1	Escape Exploring the past at Easter island. read more...
2	Fashion Spanish influences on New York’s runways. read more...
3	Salud Adamari López shares her breast cancer battle. read more...
4	Spice Chef Marcela focuses on Mexican flavor. read more...
5	Driver’s Seat Our Fall Auto Preview looks at some exciting twists and turns in the automotive world. read more...

spice

spirited Cooking

With a focus on fresh Mexican food and creative approaches, Chef Marcela stays true to tradition and mixes drinks with dinner.

Mexican food in the U.S. gets a bad rap as greasy or heavy. Chef Marcela Valladolid, a cookbook author and host of Relatos con Sabor on Discovery en Español, wants to turn that thinking on its side. There are plenty of very traditional recipes, she says, that highlight garden-freshness.
Chef Marcela’s goal is spreading the word about fresh Mexican food. “Mexicans feel that I need to tell [the audience] that it’s just not mariachi music, [and food] drowning in yellow cheese ... I think this huge Mexican population in the U.S. wants to be represented accurately in terms of food.”
The chef, who is a native of the Baja California border region, focuses on fresh Mexican food with an emphasis on easy creativity, organic foods and shopping locally. Think slow cooked ribs in mole sauce, strawberry tartlets made with Mexican cookies and piloncillo (unrefined sugar cane), or chile BBQ ribs. Like her approach, her recipes cross borders. She also recommends using easy-to-find market variety ingredients to recreate traditional dishes.
For Chef Marcela, cooking is also a way to bring an emphasis back onto home life. And in her home, tequila was a sipping drink, enjoyed with a slice of orange instead of the typical lime. It’s all a part of her organic approach. “I grew up with it,” she says. “My dad would sip tequila straight. For me, it’s very organic to infuse it into food. ... Food is so representative of who we are.”
Growing up, her relatives would produce tequila in their home in Guadalajara and send her family bottle after unlabeled bottle. She learned at the knee of her grandfather, who infused Mexican food with French techniques. Inspired by the family love of good food, Chef Marcela took tutelage under the aunt for whom she was named. Aunt Marcela, also a chef, opened one of the first cooking schools in Baja California, where Chef Marcela was a teacher’s assistant as a teenager. Food became her passion and personal enterprise.
Today, the single mom juggles a myriad of projects. Her cookbook, Fresh Mexico: 100 Simple Recipes for True Mexican Flavor, is a testament to healthy Mexican cooking She hosts a TV show, she runs a catering company, teaches private culinary classes in Tijuana and San Diego, and will soon cross over to English-language television. And just recently, she appeared on the Today Show, teaching the hosts to cook a recipe that’s been in her family for generations and apricot and tequila salsa.

Business of Brews

By Idy Fernandez

There are white wines that taste best with fish but not cream sauces, and reds that if paired with the wrong dish, you might as well be committing a cardinal sin.
But what about beer? Are you a budding sommelier but not exactly a brewmaster? Do you assume whatever is on draft that goes with pizza and just about everything in between?
If you’re 21 or older, you can enroll in Florida International University’s (FIU) Intro to Brewing Sciences and learn more than just which lagers, ales and beers go best with which dish.
Taught through the university’s School of Hospitality, the class aims to expose students to the basic science behind home-brewing beer as well as to the fermentation process and the history behind certain brews. In its first year, there were about three undergraduate students, while this year the class closed at 40 students, with 10 on a waiting list. This year marked the first time the course was offered on a graduate level, and about 25 students filled the room on a recent Hispanic visit.
“It opens the door for creativity and is a learning experience, so you know your product,” says 35-year-old Jose Taveras, who hails from the Dominican Republic and is pursuing a master’s degree in hospitality.
In a hands-on lab, the students brew a variety of ales using different brewing styles and bittering agents. The lab also allows students to apply the scientific principles and operations of craft breweries, commercial breweries, and micro-brewery technology.
“Being in hospitality, [the students] are going to be working where part of the business is merchandising beverages,” says Dr. Barry Gump, the courses’ professor. “If you know about your product, how it’s made, the quality aspects, it all makes you a better host.”

The Bar

Consider stocking your bar, or pantry, with some of these picks.

1. Corzo
Boasting twice the agave of other tequilas, Corzo is a new clean tequila that’s a creative alternative to vodka in cocktails such as martinis.

2. Jose cuervo
Reserva de la Familia by Jose Cuervo is very sweet, almost like rum, says Chef Marcela. Great for sipping, the tequila is also well suited as a dessert topping. Try mixing it into some softened ice cream or drizzling it over chopped fruit.

3. gran patron
For cooking, the subtle flavor of Patron tequila blanco is Chef Marcela’s pick. Consider using it as a substitute for vodka in a vodka shrimp dish, mixing it into a crème anglaise, or as an ingredient in vinaigrette.

4. dos lunas
A specialty sipping tequila, Dos Lunas Gran Reserva is an extra añejo that’s
aged for 10 years in Spanish sherry oask casks.