About – Letty Flatt
Letty Halloran Flatt has worked at Deer Valley Resort since 1981. Executive Pastry Chef since 1988, she supervises more than 30 bakers and the three bakery kitchens that supply Deer Valley restaurants and banquets. Flatt was born in California, but moved to the mountains when she was twenty to ski and earn a diploma from the University of Utah. She is a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York. She has studied with Madeleine Kamman and attended Ecole-Lenôtre in Plaisir-Grignon in France. Letty enjoys the outdoor lifestyle of Park City, Utah. She skis and hikes and bikes with her husband Robbie, whom she met on the ski slopes.
Vegetarian Cooking – I have been following a vegetarian way of eating for more than 35 years. If I were to count, I am sure my vegetarian cookbook collection equals my baking and pastry cookbook collection. I am committed to cooking and eating without meat and through my blog, I share that passion with you. Robbie and I belong to a CSA, Community Supported Agriculture. CSA members join by purchasing a “share”, in exchange for a weekly box of fresh produce during the June to late October harvest season. I write two recipes each week for our CSA, using the produce in our CSA box. You can enjoy those recipes at muffintalk.wordpress.com.
Mexico and the Spanish Language – I try to visit Mexico once a year in the fall. Not the beaches, but inland—Cuernavaca, Morelos for language school, Taxco, Guerrero to purchase silver jewelry and further south to Oaxaca City to celebrate the Day of the Dead. From the Mexico City airport I catch a premier-class bus, complete with movies and a pretty attendant offering snacks and beverages, to Cuernavaca. I am still working my way through the curriculum at Cuernavaca Language School. I love my home-stay sister, Carmen and we have become good friends over the years.
After a week or so in school, my Spanish much improved, I meet my girlfriends Laura and Laurie (Lorena) for our shopping trip to the silver mining town of Taxco. In Taxco, in the state of Guerrero, we dip in out of tiny wholesale shops, helping Laura buy silver jewelry for her small importing business, and buying more for ourselves and friends. (We have a big sale and party here in Park City between Christmas and Thanksgiving.) The city of Taxco sprawls up the hills from the old mine, in steep and narrow cobblestone streets. It seems like every car is a white Volkswagen, either a bug or a van; the bugs are the taxis and the vans are city buses. I love trying to get lost and unlost in the cavernous half-above, half-underground Mercado. There we buy freshly roasted, perfectly salted pumpkinseeds right off the old comal grill from a gentlemen that has probably been there since he was 15 years old. We search for souvenir skeleton dolls, holding miniature Corona beers or a Hornitos tequila bottle. I like to indulge in a new $4.00 shopping bag with silkscreen of the Virgin Guadalupe or Frieda Kahlo or Day of the Dead skeletons. If it is not raining, we hike from our hotel up to the huge statue of Christo overlooking and blessing the town–an aerobic climb up the cobblestone stairways that appear around every corner.
After Taxco we travel to Oaxaca. On the way we see sagging truckloads and roadside stands over-brimming with traditional yellow-orange marigolds and purple cresta de gallo (rooster comb) flowers, readying for the upcoming fiesta.
Dia de Los Muertos is a strange fiesta to the US way of thinking. Bread, cookies, cakes, candy and candies made in the form of skulls and skeletons can be found on nearly every street corner. Businesses and homes erect elaborately decorated altars to welcome the dead for the holiday. The streets are full of gaiety and families gather for all-night picnics in the cemeteries. In the bustling markets the scent of the marigolds and special incense permeates the air.
In Oaxaca, my shopping bug comes to full bloom. We buy the best mole and chocolate and the cutest shopping bags. We decorate our hotel entrance with our own altar, after visiting the sprawling market for requisite egg bread, flowers, candles, incense and sugar skulls. We always take a day trip to Mitla, to tour the Zapotec and Mixtec Indian ruins. Afterward we bargain for locally woven dishtowels, shirts, dresses and simple purses. In Teotitlan del Valle, we slowly walk the cemetery, fully decked out with flowers, glowing candles, and servings of the deceased’s favorite foods and vices. Teotitlan is famous for its woven rugs and we visit weavers in their home studios, me lusting to buy. (My pocketbook is fortunate that the definition of shopping also includes the search.) On another day, we might visit other outlying villages for vivid woven table runners and placemats and distinctively painted wooden animal carvings.
My favorite day of the trip is cooking school at Seasons of My Heart. A brochure cannot prepare one for the richness of the experience. And it is a bit different each year—new recipes and new learning.
One year we were picked up in large vans near the 10-block-sprawling mercado in downtown Oaxaca. We drove north, to a small village, one of several named Etla. We stopped in front of a large gate and a small woman with an immaculate white apron opened it to welcome us. Before we knew where we were, our hostess Dominga was preparing Chocolate Atole. Susana Trilling, who owns Seasons of My Heart Cooking School was translating every step, explaining in detail the unfamiliar ingredients and process. “The foam of hot atole drink is very important-it holds the spirit of the person who makes the beverage.” Almost frantically, I tried to write every detail in my notebook.
We drank the atole and munched on simple, delicious breakfast bread from the village bakery while Meche, a second Zapotec Indian woman, proceeded to prepare two salsas, one red and one green. She roasted ingredients on the comal, an open-fire earthenware griddle, and then ground them in the molcajete, the volcanic rock Mexican version of a mortar (and pestle.)
Then she showed us how to make memelas from masa corn dough. Memelas are a Oaxacan specialty–perfect little munchies for the mid-morning meal. We shaped our personal balls of dough into flat ovals and baked them on the comal. Memelas get a little hand crimp around the edges to hold in the toppings-Meche and Dominga made it look easy and with practice I’m sure I would get better. I put frijoles (black bean paste) and both salsas on mine and topped it with fresh cheese. Meat eaters spread a little asiento (ground pork skin and bacon drippings) under the frijoles, salsas and cheese.
Next we learned how they make cheese! Silvia is the expert from Reyes Etla, the cheese-making village. She demonstrated while Susana translated. We saw the milk coagulate from the enzyme, making jokes about cutting the cheese when Silvia gently did so with her hands. The first product was queso fresco, which we had put on our memelas, but we also learned how to make quesillo and requeson-much the same as mozzarella string cheese and ricotta, respectively.
Our attention went back to Dominga for chocolate making. She roasted the cacao beans on the comal while Susana told the legendary origin of “food of the gods.” As the roasted beans cooled, we students peeled off their shells and Dominga ground some cinnamon on the metate, another volcanic rock grinding tool, this one a large slanted rock. She ground the shelled cacao “nibs” into a shiny mass, adding some sugar and the cinnamon at the end. As soon as she stopped working the chocolate, it cooled into a block that she cut for our tasting. This is not the refined chocolate we use for desserts and candy making–that chocolate is made with hydraulic rollers and goes through another process called conching. Dominga’s chocolate is the same as the chocolate selling like crazy in Oaxaca’s mercados–produced there with machines that mimic the toil of Dominga’s hands and the sweat of her brow.
And that was only the morning session! We then headed to the actual cooking school on Susana Trilling’s property. Seasons of My Heart website describes the setting and curriculum.
That afternoon, divided into small groups, we chopped, roasted, sautéed, mixed, pureed and baked. We cooked and learned and then we sat down together to eat. We made Cream of Poblano Chile Soup, a beautiful vegetable salad, 4 kinds of tamales and Coconut Ginger Flan. It was dusk before we climbed back into the vans for the ride back to our hotel.
Another year we spent the morning in a private home south of Oaxaca City, where a family graciously welcomed us and shared the details of their cuisine. Susana was just as excited as we were to learn the secrets of Sopa de Guias, their hearty squash, corn and greens soup. We shared almuerzo (good-size mid-morning meal) with the Navarro Gomez family. Afterwards, the women demonstrated and sold us their weavings and their son/brother displayed his paintings. Susana spent a portion of our tuition on two gorgeously brilliant watercolors.
Back at the “school” we made Sopa de Tortilla and Mole Amarillo, and we studied well the makings of margarita cocktails. I offer many praises to Susana and her staff for memorable days at Seasons of My Heart.
Since we return to the US via Mexico City, we spend a day or an evening there. Maybe we go to Xochimilco, which I love. We hire one of the private colorful guided gondolas for passage around the old waterways, enjoying the musicians for hire traveling in their own boats. We listen for the best group of mariachis to sing to us. We drink our share of beer and tequila and buy hot corn and whatever snacks strike our fancy from the food vendor boats. The quiet man at the back of our boat appears to be an assistant to the boatman, but after a while he opens his display of silver jewelry. It’s hard to explain to him that we have just been to Taxco and we are full of prettier designs for better prices.
I hope you catch a bit of my enthusiasm for our neighbor Mexico’s charms. One day I might reach my life-long goal to understand and speak excellent, fluent Spanish. I am working on it…