About 35 years ago, when Lourdes was still a child, she watched the huge pots cooking pozole over the burning firewood
Pot with pozole cooking over firewood in the traditional way.
Jazmin Stengel. – The use of new technologies has led to the end of cooking over firewood. In the past, pozole was cooked for the whole block, now it is ordered to take away. On New Year’s Eve Chapala families still get together for dinner. On the one hand there are those who cook at home, but most choose to order something already prepared. The truth is that the flavor of the extinct pozole a la leña only lives on in the memories of the older ones.
About 35 years ago, when Lourdes was still a child, she used to watch the huge pots cooking pozole over the burning firewood. «All along the street there were bonfires,» she said, smiling and stretching out her hand as if pointing to something that has no end.
It was the older ladies who every year were in charge of cooking the traditional pozole, while the men were in charge of gathering the firewood and lighting the fire. The preparation began the day before, soaking the corn kernels so that they would swell.
“This practice kept the family awake all night, since the secret was to keep the fire burning,” stated Lourdes, who said she had learned the recipe from her aunts since she was a child. “Nowadays this is no longer done, now everyone cooks with gas, which makes the process faster, but it doesn’t taste the same,» said the cook.
These days, it is unusual to find families that still gather around a bonfire in the middle of the street as in the past when even the food and drinks were for everyone on the block. «You’d walk by and they’d invite you to stay,» Lourdes recalled with her childhood neighbors.
Most modern families now prefer the convenience and the comfort of their own home, making use of new digital technologies and ordering the family dinner to go.
Translated by Sydney Metrick
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