Episodes
Wednesday Mar 20, 2024
19: Culinary Choice, Kinship, and Embodiment
Wednesday Mar 20, 2024
Wednesday Mar 20, 2024
This episode is part of El Paso Food Voices’ special feature on "Culinary Heritage and Culinary Kinship.” Three graduate students from the University of Texas at El Paso coming from three different geo-political locations share their culinary stories: El Paso (Stephanie), Juarez—El Paso (Victor), and Nepal (Purna). These stories speak of empathetic passion, scarcity, and a deep yearning for home. Their conversation begins by sharing their typical “food choices” and come to a general conclusion such culinary choices have been influenced by a network of relationships not only with food but also people. Moreover, they come to a general understanding that food choice is part of developing a “culinary kinship” which goes beyond the socio-cultural legacy and expectations of heritage. Finally, the students explore the ways they embody such culinary kinship which manifests in different culinary occasions. Their stories speak of tasting new foods with childlike openness, overcoming scarcity of food, and longing for the warmth and familiarity of a homecooked meal away from home.
References
Abarca, Meredith E. “Charlas Culinarias (Culinary Chats): A Methodology and Pedagogy Expanding a Food Consciousness.” Food, culture, & society (2023): 1–13.
Abarca, Meredith E., host. “Hugo Loera Cooking to Remember.” EL Paso Food Voices, August 14, 2022. https://youtu.be/1hitDyGnj-o
Abarca, Meredith E., host. “Roman Wilcox Full Interview.” El Paso Food Voices, December 22, 2022. https://youtu.be/_3aKYqjbfSY
Bittman, Mark. “What's Wrong with What We Eat.” TED, May 21, 2018. https://youtu.be/5YkNkscBEp0
Elebiyo-Okojie, Vivian. “There’s Something about Food.” TEDx Talks, October 28, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C6cRiHKCOg
Goldwyn, Samuel. East Side Sushi. YouTube Movies and TV, October 14, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt-OBSb_EGo.
Sheena, Iyengar. “The Art of Choosing.” TED, July 26, 2010. https://youtu.be/lDq9-QxvsNU
Monday Mar 04, 2024
18: Food and the Senses
Monday Mar 04, 2024
Monday Mar 04, 2024
In this episode of EPFV special feature on “Culinary Heritage and Culinary Kinship”, graduate students Marissa Bond, Fernanda Estrada and Tony Diaz discuss how the senses not only relate to the consumption of food but to the relationships, spaces and experiences that come from eating. This talk offers a window into personal stories that encompass a variety of sensorial experiences–from cooking with our hands, to dining alone, to even growing and feeding others. Utilizing key scholarship from food philosophers, Marissa, Fernanda and Tony dive deeply into intellectualizing the body’s relationship with food as well as how certain emotions like disgust and hunger play a role in our lives.
Works mentioned in the episode are:
Abarca, Meredith E. & Colby, Joshua R. Food memories seasoning the narratives of our lives. Food and Foodways. 2016. DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2016.1150101.
“Yolanda Leyva: ‘Ancestral Foods.’” YouTube, September 30, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8HUqD9CNdc&t=3s.
Korsmeyer, Carolyn. Savoring disgust: The foul and the fair in aesthetics. Oxford England: Oxford University Press. 2011.
Mylod, Mark . The Menu. Searchlight Pictures. 2022.
Wood, Machelle R., "Interview no. 1727" . Public Kitchens. 7.2019.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/ep_public/7
Young, A.M. & Eckstein, J. Terroir and topoi of the low country. In Conley, D., & Eckstein, J. (Eds.), Cookery: food rhetorics and social production (pp. 43-60). University of Alabama Press. 2020.
Thursday Nov 23, 2023
17: Culinary Heritage and Kinship in Food Stories
Thursday Nov 23, 2023
Thursday Nov 23, 2023
On this episode of the EPFV Podcast, Meredith E. Abarca and Joshua Lopez discuss their role in the development of the El Paso Food Voices project, the podcast and the open-source digital archive website. Meredith and Josh discuss the challenges and values of framing the “intimate histories” people share with one another through their food stories by using the terms culinary heritage and culinary kinship. In this episode, Meredith speaks about a new special feature to El Paso Food Voices podcast, an audio documentary on Culinary Heritage, that students in a graduate seminar on “Mapping Food Narratives” will be creating and hosting.
Thursday Nov 23, 2023
16: Sotol The Spirit of the Chihuahuan Desert
Thursday Nov 23, 2023
Thursday Nov 23, 2023
In this episode of EPFV, Meredith E. Abaca speaks with Valeria Alcalde who grew up in Ciudad Juárez, and after traveling the world, returned to create her own brand of sotol, an alcohol made from a native yucca plant of the Chihuahuan Desert. Valeria describes the history and process of making this spirit. We learn from Valeria’s story, not only about the artisan process of making sotol, but also about her own spiritual journey that has taken her to development of her own brand, Rarámuri sotol. In the process of learning about sotol, we also learn about the difference between this spirit and others such as mescal and tequila. Valeria to the popularity of the whiskey in history of beverages in Mexico. For those of us living in the Chihuahuan Desert, sotol should be embraced us our heritage drink of choice.
Thursday Nov 23, 2023
15: Fusion of Mexican and Asian Flavors
Thursday Nov 23, 2023
Thursday Nov 23, 2023
In this episode of EPFV, Meredith E. Abaca speaks with chef and restaurant owner of “El Charlatan: Taqueria y Ramen-Ya.” The restaurant is located in Socorro, Texas, about a 20 minute drive east of downtown El Paso. Enrique shares his culinary journey that began with him cooking downtown El Paso, took him to Chicago, to eventually opening his own restaurant, El Charlatan. In Chicago, he worked for six months at Next Restaurant. Recalls how his father was instrumental in getting him to Chicago. They used to watch cooking shows in Netflix such as The Chef’s Table and Mind of a Chef. After an episode featuring chef Graut Ashatz, Enrique’s father encouraged his son to follow his dreams. His culinary career has not been a product of formal training at a culinary school. He learned be method began by watching cooking shows, cooking with his father, and “hands-on” experimentation. Since his journey of becoming a chef and restaurant owner has taken a path of just doing things without formal culinary training and creating ethnic fusion foods—Mexican and Asian, he came up with the name El Charlatan. In Spanish, this word suggests a person that does not quite belong in a social setting, but nonetheless claims a space for himself. Enrique is not simply claiming a space for himself in the culinary world, but claiming cultural visibility and offering economic support to the food industry of the “Lower Valley” in El Paso del Norte area, a place was born and raised.
Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
14: Lucy’s Café: A 50 Year Old Family Legacy
Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
In this episode of EPFV, Meredith E. Abaca speaks with Josh and Margo Lepe, owners of Lucy’s Café North. Josh Lepe is the grandson of Lucy Lepe who in 1978 open Lucy’s Café in El Paso Texas. Josh shares that now it is Lucy’s sister who runs this first original Lucy’s Café establishment. In this episode, Josh shares memories of his family’s culinary signature dishes—Machaca with chile con queso and Tacos Antonia, for example--that have fed folks in El Paso, Texas for over 50 years. Currently there are four Lucy’s Café establishments in El Paso, with Lucy’s Café North, being the newest addition and the only one in El Paso’s Northeast. Josh’s speaks of the key ingredient that kept his grandmother in business for years helping her, a single mother from Juarez who crossed the international bridge into El Paso raised seven children on her own: kindness. It is the intention of kindness and the desire to server a community with humility that underscored what Josh’s business model. As we hear Josh’s and Margo’s speak about their new adventure running Lucy’s Café North, beyond hearing about some iconic border Mexican dishes and family culinary creations, they also speak to the role the family run restaurants play in functioning as community centers.
Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
13: Salsa: The story of Zubi’s Salas & Dips
Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
The host for this episode of EPFV, Margo Lepe, speaks with Sarah Zubiate, founder and CEO of Zubi’s Salsa & Organic Dips: Plant Based by Latin Taste. Sarah speaks to the health, cultural and sustainable motives that led her to transform some Mexican family recipes she grew up eating in El Paso, Texas into marketable fully plant-based products she now sells worldwide. The motivation that marks Sarah culinary trajectory into all plant-based Mexican food products is based on the process of returning to that earth and eating from the earth. In this episode, we learn about Sarah’s personal story of growing up in El Paso, Texas, of being adopted and later in life reconnecting with her biological family who live in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Rooted in this personal story is the trajectory of her Mexican culinary entrepreneurial trajectory. She grew up in the Chihuahua Desert connected to the earth, and now she spends much time in an organic sustainable farm in Dallas, Texas creating Mexican salsas and queso dips without animal products.
Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
12: La Semilla Food Center, Anthony, New Mexico
Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
In this episode of EPFV, Meredith E. Abaca speaks with Marleen Yañez, Education Coordinator for La Semilla Food Center Organization. La Semilla, founded in 2010, is a nonprofit organization located in Anthony, New Mexico. Its mission is to create healthy, self-reliant, sustainable and fair food systems in the El Paso del Norte region. In this conversation with Marleen, we learn about her personal life-changing relationship with food and how this let her work with La Semilla. She shares the history of the organization and its multiple programs that range from teaching about food cultivation using a system of “agroecology,” which refers to both methods of production and a food movement of food, gender, and climate justice, to cooking lessons and culinary storytelling gatherings. The process of remembering and relearning Indigenous/ancestral gardening and cooking techniques are a central component to the food systems work. Through the storytelling program, for example, the goal is to change the dominant narrative in the El Paso del Norte region that mostly defines Mexican food as unhealthy, in order to remember the nutritional, spiritual, and cultural benefits and values of ancestral ways of cooking. La Semilla is committed to sharing and learning from community members. Through a number of different programs form fellowships to community partnerships, La Semilla functions as a resource to teach agriculture on its farm property, space donated by Sierra Vista Growers, to help organizations such as schools develop sustainable community gardens. In addition to hands-on projects that impact food habits at an individual level, La Semilla also has a policy program that works to enact governmental based policies to assist in the development of long term sustainable food systems changes. La Semilla Food Center, therefore, works on both local and global methods for creating food systems that are motivated by a holistic approach that interconnects food, gender, class, ethnic, and climate justice.
Monday Dec 13, 2021
Monday Dec 13, 2021
In this episode of EPFV, Meredith E. Abaca speaks with Adriana and Lily Nadar, co-owners and chefs of El Layali, a Lebanese restaurant. In this conversation we learn about the migration of Lebanese into Mexico City and the northern state of Chihuahua. Adrian shares the history of her Lebanese-Mexican family and what led her aunt Adela Nadar encouraged her husband into opening the first Lebanese restaurant in Chihuahua, City in 1986, Los Fenicios (The Phoenicians), which is still operating and family run. Adrian and Lily speak about their introduction to the restaurant business; connections between Lebanese and Mexican cuisines, both at the level of ingredients, techniques, and dishes. They also speak of specific familial culinary traditions that began at Los Fenicios with their aunt’s cooking and that now they prepare at El Layali. Last but not least, the philosophy guiding their cooking, which they see as artisan, is one that in Adriana’s words is intended to help their patrons “to taste the earth.”
Thursday Aug 05, 2021
10: Taconeta: Tacos and more filled with History and Culture
Thursday Aug 05, 2021
Thursday Aug 05, 2021
In this episode of EPFV, Meredith E. Abarca speaks with Alejandro Borunda, co-owner of Taconeta, a restaurant that specializes in tacos and other regional foods mostly from central Mexico. Alejandro shares his journey into the food industry and his vision for Taconeta’s serving style, dining area, kitchen, and of course the menu. Raised by a mother whose own passion for food led her to become a professional CIA (Culinary Institute of America) trained chef, Alejandro embraces the philosophy that a way to learn about a place history and culture is through food. This belief is the very spirit of Taconeta as patrons experience the flavors and textures of heirloom blue and red corn that reaches Taconeta through a network that buys directly from framers in central Mexico. Alejandro shares the process of importing sacks of corn to the nixtamalization for making daily fresh tortillas. We also learn about the origin and process of making what should be considered El Paso’s native alcoholic drink: sotol. As a restaurant co-owner, he also brings our attention to the important topic of food waste and what steps are taken at Taconeta to mitigate this environmental, ethical, and social issue.