Pirar Cabrera: Oaxaca's Culinary Ambassador
by Malcolm Jolley

Pilar Cabrera's mole negra with chicken. Photo: A. Starkman

Pilar Cabrera is impressed with Toronto. It's not just the people she's met and the chefs she's working with on her four week visit from Oaxaca in Southern Mexico, it's also the ingredients: "I have found almost everything I need in the markets here." This news is heartening to your humble reporter. Perhaps I think, if I learn a few things, I can replicate the fantastic fusion of flavours that is mole, what Cabrera calls "Mexico's curry".

Cabrera is the chef and owner of La Olla, or "The Pot", the Oaxaca City restaurant she opened in 1994. She is also the chief instructor at Casa de los Sabores her bed & breakfast and cooking school where luminaires like Rick Bayless come to freshen up on their central Mexican skills.

Cabrera is accompanied by Alvin Starkman, a Toronto native who wound up his law practice to move himself and his wife, Arlene, down to Oaxaca after many enchanting vacations. The Starkmans now run a guest house, Casa Machaya, and Alvin has become a guide to the region's culinary attractions, which include Pilar Cabrera, her moles and the region's other famous product, mescal. "You have to understand," he explains, "that Oaxaca has everything from high mountains, to deep fertile valleys to ocean coasts: the variety of food is amazing". Cabrera agrees, noting that the tropical climate makes for a nearly perpetual growing season, and all manner of fresh vegetable arrive each day to the state's capital form all over Oaxaca.

Cabrera learned her trade first by helping her grandmother and cooking for her family. Then, she left for Mexico city where she took a degree in food sciences and subsequently landed a job at the big food producer Herdez-McCormick. "I know how to do things the modern way," she says, "but for my restaurant I decided to go back to the traditions. Everything is by hand."

Cabrera's great love is the mole sauce. Some moles she tells me with wide-eyed enthusiasm would take all the women in an Oaxacan village a week to prepare using over thirty ingredients. They are the product of the Spanish conquest, since they mix indigenous ingredients like chillies and chocolate with Old World imports like cinnamon and cloves. It's interesting to be reminded that the Columbian exchange worked both ways. Cabrera likens the Mexican mole to the Indian curry, emphasising that recipes for the ground spicy sauce vary from village to village and family to family.

Cabrera will be demonstrating and cooking her moles throughout the city this month. Writer, TV producer and all-around Latin food guru Mary Luz Mejia (see www.maryluzmejia.com) wanted to point the spotlight on Latin food in Toronto in part through Chef Pilar Cabrera Arroyo's tour. She used her many contacts in the food industry to create a multi-venue cooking tour for Chef Pilar in consultation Starkman, a mutual friend. Mejia booked Cabrera in as many different venues as she could, and the chef had the further good news of being sponsored by the Mexican Consulate in Toronto to participate in an Iron Chef competition at Harbourfront's Hot and Spicy Food Festival. Mejia is excited an pleased: "The whole point of the exercise is to introduce authentic and new flavours to people who may have never been to Oaxaca and were curious about the food there. This kind of regional cuisine is a world away from tacos and nachos!"

Some of Cabrera's event in Toronto include:

Monday, September 21st: Dinner at FRANK at the Art Gallery of Ontario with Executive Chef Anne Yarymowich - http://www.ago.net/frank SOLD OUT

Tuesday, September 22: Cooking class at Nella Cucina Cooking School - http://www.nellacucina.ca/cucina/event.html?Year=2009&Month=9

Wednesday, September 23: Dinner at Veritas Local Fare with Food Network Celebrity Chef Brad Long - http://www.dine.to/profile_features.php?feature=website&id=3710

Monday, September 28: Torito Tapas Bar- Pilar prepares a menu of “Botanas”- Mexico’s version of tapas- http://www.toritorestaurant.com/

Tuesday, September 29: Multi-course dinner menu at The Chef’s House at the George Brown Culinary Institute- www.thechefshouse.com

Malcolm Jolley is the editor of Good Food Revelation.