is definitely best done by a group of women chatting companionably about other things. We learned about the experiences of adult children engaged in work and study outside Mexico: one is in graduate school at Harvard; another works for the International Monetary Fund in New York; still others work in Europe—in Spain and Germany. This is such a cosmopolitan, well-traveled group that our participation is not only special but a genuine pleasure.

Picking Dried Cod
Left to right: Ángeles, our hostess; Heidi, reaching for more dried cod;
Emmy, listening intently to Verónica, who invited us to join the group.

With the cod well picked, the conversation turned to cooking. Ángeles brought out treasured cookbooks. In addition to her well-worn Spanish cookbook, to my surprised delight, equally well-worn copies of Julia Child and The Joy of Cooking were part of the trove!

Ángeles sharing her Spanish cookbook with Emmy

The women's international palate is quite impressive.

 Bacalao: Ángeles added small, boiled potatoes, Spanish green olives,  and the
entire bunch of finely chopped parsley to the simmering base of onions and tomatoes.

When all that remained was for the Bacalao to sit overnight to let the flavors marry, we chatted some more before calling it a night.

Reading Circle

The next evening we arrived at 6:00 PM for the Reading Circle. When we walked in, the buffet table was already set up for our cena, supper, which we would enjoy after about an hour of discussion.

Everyone was there: Ángeles, our charming Spanish-born hostess; Emmy, English teacher and perspicacious wife of a professor of philosophy at an elite Mexican university; Heidi, nutritionist, source of spirited, no-nonsense insights; Verónica, gregarious attorney specializing in Family Law and networker par excellence; Aureliano, delightfully cultured retired businessman; husband Reed, and Eusebio Ruvalcaba, 'el profe', the professor, the Reading Circle's leader.

Mexicans make free use of titles and nicknames; el profe combines both. El profe wears his considerable erudition with a patient courtesy that nurtures the best in all of us.

Deep in Discussion (left to right): Aureliano, Emmy, Ángeles, Heidi (arm only), Reed

The group's discussion of The Little Prince was sensitive and insightful. As a group, we were touched by the vulnerability of the Flower and by el Zorro, the Fox, asking The Prince to 'tame me', then memorably describing what it means to be tamed. We explored the themes of attachment and separation and together we recalled the child, la niña and el niño, inside ourselves. At times, the comments were vaguely biographical, providing rare glimpses into the personal lives of our fellow readers.

At the break, the Bacalao commanded the place of honor on the buffet table.

Bacalao in front of the Poinsettia flanked by plate of melon slices interspersed with prosciutto, another plate of cheese and crackers and another of butter cookies. Out of sight is a basket of deliciously fresh, thick-sliced Mexican white bread.

For dessert, I brought d'Anjou pears baked in apple cider (real cider, pressed in Mexico!), with a filling of maple syrup (we 'import' it from Trader Joe's), chopped walnuts, golden raisins, cinnamon and nutmeg—easy to prepare and absolutely delicious! Verónica brought scrumptious butter cookies ... such a repast!

Aureliano and el profe (right) helping themselves

Over the Bacalao, the conversation ranged far and wide, encouraged perhaps by the champagne contributed by Aureliano. When the group begins talking like this, we sit back and listen with rapt attention to viewpoints otherwise inaccessible to us.

So enjoying a communal supper with new friends, we ushered in the Holiday Season in Mexico. In the same spirit, to all of Jenny's readers:

Season's Greetings With Warmest Good Wishes for a 

Healthy and Fruitful New Year!