Visiting Mexico City not too long ago, I spent time with two women, Araceli Piña and Susana Rangel Gutierrez—neighbors, good friends, and great cooks. They live in Azcapotzalco, a community with ancient roots, once a leafy suburb of Mexico City, swallowed up years ago by the city's unremitting outward expansion, now a post-industrial urban neighborhood that not many tourists make it to. Cooking at home with Susana and Araceli, I got to know the two women a little bit better, and I asked a lot of questions about what food means to them and to their families. They seemed kind of amused by the whole thing, but happy to talk about what they love doing. Cooking, I found out, is what brought these two friends together in the first place—and what has provided them both, at different times, consolation, a livelihood, and a sure sense of their place in the world. I'm forever trying to get to the bottom of what makes a food culture like Mexico's so consistently excellent. How do Mexican cooks, from housewives to high-end chefs, receive and impart that incredible wealth of knowledge and skill? In the kitchens of these two extraordinary cooks—who happen to consider themselves perfectly ordinary—I set out to better understand. —Beth Kracklauer
The market where Araceli and Susana do their shopping, in Azcapotzalco's bustling main business district, is housed in a cavernous public building lined in gleaming white tile. Outside, indigenous people from all over Mexico State arrive early in the morning to sell produce, much of it foraged—edible plants like quelites and huanzontle that have been sold on or very near this spot since long before Cort¿s stormed Tenochtitlan. Inside the market, what a scene: gorgeous displays of produce, meat, fish, cheese, purply-black dried chiles, massive rippled sheets of chicharrón (you can see some of that ethereal fried pork rind in the background of this photo, behind the ladies). There are also stalls turning out tortas (sandwiches) and fresh juices and tacos stuffed with juicy pork carnitas that you can eat as you allow the current of shoppers to carry you through the maze of market stalls.
When I visited the market, on a Saturday, I followed Araceli and Susana around as they called on their favorite vendors. At a stand selling dried chiles and prepared mole pastes, Susana nodded gravely and said, "I know who to go to. At this place, they don't wet their chiles to weigh down the scale." At the fishmonger, Araceli was thrilled to find a fish called extraviado. The name translates literally as "lost," and the fish is, in fact, hard to find, with a very brief season; the fishmonger had just one for sale that day, caught off Veracruz, he told us. "It's very rich, but with a delicate flavor," Araceli said. "The other sellers won't have this, not extraviado. The fish here is always the best, very fresh. And the prices are reasonable."
When I visited the market, on a Saturday, I followed Araceli and Susana around as they called on their favorite vendors. At a stand selling dried chiles and prepared mole pastes, Susana nodded gravely and said, "I know who to go to. At this place, they don't wet their chiles to weigh down the scale." At the fishmonger, Araceli was thrilled to find a fish called extraviado. The name translates literally as "lost," and the fish is, in fact, hard to find, with a very brief season; the fishmonger had just one for sale that day, caught off Veracruz, he told us. "It's very rich, but with a delicate flavor," Araceli said. "The other sellers won't have this, not extraviado. The fish here is always the best, very fresh. And the prices are reasonable."
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