My name is Eva Longoria and I am my traon and welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our past and present through food.
On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our culture.
So make yourself at home, even Brichel. Thanksgiving is coming up, which means trips to the market, the crowded markets.
Every market right around Thanksgiving is a zoo and that kind of energy has existed in markets ever since they started.
Today's episode is all about mercados.
Let me tell you something.
My first cookbook, I did a love letter to produce managers.
After that, I love I love a good produce section. I love it. That's why I like mercados. I like to go.
And this is living in Mexico and now in Spain. You have to take a little your own shopping cart because you have to go to the market to get your vegetables. You got to go to the butcher to get your meat, and you got to go to you know, the flower place to get your flowers. Like they don't have the souper market that has everything they do, but they're.
Not as popular. Yeah, I wish it was like that here.
You know, I try to go on Sundays, I try to go to the farmer's market and there's one not far from me.
There are a few sort of around around me. And I love it.
And I love it because you're supporting the local farmers, you know, and and that the markets in Mexico or the Wahaka Golula market is incredible. There's this one in Wa Watemala that I went to, Chichi Castenango. That's unlike anything I'd ever ever seen before. So yeah, and I'd love that. It really gives you a sense of community.
So I feel like markets have historically in the soul of every community. It was the blass i. It was the place where everybody was seen. It was the place of commerce. It was, you know, the place of meeting people and talking to people.
And so what is the history of meticalgo's in the markets?
Yeah, I mean they, like you said, they are the soul of every community. And really their initial history predates the oldest records. And they they are something that, you know, they connect social and economic lives of cities. They showcaser regions, you know, food and because some of them are many of them, especially historically are ephemeral. They are difficult to find archaeologically, you know, because of this, because sometimes they've only lasted for a few days or for or for
a week. A stall was set up and then taken down, so there's not much of a trace. But there have been markets, of course for and thousands and thousands of years in every part of the world.
Yeah, you know, when I went to Morocco, they have the famous spice market, which has been around.
For thousands of years.
That's like one of the oldest markets, and it's called the spice market because you see all the spices of this beautiful, big relapsed sacks.
And I love to see that history.
And it's obvious that that they're living archaeological finds right like they're continuing to this day.
Oh my god.
Yes, absolutely, And this is one thing that really strikes me, Like when I went to Toaka or to Chichatemala, it's like, oh my god, this is this is a history, this is living history. This has to be you know, preserved forever. And they bring people together.
The ancient Greeks probably you know as one of the most famous markets.
Yeah, the ancient Greek Agora was a major focus of everyday affairs, and they traded everything from food to perfume. You could get your haircut, you could go for a drink, and they just did. They had everything like many markets you know, do today in this ancient Greek agora, which I find a fact that I find really kind of funny is that bread sellers were notoriously loud and vulgar. They needed to make a mark so that people would
come and shop from them. Most people couldn't read, so whoever was making more of a scandal would get the most attention.
Markets differ wherever you are in the world. Sometimes they are the soups, so the bizarres, the mercados. I love the fact that they support small businesses, yes, right, Like it's a way for small business owners to kind of test the success of their food and you know, kind of experiment and do research and development to see like is this working. So I've always loved to support, you know, the small farmer, the small business.
They're really the soul of a community.
After the break, friend of the show chef Brian Ford joins us to talk about his new cookbook, ban Dulse, the Latin American baking book Today.
Bread is one of the most important things that you could buy at a market. So we thought, why not chat with Brian about what those early loaves of bread were light.
That's after the break.
I'm great for history.
Got a chance to talk to chef Brian Ford, baker extraordinaire.
He joined us last season for our Toba episode.
Brian's new book is really special.
He includes native grains and roots that would have been sold in pre Hispanic mercados to make contemporary breads grounded in history. Enjoy our conversation.
Hey, Brian, who are you. I'm good. I'm so happy to see you.
It's been a while. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it so much.
So I want to talk about your book, Banni Dulse, The Latin American Baking Book. You have over one hundred and fifty recipes from all of the Latin American countries from Mexico, Central South America to the Caribbean. You set the reader up for success, but you also include a lot of history and cultural insight, and that is what
I think makes the book really shine. The history of Latin American breads are not straightforward, like you say, right, Some breads trace their roots back to indigenous ingredients and traditions. Some of the moros to a reaction to colonization, and others are influenced by West African traditions. So there's a
lot going on there. And you really talk about all of this, do you have a whole section on grains and roots with native ingredients like cassava, quin amoranth corn and these are all ingredients that would have been found in pre Hispanic markets.
Yep?
Right? What kind of native breads were.
Being It's difficult to pinpoint exact and this is something that I'm going to be pursuing forever, uh, you know, and hopefully you know, find better avenues into.
Uh.
Documentation is really the word, right, It's like how how was? How was pre Hispanic baking documented? And there's trace evidence of a lot of different stories and and and pieces that you can kind of put together. Specifically in Ecuador, banda ambato was a was a bread that was made with different you know, pea flowers and uh chicha as as.
The for fermentation.
And the initial colonists there they felt that it was as good or better than the wheat bread they were eating back in you know, France or wherever they you know,
where they came from. Amorant is something that's always you know, grown in Latin America, and you know, I tried to utilize amorant in a way that it could utilize its nutritional benefits in like the sour dough starters and sour dough preferments or incorporating you know, fifty or one hundred grams of amorant here and there and some of the recipes just to let that indigenous grain shine through, you know, in the gluten free section, you know, kind of just
concocted some of my own ideas of how amorant could be used in baking, as well as sorgum. Even though sorthum's indigenous to Africa, it is it's a grain that's commonly used in Central America to combat hunger and to just try to you know, to be used in abundance to feed not just animals but also people.
So fascinating.
I was surprised to see sorgum in there, actually because I feel I grew up in South Texas and you see sorghum on the road and it was like for for animal feed.
So yeah, yeah.
But you mentioned this whole, this whole thing about just you know, trying to figure out these roots because so much is not documented and even the the i'm Ambato that you that you just mentioned and I I have never heard of it before, you know, reading your your book, but we know about it because the colonizers talked about it, right, So it's like who's telling these stories? Like who gets to you know, tell these stories exactly.
It's tricky, It's tricky. It's not easy. Yeah, but hopefully this is just like.
Opening the door, you know, this is this has definitely unlocked my mind and unlocked like the path forward in terms of where where I can go and and how I can research and like you know what almost like a roadmap to start to pinpoint more uh uh specifics about this history and try to like really, I think it's a it's it's not something that can just be unpacked in a matter of a short period of time.
I think it's gonna be for me personally, a lifelong pursuit to just continue to get as deep as possible within the truth or as close to what we what we can consider to be the truth about the origins of the specific food ways.
And it's tough because you know, you have you have the reality of chattel slavery.
Right, So you know, we're talking about so many different people that were displaced from Africa and enslaved and basically do you know doing bringing their traditions into the Americas. Then you have the indigenous, which and then there's so many different types of indigenous, you know, different tribes and
different food ways. And then you have the colonizers. So you have this kind of trifecta of influence and it's like, I just I hope one day to be able to really see some concrete, some more concrete facts about or documentation about how these food ways evolved.
And even at the beginning of your book you talk about Latin America.
It has Latin because it was colonized by people who spoke these languages. So everything is just sort of tied into complex web, which is super super fascinating. Yeah, you talk about well, of course, when I think of bread, and I think maybe when most people think of bread, they think of they think of wheat, right, So this is like way before wheat, and wheat was introduced pretty early on in Mexico by and the very first well the first known harvester of wheat in the America's was Juan Garrido.
It was an African. Let's talk about it.
Yeah, let's talk about it.
It's the most fascinating, one of the most fascinating stories, which I you know, I have I have ambitions, uh, you know, to to really try to to dive super deep into this one.
But Garrido was that's not even his real name, you know, that was Actually I'm not gonna lie.
I mean, I'm trying to find his you know, his real name, you know, that's part of But that's and and that's see that it just feels so problematic. It's like, how could if we know his name was one Garrio, how how can we not know what his birth African name was or like but anyway, you know, I'm sure you know it's getting out of Africa and ending up in Spain. You know, he assimilated, essentially became a conquistador by choice or by you know. Again, it's it's it's
how do we unpack it further? But he changed his name to match those names of the Spaniards, and he accompanied Pons dely on, you know, and he and it's it's interesting. Actually, my my wife's parents live on the coast of Florida. I mean a few minutes drive from this National Park that's Ponce's landing point. Actually, so it's it's you know, when we travel for the holidays, I always see it.
And I'm like, you know what one Garridos right here. He must have been walking amongst this area right here, and they were like, yo, you know.
And it's it's you know, trying to think back on on that must have been wild by the way, just like to think back in the fifteen hundreds, you know, yeah, that same supposedly this spot is where they came.
But yeah, he was the first African in North America.
Yeah, yeah, the first like known or documented African, you know, black human being.
You know.
But again it's like, you know, who started this stat But but that's where we're, That's where we are, and that is that is the accepted fact. So that's what we're going with. But yeah, so you know, and and and his it's kind of legendary. It's it's honestly, it's a thing of legend.
Juan It' said.
It's a very interesting story that I want to continue to to learn about research right about and so he you know, he was he was given some seeds and he was, hey, go go.
Plant, go, you know, go figure out how to plan this.
And and from there there was a lot of other history in terms of how you know, once ponstil On wasstanly On. That's like guac guak constantly on, you know, I you know, I believe.
He was with him for when when he passed away as well.
And then Garrido ended up, uh, you know, having a farm and kind of like riding into the sunset it seems but I'm like, what did he really just liked? But you know, so, but yeah, it's an interesting story. I think it's unbelievable and I can't I can't wait to learn more about you know, who was he before he was one Garrido?
That's the real question.
And yeah, that is that is a fascinating question. And why he became a farmer basically, right, he harvested you know, wheat after he was a conquistador. Yeah, but really early on, so bread was first sold in Mexican markets beginning in fifteen twenty five, so this was really really early, you know, post conquest. Yeah, so what were these early breads like because they were divided by.
Class, right, so you know, you you have obviously at the time a heavy you know, the reason the reason wheat was planted was because the colonizers they wanted bread. They wanted to you know, they wanted to they were here to take over the land, right to conquer, and they wanted to eat stuff that they like back home, which was you know, you know, enriched enriched wheat based breads. Uh, you know, white white flour being you know, if you're eating white flour, your your high class, you.
Know what I'm saying.
If you're if you're eating like in Brazil, if you look at like franceas or Baugeno with you know, Banfrances, it was you know, they wanted it with what the the who was ruling the land, They're like, I want this with white flour and the wheat flowers for you know, the enslaved and for the for the four they're going to eat the wheat flour. Which is interesting now if you think about today, if you're eating white flour, you're broke. If you're eating white you're using white flour, eating white
like straight white bread, you're broke. And it's because it's you know, it's easier to mass produce and bleach uh white flour and package it up and sell it for cheap and make you know, uh you know, commercial commercialized commodity bread, which is like, so, but if you've got money, you're going to the farmer's market to get that heirloom wheat, to get that whole grain because you're you're trying to watch your pH balance and your you need your probiotics
and so like if you're eating wheat, now you are affluent.
Whole whole wheat, so to say.
But but yeah, you know those first uh banias or reposterias, uh was what were designed to a lot of different pastry shops were made to kind of emulate uh yeah. The say is essentially it's like, hey, like how do we add this fat? We want to make, you know, a brioche or or whatever it is that they were accustomed to wanting to make. And I think it it just evolved into the way that this mashup of people
made it, you know. And and that's there's there's lines within like how food permeate time, Right, It's like there's like definitive lines where something used to be something else but then it became something else. And it's but it's also both at the same time. The easiest example, I always uses dumplings, ravioli or noodles to pasta, you know, Egyptian or flatbread in the Fertile Crescent to pizza. So no, but with pizza, no one, there's no one out there.
That's just like, like, pizza is Italian, Pizza is very distinct, right, That's that's just like a fact. And people are die hard about pizza. It's not a flatbread and this and that. But when it comes to panduls, it's like, oh, isn't that just a briosh you know? Or isn't that It's like, well, if you're going to use that logic, use that logic across the board, right, you can't just use that logic for us, but then go ride your high horse with all the stuff that was derived from uh.
A Joe or or Africa in the Middle East.
So so please like you know, like pastry, pastry is pastry French. No, No, pastry is Egyptian or you know, it's it's a Middle or Middle East. You know, you apply it across the board or don't apply it at all. Right, So that a little off topic, but yeah, but you know, you. Essentially you get these Bandulsas you start, you start to see different breads being made with of course the you
know Beatot this uh in Guadalajara. You know, you've got this this story storied uh tale of Biote, this colonizer who is trying to help some of the indigenous, and some of the native people make long breads, you know, like the like the ones they want to back home. But through the climate, through the altitude, through the the different time, you know, the way the flower grows, you have a different bread and then you have a different baking culture.
And over time you have a completely different bread now.
And it's like, hey, you can't just say that that's a bag it because again, say, you know, applying this principle of food and the principle of time, it's a completely different thing. So you know, these early breads were of course influenced by those that were not native to the lend, but it has become a very distinct bacon culture.
Thank you so much. I'm so excited about cooking from your book.
Thank y'all.
After the break, we're going back in time to talk about the largest and most important pre Hispanic market in Mexico.
And They sold everything there from precious stones and tools, sita malas and ghisallos.
They still sell them.
That's after the break.
Stay with us.
The largest and most important pre Hispanic market, or the tianges was the one in Tlatelrgo, which is now a park called Jadin the Santiago and next to the city. And this was a market that was set up and taken down daily. A part of the market was on the edge of the water to facilitate the exchange of
products on canoes. And this market was massive, massive, massive, massive. Yeah, everything from cacao and vanilla and herbal medicines to flowers and ceramic, cookwars and feathers and tortillas and live animals like everything precious stone, gold, silver, everything, as well as like prepared foods like the malis and gisados and atoles, and sellers from neighboring regions would come to sell their products, and so there were likely numerous languages.
Yeah.
Remember when we did our when we did the chocolate episode, and we talked about how the cacao bean was used as currency in these markets. But for the most part, the Aztecs we really didn't have a currency. They didn't have a coin or bill or anything, and so everything was based on bartering. I'll give you, you know, two of these for one of those. You know, here's two tomatoes
for one avocado, chili for beans. But if you had the cacao seeds, then you you were part of the upper class because you could get better, better stuff.
Yeah, you could get gold or cotton, but yeah, but yeah, and everything was else was on the treque was this bartering system. But even sellers established the worth and the cost of the ingredients. But there were inspectors at the market on duty ensuring that transactions were done honestly and honorably.
Wow, I didn't know this that hevnan Grpez and his letter back to the Emperor Carlos mentioned that about sixty thousand people came to the plaza daily daily for products or to barter.
That is insane.
His chronicle mention that people were as far as the eye could see, and they sold raw goods, cooked goods, infinite amounts of corn, obviously, fruit, avocado, honey, agave.
So that is so crazy.
That is as early as fifteen twenty, this was already a thriving medicado.
And one of the most important items that was sold was salt. And they also mentioned how yeah, how organized everything was, so each type of product had its own section or its own row.
But there was also class structures.
You mentioned if you had cakeosi, but you were among the elite. But all classes came and mingled, they shopped, they ate, they exchanged cheesemay, And there was a group of people that I found that I find particularly interesting that were called the hipless. And these were young men or women that were chosen good looking young men or women. They were chosen to represent the god gods for a
certain period of time. So a young man was chosen, was dressed like a god, he lived like a god for a year, and they walked around the market like they own the place, and they had servants and they had the best year as representatives of the god. And when the year was up, the sheep flat was then sacrificed on the day commemorating the god.
Oh again, I was gonna say, this sounds like a beauty pageant, like women too pageants.
But women too.
Yeah, yeah, but I don't think I would want to be.
Yes, So they were sacrificed in order to thank the gods. Can you imagine if you were chosen like, oh my god, like you're so beautiful, I'm going to kill you in a year.
So then what.
Happened to these amazing prespanic markets during the colonial period, Because I know that even though the conquista leaters were amazed by these you know, indigit markets, they still destroyed them to set up their own shit.
They still destroyed them.
Yes, so they set up their own fares and market which reflected this new commerce and trade routes.
You know.
So you had like the Manila galleons that connected Manila Takabuco. Right, this is this voya three months to get from a cup would go to Manila, six months to get from Manila in the Philippines, which was a Spanish colony, and a month and a half to unload and repack at each location. So that was one trade route. There was also the flood that the Indias which connected Gaddi's to Cuba redcrus in Mexico City, but they took them a while to unload and unpacked. It's a month and a half.
In Acapulco, it's like party time, it's like a fair. So people would come over even Peruvians would come to Mexico to buy Asian goods and take them back to sell. So this is when we start seeing sevice in Mexico and Acapulco brought over by you know, Peruvians, and so this these fairs they had these roots in medieval Europe and they were there was entertainment and merchants came together.
They would buy ingredients, They would pick up ingredients that would that they had ordered, you know, a year before, six months before.
So there were major fares.
There was a major fair in Acapulco that sold furniture, you know, China spices. There was another fair in Jalapa, Verracruz that sold hams and choriso olive oil, almonds, you know all of these Spanish you know, wines and so.
Yeah, it just the culture just completely changed.
Hey, we love hearing from you and learning all about your family traditions.
What's on your grocery list this Thanksgiving? And what are you cooking?
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Happy Thanksgiving?
How dare Thanksgiving? Hungary?
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