No sweat
Published October 24, 2009 by Rachel Laudan
Really, grinding’s no sweat. Put on a pretty dress, find ribbons for your hair, layer on the jewelry, hang your hat in the corner of the kitchen and buckle down to several hours at the metate (grindstone).
This mid-20th century print of a happy grinder in the collection of the Soumaya Museum would be reason enough to buy the latest special edition of Arqueología Mexicana, always a fine magazine put out by the Mexican National Institute for Archeology and History.
But the reason to include this print is not the maize (nxtamal) being ground but the dried chiles in the bowl in the left front of the picture. This special edition is dedicated to chiles. Just when you think that there’s nothing new to say about chiles, the editor Enrique Vela, manages to pull together all kinds of interesting stuff:
sculptures of chiles from prehistoric sites, photos of growing, selling and preparing chiles from the twentieth century, a really good visual catalog of chiles with all their names and the parts of Mexico where they are now grown, chile history, chile cartoons, chiles in the world, chiles in Mexican cooking.
Well worth picking up a copy if you are in Mexico.
And sorry, all these sites are in Spanish as is this special edition of the magazine. I know that’s frustrating for many readers. But I do want to spread the word about all the very interesting publications on Mexican food that appear in Mexico.
Filed under Food History,Life in Mexico,Mexican Cuisine
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Looks like a great issue, Rachel, thanks for letting us know. If you have a chance to pick up and extra copy for me, I’ll gladly pagarte martes por una copia hoy. I’ll be down again soon, must keep the car legal…
the chile book looks amazing – it’s bound to be made available in english eventually (most printed material gets translated these days)
That is a wonderful picture – just what some food-romantics like to imagine ‘getting back to nature’ (aka natural foods) is all about?
PS – for a more realistic version of how it’s (still) done in Africa, here’s a picture from Africa – 19th. Century, but valid still in some parts of the continent (first picture):
http://dianabuja.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/cuisines-and-crops-of-africa-19th-century-zambezi-river-watershed-in-southern-africa/