All About Tamales workshop will start with a comprehensive guide to one of the ancient Mexican foods still prepared today: Tamales. Day one, students will learn about the origins, history and how this Mexican “power bar” has evolved through time and still is prepared today as a strong part of our Mexican culinary culture. Day two, participants will learn to prepare five styles of tamales, including tamales wrapped in corn husks, tamales wrapped in plantain leaves, both traditional, vegetarian as well as sweet tamales. At the end of day two, participants will feast on the fruit of their labors, while discussing lessons learned through the art and culture of making tamales.

This workshop is a comprehensive guide to the origins of chiles and how they have evolved throughout history. In this workshop, students will learn how to identify and classify the most common varieties of Mexican Chiles. First, I will guide you through an in-depth multi-sensorial experience applying different Mexican cooking techniques to more than 24 varieties of fresh and dry chiles. Then we will create a database that will serve the student as a means to understand Mexican chiles as one of the main components of Mexican traditional cooking. Finally, students will learn Mexican cooking techniques to treat dry and fresh chiles and we will make some basic recipes applying these techniques with some of the chiles featured in class. Once finished, this Mexican Chile matrix of flavors will be a student’s cooking tool for life, useful to create or re-create recipes.