Tlaxcala, Mexico – I always like a glass of good pulque and my friend Pedro had some of the best. Once allowed only to Aztec nobles and priests, pulque is produced by cutting out the center of a maguey cactus and collecting the liquid which rises from it. Fermenting naturally in two to five hours, the resulting drink is mildly alcoholic, viscous and sweet. Served at room temperature, it is an acquired taste – as are the locations, or pulquerias, where it is sold.

Pedro’s pulqueria is definitely one of the best. Calling me his “brother,” he would sit with me in the shade of the bottle brush tree in the sandy area behind his gate. There we listened to his clientele of farmers and peasants talking in Spanish or Nahuatl as they sat surrounded by an assortment of dogs, chickens, turkeys and goats – as well as their distinct and mingled smells – drinking what Pedro called “the elixir of the gods.”

Pulque, I was told, would cure everything from guilt to senility. When served with chito (a dried meat), they assured me that it would produce a male child(!). You won’t find Pedro’s in any guidebook; it is hidden from the world, left over from some other Mexico that doesn’t exist anymore. . .

As we sat there soaking up the earthy ambiance, a car pulled up. Amid clouds of swirling dust and barking dogs, blond heads were visible over the high gate. Pedro yelled, “Johnny!” and rose to hug the thin blond guy who had just arrived, followed by three middle-aged women and another man, all Americans. Odd, I thought. Quite odd.

It turns out that I had another brother! Pedro led him along with the others into the distilling room. He motioned me to follow. My new brother, Johnny, was here with students from his cooking school for a “Pulque Experience.” We were led into a tin-roofed adobe room, lined on one side with old rakes, sacks of corn, broken shovels, religious statues, burning candles and a stuffed armadillo. On the other side were dozens of five-gallon plastic cans full of bubbling, fermenting pulque. Pedro was serving and the air was heady.

Johnny told me that pulque is used in many recipes here in central Mexico and that his Mexican wife Estela considers it part of the culinary experience of the country. Here I thought Pedro and I were merely having a drink when it turned out that I was actually having a culinary experience with my “other brother” and four gringos!

They definitely got my attention with all that talk about pulque and food. So I followed them outside, stepping around Señorita Romero, the sleeping pig, and onto the dusty road to meet Doña Estela at her home over in the next town. I liked what I saw there, and figured anybody who would send her students to Pedro’s for a culinary experience had to be interesting. So I signed up, moved out of my hotel and into Estela and Johnny’s house for a week of lessons at “Mexican Home Cooking.”

My introduction to Mexican cooking

My fellow students, whom I’d first met when Johnny showed up at Pedro’s were Crocker, his daughter Hester, and Billie and her friend Bridget. They turned out to be as interesting as the rest of the crowd at Pedro’s They all loved cooking, and with glasses of wine at hand we diced, and sliced and fought over who got to dredge the chicken breasts. As classical Mexican music seeped into the food, Estela and her helpers did their best to empty our heads of measuring spoons, cups and any preconceived ideas of Mexican cuisine we may have had. “Touch, mix, taste, use your hands. Feel the food!” she said.

Doña Estela had at least 15 uses for masa (tortilla dough) – round, oval, open, topped, flat or thick – these we covered with sauces and filled with unknown greens and blossoms, cactus, mushrooms from the fields and fungus from corn. A parade of meats appeared as neighbors brought rabbit, lamb, possum and barbecued goat. Yes we even used pulque, that “elixir of the gods.” And feeling a little godlike ourselves, we ate the forbidden amaranth (banned by the Spanish as food of the devil) while visions of the Inquisition filled the kitchen.

Gradually we began to let go of our busy minds and entered the world of sensation and tastes, of mingled aromas and people hilariously stumbling about trying to execute that perfectly flowered cauliflower. Success! . .with much clapping and patting on backs; It was Mexican Grand Opera with music in the air and a toast to ourselves and Estela!

The days were filled with delights. There were visits to Mayan ruins. The murals and pyramids at Cacaxtla really knocked me out, as well as the colonial city of Tlaxcala to explore, with cafes and dancing under the portales on the square. And best of all, the tastes. . .there were tastes I never dreamed of in Mexican cooking!

It was winter; the nights were chilly and filled with the smell of burning wood and cooking tortillas. One by one we would wander indoors to sit and talk. One night around the fireplace in my room, Billie told us a little of her own story: In 1936 her father had lost everything in the Great Depression. With his last money, he bought a ticket in New Orleans and boarded a ship for Veracruz. He arrived with one bag and a stolen typewriter. He soon sold the typewriter and bought two more. A business was born and two years later, in Mexico City, so was Billie. Selling typewriters, her father became one of the richest men in Mexico, and Billie was born a Mexican.

The last night

The story ended and music called us to our dinner. It was our last meal together and the musicians had arrived. They serenaded us into the evening singing “Volver, volver” – "Come back, come back" to Mexico as we ate, and sang and sipped our margaritas.

In the end it was okay that Hester never was able to get her hands into those duck eggs to separate the yolks. It was a color thing she later admitted – the brilliant yellow yolks just did her in. And Billie and Bridgett never did discuss their – I thought – rather excessive enjoyment of the soft masa dough. But for me, it was the “fiancée’s sighs,” covered in honey, lemon and cinnamon, that left me forever changed.

Mexican food for me has become an elusive smell, a subtle, delicate or intense flavor remembered from there and never quite found again, except sometimes when I take out Estela’s recipe book. That’s when I begin to remember to taste and touch, to feel the food and try again for that perfect walnut sauce for chiles en nogada.