At 11, Charlotte Saenz was making tortillas, but, she confesses, they weren’t round and her brothers would tease her.
It’s still a point of pride in the family.
Now, as a cooking teacher, she delights her classes with a story about an acquaintance whose tortillas were so circular, everyone was amazed. It turns out the woman was using a lid to cut the orbs.
Saenz prefers the more natural way of achieving supremacy. She teaches students the art of coaxing a recalcitrant lump of dough into a perfectly thin, perfectly round thing of beauty, ready for the hot griddle.
The students try their best, but symmetry eludes them.
“Mine looks like Florida,” says one man.
“Hey, who made the dough square?”
Like any good teacher, Saenz never criticizes, only offers tips.
“Always keep the same side of the dough down,” she instructs. “Otherwise it will stick when you roll it. And put the bottom side on the griddle first.”
It has something to do with moisture, but scientific explanations aren’t needed; she’s been doing this for more than 50 years. And after one taste of those exquisite breads, her legions don’t care about shape or ask why, they just scribble notes, hoping not to miss a bit of the wisdom.
Like stories, traditional recipes are passed from generation to generation. Most aren’t written down, they are told. Alive and evolving, they often are decorated by embellishment. Many times, one ingredient is substituted for another, but the backbone always is the same, always good.
Saenz, who teaches several Mexican cooking classes through the city of Aurora, makes it easy to wander down the path of an unfamiliar ethnic cuisine.
She’s been in training since she was a child, standing on a chair next to the sink or stove, helping her mom do “everything.” She automatically absorbed the rituals of what she calls Mexican/American cooking.
“It’s the way everybody does it in New Mexico,” she says. Her parents lived in that state until moving to Florence, Colo., where they had a few acres of land, some cows and chickens and even a few goats. And, always, homemade meals.
The 65-year-old has taught at Aurora off and on for years, taking time off to shepherd her children to after-school activities and recover from breast cancer.
She loves teaching nearly as much as cooking, passing on her fresh, minimal cuisine to dozens of people, young and old. Restaurants, she says, add too many spices or make dishes too hot, overwhelming the flavor.
She prefers to taste her green chiles and uses only a little salt and garlic as complements. (She chooses chiles from Pueblo over those grown in New Mexico, she says, because they have more flavor and the right fire. But she prefers New Mexico red chiles. Remember, don’t ask why, just believe.)
Many times each season, she dons her white apron at the Expo Recreation Center kitchens and expertly demonstrates a cuisine that only seems complicated and time-consuming.
One class focuses on green chile, burritos, tortillas and sopaipillas. Red chile gravy, tostadas and enchiladas and a variety of salsas are taught in another three-hour session. Tamales, including ones for dessert, dominate the third class, which former students and cooking volunteers rave about.
This is the way she’s always done it, the way her mother did it: grinding the dried red chiles with a mortar and pestle, roasting the green chiles in the oven, making her own tortilla chips. Yes, tortilla chips, and taco shells too.
“I’ve never bought any at a store,” she says matter-of-factly, even a bit smugly, while students squirm in their seats at the thought.
But aside from the few minutes it takes to heat the oil and chop the corn tortillas into neat triangles, making chips is a cinch. Crispy, not greasy. Fry them until they no longer sizzle. If they shine, she says, they aren’t cooked fully. No salt, otherwise you mask the flavor.
Everyone in class crowds around this petite leader, eagerly watching, just as she did with her mother. It’s all about habit for her, but measurements for everyone else are included in her instructions.
“It took me three months to perfect these recipes. I had to test everything. My mom would hold (the ingredient) in her hand to show how much, and that’s the way I did it,” she says. She passes out booklets of instructions to the class early on, with plenty of room for notes.
She also sells a cookbook that contains most of her repertoire. An updated version will be out soon with more recipes and all those little tips she tosses out to her students.
“A person can get a cookbook, but to make it taste the way it should, you need the little tips.”
Every student in her classes gets to roll out their own tortilla, assemble an enchilada, make salsa or guacamole. Then the entire group eats – in silence – savoring the fresh tastes. It’s that good.
Staff writer Cynthia Pasquale can be reached at 303-820-1722 or cpasquale@denverpost.com.
Upcoming classes
Expo Recreation Center, 10955 E. Exposition Ave., Aurora, offers a variety of cooking classes, including these taught by Charlotte Saenz. For more information or to find out how to register, call 303-326-8630 or visit auroragov.org/recreation and click on the cooking icon.
Mexican Cooking, Menu 1
(green chile specialties)
Ages 16 and up
June 1, 6:30 p.m.
Mexican Fiesta
Ages 8-12
June 13, 9:30 a.m.
Mexican Cooking
Ages 12-16
June 14, 5 p.m.
Mexican Cooking
Ages 8 and up with parents
July 28, 6 p.m.
Mexican Cooking, Menu IV
(chile rellenos)
Ages 16 and up
Aug. 24, 6:30 p.m.
