Welcome to Out of the Kitchen, our ongoing exploration of the relationships that build and sustain the food industry. This year, we’re traveling the country to look at how sustainability has become a rapidly growing movement within the food world. Chefs at the forefront of this trend are introducing their patrons to local farms, fresh ingredients, and innovative dishes while farmers are educating chefs and consumers about where their food comes from and what it takes to grow the food served. Their practices and personal customer approaches provide a bigger impact to the community at large, hoping to create a better and more sustainable future for all.
Susana Trilling owns her kitchen classroom like Muhammad Ali owned the boxing ring, weaving between prep and cooking stations with light-footed, fluid ease, swooping in for a quick taste of a sauce followed by an insightful, encouraging suggestion for an amateur chef or two—and then finally orchestrating a knockout climax that leaves everyone satisfied. Presiding over the result, a six-course Oaxacan dinner made with sustainable ingredients, she looks at her guest-cum-sous chefs and happily declares: "What a wonderful meal we've made together!"
Originally from Pennsylvania and now living in Oaxaca, Trilling is a noted chef who hosted her own PBS series and most recently wrote the book Milpa: From Seed to Salsa, about the Mixtecan farmers in rural Oaxaca province who use sustainable and organic food systems to feed their families and their customers. ("Milpa" is the Nahuatl word for a sustainable system of growing the complementary crops of maize, squash, and beans, which allows farmers to grow enough to feed the community without having to rely on artificial fertilizers.) Trilling's also the head of her own cooking school, Seasons of My Heart, a beloved institution in Oaxaca City. For this class in late July, she's combining her roles, teaching a hands-on class on Oaxacan cuisine in which the students make a full dinner that uses sustainable ingredients from local, native farmers.
The turkey for the mole negro Oaxaqueño comes from Cuni Cuni, a local group that has been teaching Mixtec farmers in the Oaxacan central valley to organically raise Mexico's native meat bird, the turkey, in their family plots. The amaranth leaves and amaranth flour for the tortitas de hojas de amaranto and the crepas de amaranto are supplied courtesy of farmers in Etla and other farming communities in the province. They're working with Puente a la Salud Comunitaria, a nonprofit that is empowering local families to take control of their own economic destinies by reintroducing the once-ubiquitous grain that played a critical role in pre-Columbian Aztec, Zapotec, and Mixtec cultures. Amaranth is also naturally suited to the southern Mexican environment, meaning farmers don't have to rely on a bruising battery of ecologically unfriendly chemicals and techniques to grow enough to live off of.
Hope Bigda-Peyton is Puente's development manager, but tonight she's taking the class in celebration of her birthday: "When growing up in Bedford, Mass., my mom always emphasized the importance of nutrition and eating vegetables and whole grains and avoiding processed foods. But it wasn't until I got to Oaxaca that I started reflecting more deeply on the origins of my food and the implications that has for my own health and the environmental and social well-being of the communities that produce the food."
The chayote for the crema de chayote soup, and the radishes and greens for the ensalada de la milpa are from 314 Punto Natural, grown on a walled-off plot just to the south of Oaxaca City. 314 Punto Natural emphasizes the philosophy that consumers should know their farmers. The organic sesame seed is from Ecotierra, the brand of a cooperative group of over 500 indigenous families working on farms in southern Oaxaca. "The heart of the mole is the sesame seed," Trilling says.
Finally, used in every dish is the salt, painstakingly harvested entirely by hand in the village of Salinas del Marques, on the southern Pacific coast at nearly the narrowest point of the country. The salt's a community activity, engaging basically every household in some way, letting the villagers maintain a living when they're not out on the sea fishing for prawns, oysters, and mullet, which the locals call "Lisa." "Their salt doesn't choke you with its saltiness, but it lets the flavors blossom," Trilling says. "It's crunchy but super tender and sweeter, in a way that you feel on the tip of your tongue."
"The flavor of it is amazing," says Gilbert Salazar, an educator on vacation in Oaxaca from Glendale, Ca. He made the chayote cream soup. "The salt itself was fluffy-like, less salty, and learning from Susana that salt should only be used to uplift the flavors of a dish, was a nugget of a seed of knowledge for me."
Over at the station for salad prep, Amanda LaBerge, Bigda-Peyton's friend visiting from San Francisco and a former Oaxaca resident herself, takes a break from the mole cauldron to roll out tiny balls of goat cheese for the ensalada—noting that the sustainable ingredients she's using tend to be "smaller but much more flavorful." Later, after stomachs are full, the bottle of birthday mezcal emptied, and plates are all but licked clean, she admits that she's impressed herself with the meal—especially the mole, with its Cuni Cuni turkey and organic Ecotierra sesame seeds: "I thought our mole turned out deliciously; it was super rich and flavorful," she says. "Honestly, I thought our mole was better than some of the restaurants here and definitely better than the mole I've tried in restaurants in California."
Susana Trilling's Oaxacan dinner will stay with LaBerge much longer than this night, she says. "The benefits of biodynamic farming in relationship with growing native crops, in native methods, seems critical to me," she says. "It cultivates in us a more sustainable relationship with the land. So I hope to plant a garden in my new place, and, if possible, it would be amazing to utilize the milpa model."