You’ll learn techniques rooted in indigenous and mestizo culinary traditions, such as cooking in leaves, hand-shaping figures, fermenting dough, and frothing chocolate. You’ll also explore the symbolic meanings behind each dish and their importance in the context of Mexican ritual. This course is essential for those seeking to engage with cuisine as both heritage and profession.

Pipilitas – Hand-molded sweet figurines made from nixtamalized pumpkin seeds and colored with natural dyes. You will learn the precision of this artisanal modeling and decorating technique.

Chocolate de Agua – A frothy drink made with chocolate and cinnamon, ground with a metate, and aerated using a traditional wooden molinillo. 

Pan de Muerto – A fragrant, fermented bread perfumed with orange blossom water, decorated with a bone-shaped motif, traditionally finished with sugar or sesame seeds.

Candied Pumpkin – Layers of pumpkin simmered with piloncillo (raw unrefined cane sugar), cinnamon, fruit, and fig leaves. A traditional covered cooking method.

Mucbipollo Tamal – A baked Yucatecan tamal featuring dough colored with achiote (annatto), stuffed with meat, spices, and salsa kool (a thick sauce made with dough, broth, spices and seasonings).

In this course, in addition to the recipes themselves, you’ll also learn various cooking techniques that will be useful on numerous occasions.

The techniques you’ll learn are:

• Nixtamalization
• Friction peeling (with a cloth)
• How to knead dough
• How to model figures
• How to froth chocolate with a molinillo
• Dough fermentation
• How to finish and decorate breads with butter, sugar and sesame
• How to candy pumpkin
• Covered leaf cooking 
• How to shred/pull meat
• How to color fat with achiote
• Sautéing
• How to thicken broth with dough
• How to shape tamales (base, filling, sealing)
• How to bake tamales in the oven