"The Tools of the Trade"

The tools of the trade are not what they used to be.

For better or worse, the beauty of this is in the eye of the beholder.

In my growing up years in Southern California, my mother, a renowned "good cook" of our Mexican-American culture, relied on the simple and classic to get her good meals on the table. Except for a cast-iron pan, most of these mainstays have gone by the wayside in favor of "new and improved" tools. Let's discourse a little about that.

Take the simple art of salsa making. For the indescribably best product, a whole lot of green chilies need to get roasted. A melange of personal favorites (experimentation decides this, one cook at a time) snug up in a skillet, but with less intimacy than one might think. You can't crowd them too tightly, and you can't rush the proper blistering of chilies with quick, relentless heat. Try this once and you'll suffer the loss of superb ingredients as well as  deflated anticipation. Skins that will not release take all the good flesh with them--straight into useless, straight into the garbage can.

No, you gotta baby things along. Fire up that seasoned (cast iron) skillet, nice and hot to start--but lower that burner to steady and almost slow, and nurse those blisters into billowy pockets heavy with "just right" blackening. Ideally, the skins (upon cooling) will pull away with most of the flesh intact while retaining just enough blackened peel to embolden your salsa with flecks of char.

Food art, but delicious, flavorful art. I can still see on my mother's counter her "molcajete," the tool of the trade for stripping down roasted chilies and blanched tomatoes. A molcajete (if you are unfamiliar) is a volcanic rock bowl with three tapered legs, the whole thing being one piece. The unit is accompanied by a tejolote, a smaller shaped rock meant to be manipulated as a hand grinder against the peppers and the walls of the molcajete.

Somehow salsa made that way seems "crafted" to me, but in a recent conversation with my mother, she confessed readily that she hasn't made it that way for many years. She even further blasphemed my memory by saying that not too long ago she made some for the family in a blender, the now-accepted (really?) way to do things. (Along with a food processor, I suppose.)

She softened the blow with the qualifier that the blender has to be pulsed "just so," in a "skilled" way so as not to mush the ingredients.

My stabbed heart sheepishly recuperates, because except for salsa that I chop from fresh uncooked ingredients, of course I make mine in a blender too........so much for THAT romancing of the volcanic stone bowl.

(After reminiscing about the beauty of a molcajete I started to browse online for one of my own, but soon decided against it. With my personality and ownership of such a cultural object, I would likely be pressed with the urge to turn my Wisconsin farmhouse into a hacienda, and just don't get me started.)

Another tool gone is the in-counter breadboard that was once included in even the humblest of kitchens, all across America. Young people now are kind of amazed by them; a sturdy, functional board that easily pulls out to provide extra work surface. These days if you want such a helper in your kitchen you have to ask for it and pay dearly for the luxury. (I recently saw a smallish, shabby, actually coming-apart cabinet with a breadboard on an online vintage-specialty site--priced at well over $2000.00, shipping not included.)

In our house my mother didn't make bread, she made tortillas. I can still hear the slap-thunk, slap-thunk of my mother's rolling pin on such a board. She worked up a big mound of dough, and from that tugged off smaller elastic balls. These she whomped and stretched into round discs, then (this time more slightly) charred and blistered them to perfection on her trusty cast iron surface.

The simple, old tools of the trade--they didn't require electricity and most of them were invaluable to most women, regardless of their cultures. No pioneer woman worth her salt tried to cross a prairie without her iron skillet, and I don't know that a pie crust in that age or now can make it across a pie pan without the help of a timeless rolling pin. Whipping cream didn't always result from a motor (see the "Beauty and Purpose" entry on this blog) and certainly not from an aerosol can.

Do I really think that old ways and tools of the trade make for the very best flavors? Do I really think food prepared now on my very modern stove is somehow lacking?

Not when I'm hungry I don't. Sure I love atmosphere and the appeal of timeless things and ways. It is true that old objects and the methods they provided somehow immerse my mind with appreciation for the skills and talents of the many predecessor cooks I never knew. But the food I put on the table now is prepared with enthusiasm (most of the time) and always with a sense of wanting to nurture my loved ones--so what could ever improve on THAT?

Revisiting my mother's own methods wasn't just a warm and fuzzy thing. My witnessing of her simple, priceless talents meant that I could do those things, too. Yes, store-bought tortillas are surely very handy, but the ones I'm planning for our supper tonight.......well, you can imagine.

My fourteen-year-old granddaughter has now witnessed my making of handmade tortillas countless times. Someday, in her own home, I can see her "rolling her own," and it'd better be tortillas!