Cooking Lesson #1 - Chiles Relleños

I should have been concerned when in the car, on the way to the Maestra's house, she explained that spicy foods were good for the digestive system. Uh-oh.


Don’t get me wrong, I can handle slightly more than the average Canadian when it comes to spicy. However, I can't and don't enjoy when the spicy gets to the level of lip burning, permanent taste bud damage kind of spicy. When friends launch into how they order a special spicy sauce that you have to sign a disclaimer for and is banned in Canada, my mind wanders and I start to consider painting the ceiling beige.

There are two students for the class, myself and an acquaintance from Ralph's language school - Arnie. For 280 pesos each, Socorro, the teacher, will pick up us, bring us to her house, teach us how to make a famous Mexican dish Oaxaca style, we will eat, and then she will drive us back to where we started.

Her house is in a quiet outskirt of the city centre, a few minutes away. Our work kitchen is in the courtyard, with a pretty blue wall, hanging pottery and a lovely big work table. As soon as we get there, we don aprons, take a quick picture and get started roasting chiles de agua, a Oaxacan pepper. Next come olives, episote (an herb not found anywhere but in Oaxaca) and Oaxacan cheese. She peels and seeds the peppers as we chop and dice and shred. Next she mixes up the batter, an egg, salt and flour mixture I know I am going to try on something else at some point. We gently stuff and flour our chilies. Arnie and I are excited. Here comes the big moment. We take our little tender stuffed and floured chilies and coat them in batter, and then into hot oil. Voila! Chiles Relleños! She puts music on and Arnie and I dance to our success.

After we have fried them all, we sit at the big work table to devour our masterpieces. Melted cheese, a light coating of batter...mmm. Were they spicy? You betcha. After gulping down water and a huge toasted tortilla, the fire subsided eventually!

I can't wait to make then with less spicy peppers. Thanks to Arnie for suggesting we do the class together.