Touring Authentic Mexican Cuisine | Food is Love with Chef Lasse Sorensen

[Music] Mexico the mere mention of its name conjures almost cartoonish images of desert Landscapes Mariachi and sombreros all real part of the culture that has been reconstituted and served up in Hollywood movies as entertainment filling our head with caricatures of a real life place in people one of the most commercialized parts of the culture is Mexican food whether it's rebranded by a chain or something else there's a lot of it out there most of it not too complex or anywhere near the real thing the real Mexico is not the Mexico in western movies all fast food drive-throughs it's deeper than a taker stand and more than just an empty desert scene and its ways are rooted in real tradition St Louis may be nowhere near the border of Mexico but if you know where to look here you will find much more than just the character of its food as a chef I need to stay curious in order to evolve for me that means looking Beyond a great meal to learn more about who made it and what inspires them to cook every great city has great food I'm going on a journey around the world right here in St Louis to find good food and experience other cultures I'm on a quest to find passionate chefs who cooks from the heart because food is love it's got to be delicious food is love love your food with Mexico bordering most of the Southern half of the US it's no surprise that many parts of its culture are embedded in the day-to-day of American Life Mexican food of course is no exception sure there is many Americanized versions of me Mexican food and in all fairness they're good in their own right but to find an authentic Mexican restaurant you would have to know what to look for I'm at Lada Mexican restaurant hot peppers here I come to learn what to look for latia Perez proprietor and chef at lachata is carrying on the food traditions of her upbringing in the state of halisco Mexico so this is how we roast the peppers we just put them in open flame and it blisters and it blisters it's how we do it okay in an open flame as one of 18 children cooking was an everpresent part of her childhood looking at it now it seems inevitable that she has developed a love for it so the reason for this is to get the skin off so you you're actually burning the skin right so it will be easier to peel them and uh because this the skin is kind of tough but also you are cooking in a way the pepper you can hear it's talking to you the skin yes you know I can almost hear what it's saying it's saying teila and when the pepper is uh all roasted we peel them salsa plays an integral role in Mexican Cuisine a long list of pepper varieties that grows there means there are a much broader variety of Salsas too not just the red sauce you're probably thinking of right now chips and salsa is that a when you eat as an appetizer is that a American Mexican thing or is that it is an American thing because we don't eat chips and salsa in Mexico uh we don't actually eat chips like we do here no we we have totopos that are the the corn chips fried that we add to our beans or we scoop the food with those but it's not like an appetizer that we eat over there we use it mainly as our spoon so does Peppers just grow everywhere like weeds or yes they peppers grow everywhere like weeds Mexico is a homeland of the pepper uh the peppers were domesticated by the uh Indians like 6,000 years before Christ and when the Spanish Conquest us they took them to Spain and the Portuguese took them to China so once went through the Pacific and the other ones went through the Atlantic and it's how they spread the peppers pretty much we have the peppers here that we use in Mexican Cuisine well there's a lot of them yes we use them in both forms we use them dry and we use them fresh mainly the dry ones we use them for mulles and the fresh ones we use them for sa and M is it means sauce so it's a sauce made out of different ingredients uh but the main ingredient will be Peppers dry Peppers we're going to make the mle so we normally clean the peppers we take the the seeds [Music] out and the veins here and this is what we use in Mexico when when we were babies and we suck our Tong you know for us it was something that they did to us they put pepper on our Tong so we don't suck our tongs and and it works and it works yes this is a Mexican chocolate so you get that in the Mexican store yes you can get this in the Mexican store um this we use it a lot we use it for regular drinks if you mixx this with milk you have hot chocolate and you can make it in the mle like we're going to use it now so we have some uh chicken broth here that we're going to put in our blender and then we're going to add our chocolate we're going to add our we do the tortillas and the bread to thicken the sauce it's our thicken ingredient so it's like instead of flour instead of flour right we put the tomato and we put our bread and we're going to blend all that very good now this sunflower seeds and the pumpkin seeds and we have our almonds we have our raisins this is a traditional recipe but it's how my mom used to make it for us so we have the garlic and the onions and we have all our spices here just blend all the now we're going to blend our Peppers we fried them already and we put them in hot water to recate reconstitute yeah reconstitute them now we're going to blend our Peppers so so the mle is that something you traditionally eat for holidays so it's a like daytoday you it's a very traditional dish and we use it to to celebrate we we don't need more every day because you can see it's very time consuming yeah so we put a little l in here so we're going to strain this and we're just going to cook this for like 4 minutes so now we are going to incorporate our chocolate and or spices with your mole and we're going to cook this so how long would you say it needs to cook probably like an hour that's the difference an hour makes see the colors the colors these colors these peppers and these ingredients are already cooked and they're blend together how would you say food is love in Spanish laa is Amore okay laida is Amore isn't that the truth so if you cook with your love and your heart your food is always going to be good I couldn't have said it better than that I know here in the states they tend to call Pico deallo to the salsa Mexicana but the P deallo for us is fruit and we use instead of fresh Peppers we use flake Chile the Aral Peppers halisco we make the payo with hik what is hik hik is a root this is a hik it's a fruit so we put some of our hik here some cucumbers or orangee or tangerines and we use flakes this is the difference we use red pepper flakes that's very interesting and of course some salt we just eat it like this on the side it's like a side dish like a side dish like a salad maybe mhm like a salad so this is p p it's delicious this is called amate and we have a hand we normally use or the Indians mhm use this to crush the corn you put it in here and then with your hand you're going to press it until you mush it you see it's kind of like a m pestel it's just a lot bigger but it's bigger no [Music] you keep grinding and then you push it all the way here and then you have your grind ingredients a uh prehistoric blender yes this this is our blender and to this date we still use these metates and these mahes in some areas of Mexico and now we have some steak tacos and you can use any of the sauces that you like to try all right okay I want to see if you're doing the same thing or not yeah I'm going to use some salsa meic and thank you very much salute food is love food is love love your food so many different Salsas and flavors one of the most rewarding part of cooking is that I'm always learning new things it's thought-provoking to try something as simple as salsa that I've never had before and be blown away by it so these are our poblano skins it's a roasted poblano peppers with Chihuahua cheese it's a cheese that it was introduced to Mexico by The menites there's still in Mexico there is a large community in Chihuahua and that's why the the cheese is named Chihuahua cheese because it comes from them from Chihuahua so it's what we use the way we serve them you have the roasted peppers with the cheese and then we put salsa meic in here we just put some sour cream in here this is our poano skins so we're doing the chicken for the mole so we add some of the mole sauce There rumors is just incredible you can smell the chocolate the cinnamon the cloves it is so good my pleasure guys I'm going to get fatter I'm already fatter at day kitchen cannot officially be over until we've had a drink ironically another sort of caricature of Mexican culture is tequila equally as interesting as the origin of the teaquila culture itself where's the origin you ask well halisco Mexico of course it explains why Lada boast the biggest tequila selections anywhere in St Louis tequila is in a lot of ways as sophisticated and complex as wine maybe even more so in that respect you can consider Leticia sort of a somier of tequila so we have a three levels of tequila we have the tequila Blanco the reposado and Theo tequila Blancos or or Silvers are AG no more than two months so they come straight from the The Distillery to the bottle the reposados they can be age from 2 months to a year so reposal what does that mean reposal means rested rested so they need to rest in in the like aged aged mhm at least 2 months to a year and the anos they need to go they need to at least St for a year to two three years and of course we have the extra anos that can be more than than than that and they're a little bit different of course this is the the flavor the traditional flavor and the smell of the tequila and you can try a little bit you can just put it in your your mouth and kind of keep it for a little bit and it will give you the the flavor of the Agave so this one it's a repos and it's been aged at least a [Music] year so you can you can tell the difference on the smell and on the on the flavor the Aromas are different they're changing right the profiles are different too MH and then you we move into the ano which this one has to be HED at least a year and now we're also doing tequila dinners where you we pair the tequila with food so we serve a five course meal that we're pairing the food with the tequila so so what tell me about how you pair that what what are you pairing it with um we look at the profile of the tequila and the flavors that will go perfect with the with the Tequila No the the reposados andos are they do better with dishes that there is a lot of butter or creamy dishes so we can we can prepare food that goes along with those Tequilas it's all about learning something new right right you you need that's the good thing about life you know we can always learn something and enjoy that now I know why you had 17 siblings I guess my father like to Tequila a lot who knew there were so many kinds or tequila for different occasions and that it's supposed to be served in a flute it creates a lot more respect for the care that's put into it but as a responsible guest I know when I've hit my limit and so I must go before I become a character of [Music] myself Cheroke street is home to a large number of Mexican and Latin American businesses walking down the sidewalk you get the feeling that you're some somewhere South of the Border at preparation for a family birthday party Leticia has invited me to do a little shopping here at the Latin American grocery store to find some things that aren't available many other places it's always been a Hispanic area or what's the story behind that it's been uh uh it's been a place for immigrants it's a big Hispanic population here but um they're all mixed with people from all other countries so this is a place where people feel safe and then they come over and it's a Melting Pot it's a Melting Pot but right now we're in the Mexican in the Mexican side yes let's let's go shopping and see what they have here [Music] shopping well look at that the chizo the carada it looks good doesn't it yeah fajitas we have faitas car al pastor I love is that the what makes that red color on the the peppers the peppers you know the peppers that we use for the for the mole it's the peppers they use HCHO and gu to marinate this uh Meats I mean it's some unusual cuts of meats you don't normally see that no CU like here the vistes our vistes here in America we we eat thick steaks in Mexico no we don't these are our Stakes so they're really big but they're really thin so you can slice it uh to make tacos or you can just eat it like a hole and big put a big piece of your meat in the taco I keep coming back to chicken feet in the Asian cusine they use it in the French cine we use it to make the soups and sauces gelatinous right right so it's what we use when we were kids we used to fight for those oh yeah we wanted to have one of those at the end there is only two or four right so we have to fight for those we have the avocados and tomatoes what is this savila that is savila the Alo vera plant we have the nopales here prickly pears and the prickly pears yeah you call it tuna tuna there is tuna Roa and tuna Blanca or ver this is all the the grains this is this is the grains and this is the all the dried the dried peppers so so this is a good place to get it this is a good place peppers are how fresh the the color so fresh the chili they are you know the salsa that we made with the oil mhm they look so pretty and we have all the spices here we like to do also a lot of the the skin we pickle the skin the pork skin we call it qutos so it's is it raw pickled no no it's cooked and then they put it in vinegar and in Fruit but it's not you know like it's not crispy it's soft it's softt I've never seen that before no we have to eat that and we have the also the poas the pig feet also in in vinegar or in ctio oh here are the chocolate it's what we use for for the moly you can find pretty much everything here in this area in this area yeah the stuff in here has my head spinning with new ideas I mean where else can you find chicken feet and prickly pear cactus in the same aisle that's all we need I think right you know I found a lot of inspiration I'll see you tomorrow at the party don't forget I'll be there be there to eat some menud and some P I know I'm going to love it growing up Laticia and her siblings shared a memory being able to request their favorite dish on their birthday across the continent and sands of time from halisco to St Louis they've kept the tradition alive the table set and the birthday tradition is about to begin and lucky for me I have a seat at the table in Mexico food is very important is uh it's what it keeps us together uh if we're going to celebrate that birthday we eat you know it is always what brings us together my mom used to cook for us on our birthday we have 17 birthdays right so we have uh every month there is a couple of birthdays in my family so my mom used to cook for us our favorite dish on our birthday you know so like for me it was a poon Chipotle Po in uh mustasa mustard uh Chicken in mustard with carrots and uh I remember every year my mom will make that for me and uh you know it bring back when I make that it brings back memories sometimes I make that chicken here for some of my friends and um it just brings back those memories you know that I'm eating the chicken and I'm thinking of my mom and my father celebrating my birthday with me that is so awesome I mean we eat and anything that my mom would put on the table I mean we we wor a lot so my mom was always cooking uh so do you uh have you drawn from that inspiration from your parents your cooking style is that from mother does that come from your from your mother okay yes it's all the recipes that we prepare here at the restaurant those are my mom's recipes okay right there if you have 17 kids I can only imagine the dinner table so we we grew up uh in different times you know so but the the table was always full it was at least eight nine people eating I was born in halisco but I went to school I went to siou so I came over to study so um and after we I finished my masters uh my father and my mom were already here and he wanted to open a restaurant so he's like uh so do you want to do that and I'm like yes I'll help you and that help become this what you see now you you didn't plan to be a a chef or a restaurant owner no I didn't plan to be a chef um before my father passed 5 years ago everybody all my brothers and sisters will come over here every Sunday and uh and enjoy with us dinner know so this was a place to meet and we cook for the family and that's what kepts the family going yeah and for the menudo what you do you add some of these Peppers you can just break them so just break them like this yes just go like this and break it on your plate difference like this is it the seed a one in there you want everything I want everything in there okay yeah those are very hot sh they're very hot okay you think I'm uh probably well let's see we need you okay you put it in your hands and then you go like this I see that that gives a lot more flavor so go ahead and do that get some in your plate it's never and just go like this mhm to warm it up wow and just let it fall in your plate I've heard a lot about this soup and everybody you know in the kitchen that ever work for me they were Hispanic was telling me about it but I've never had it it's delicious I love it it's not too hot I can handle it like I said it's part of our culture is what we do you know we help each other and we cook for each other and it's how we express our love through food well when I said it wasn't very hot I'm changing my mind now this is a very traditional meal there are so many restaurants out there this is a spot that is unique your your food is really unique I like s is like my second home now I've been here 30 some years that's why I decided to stay here so the music is different too because you wouldn't think you would have piano music right right in a Mexican restaurant very interesting I believe the only way to truly take in an experience is to let go of your preconceived ideas about it push the stereotype and caricature aside and jump in I like it I enjoy cooking I enjoy cooking for people toing cooking for my friends I love cooking like you said food is love so it's how you transmit you know like our hearts are kitchens and we feed everybody from our hearts I like that it's the alme it's anme tradition from the old mea um tribes they say their our hearts are kitchens for me this experience embodies a lot what makes St Louis a great Food City Leticia welcomed me into her kitchen shared her recipes and included me in her family traditions when you've been in the kitchen as long as I have you know what quality makes someone a good Chef Leticia clearly has all of that but what makes her exceptional is something else she brings to the table she's humble her love for cooking and what it means to her is evident we spoke very little of the pandemic sweeping the world at a time when everything is upside down sometimes there is no better shelter for a chef than in a kitchen even as many of our peers are losing theirs when you've left the place you grew up it's comforting to eat and cook familiar foods and lucky for us Letisha came to St Louis to carry on that tradition here I have taken a deal shank and braced it in mle and I call it shank the St Louis food scene is full of beautiful stories please support your local restaurants whenever you can food is [Music] love

2024-05-29 19:25

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