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
As the meal took shape, other family members began assembling in the next room—Monserrat, Susana's 23-year-old daughter, and her boyfriend, El Deseo; Gerardo, 22, Susana's son (pictured here, center), and his girlfriend, Mariana. They knew their mother was making some of their favorite foods. Their father, a security guard, was at work that day, but there would be plenty for him, too, when he returned home later that night. Susana looked on proudly as Gerardo, who is enrolled in a culinary course and plans to become a chef, put the finishing touches on some of the dishes—though she refused to take any credit for teaching him to cook. "I learned from television," he told me, smiling wryly. "Iron Chef!" Still, he's helped his mother in the kitchen for years, beginning when she had a business selling quesadillas, gorditas, and tortas, and now in her current venture, selling tamales from a cart at the entrance to their apartment complex. They also cater events together. "Last week it was a quinceañera, cooking for 300 people," Susana told me. Susana learned by watching her own mother, who was a vendor of chiles rellenos and other foods outside a nearby factory.
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