Speaker 1: My name is Eva Longoria and I am and welcome
Speaker 1: to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our past
Speaker 1: and present through food. On every episode, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages.
Speaker 1: So make yourself at home, eh, Rachel. This is an
Speaker 1: exciting episode because it's Women's History Month, which could be
Speaker 1: every month of the year. Yes, I agree, I agree.
Speaker 1: You and I are always talking about amazing women. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're one of bab you're one of them banks. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but yes, I love talking about women, celebrating women,
Speaker 1: and talking about cookbooks. I'm obsessed with talking about cookbooks,
Speaker 1: especially she is she is, she is every time I
Speaker 1: come over, I'm like carrying million books. Um, but there's
Speaker 1: so many ones, you know, cookbooks written by little known women,
Speaker 1: and I love to highlight these. And one of the
Speaker 1: women that we're talking about today I learned from you,
Speaker 1: and so I'm excited to talk about her, and I'm
Speaker 1: excited to talk about an And we just did a
Speaker 1: TEXTBACS episode and both of these women are have a
Speaker 1: foreign MX. So oh so we're Chicanas before the term Chicana.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're going away back yeah, yeah, we're going
Speaker 1: away like eighteen ninety eight, ninety eight. I love talking
Speaker 1: about cookbooks, and so I'm excited to dive into these
Speaker 1: amazing women, um, these powerhouse Latinas in the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: who were really revolutionary one hundred percent. I first want
Speaker 1: to talk about who was born right when California became
Speaker 1: part of the US. So she was living in this
Speaker 1: in this world, this sort of in between world. But
Speaker 1: she in eighteen ninety eight, when she was fifty years old,
Speaker 1: she became the first lepina to write a Spanish language cookbook.
Speaker 1: What's interesting about Incarnacion, which is such a beautiful name,
Speaker 1: like one of those beautiful names she was born. She
Speaker 1: was born into an elite family. But during this time
Speaker 1: where California was quote unquote sold to the United States
Speaker 1: after the Mexican American War, they lost their land. They did.
Speaker 1: They lost her land. Her grandfather and her uncles were killed.
Speaker 1: Their ranch has taken. I mean, this was the story
Speaker 1: of so many people during this time period. And they
Speaker 1: were these elite educated people who all of a sudden
Speaker 1: became second class citizens in their own home and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden had nothing. I mean, they were from
Speaker 1: Santa Clara in northern California. Their family had the first
Speaker 1: house in that area. She was fifty years old, was
Speaker 1: unmarried woman, very well educated her father. Before her father died,
Speaker 1: she begged her mother to give her daughters a very
Speaker 1: good education. And we know about this from this book.
Speaker 1: She wrote up the book for her nieces, her sister.
Speaker 1: One of her sister had married an Anglo, and she
Speaker 1: was afraid that her nieces were going to forget who
Speaker 1: they were because their father was white. So she did
Speaker 1: not want then to lose their roots and lose a
Speaker 1: sense of who they were. Oh, so she decided to
Speaker 1: write this cookbook and calls it the Spanish Cook, not
Speaker 1: the Mexican Cook, the Spanish Cook. That's not surprising because
Speaker 1: I think, you know, with the new Anglo majority in
Speaker 1: California at this time, to be called a Mexican was
Speaker 1: pretty derogatory. So a lot of these elite Californios always
Speaker 1: called themselves Spanish, which is not wrong, by the way,
Speaker 1: because at this time, you know, a lot of those
Speaker 1: old Spanish families never intermarried with indigenous people or Mexicans,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, I do think though some of
Speaker 1: it was about like, oh, we don't want to have
Speaker 1: the label of Mexicans. Let's call ourselves Spanish, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: And this is something that sort of stuck up even today.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes we refer to the rad rice as
Speaker 1: Spanish rice. I don't know why it's called Spanish rice,
Speaker 1: because nobody in Spain eats the red rice. Now, I
Speaker 1: mean baya is red, but that's from saffron. It's a
Speaker 1: totally different thing. It's more using the term Spanish, like
Speaker 1: to his Spanish size these these things. So it becomes
Speaker 1: a sort of very very confusing, and it kind of
Speaker 1: starts within what are the recipes? What are the recipes
Speaker 1: in it? Like, what are some of the dishes? She
Speaker 1: has about eight hundred dishes. One thing that's interesting is
Speaker 1: that fifteen percent of the recipes come from UM Michicano,
Speaker 1: which is the earliest cookbook published in Mexico. So fifteen
Speaker 1: percent of the recipes are from this cookbook UM. But
Speaker 1: she has about eight hundred recipes. Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: know it's it's it's a proper it's a proper cookbook,
Speaker 1: like a full on cookbook. She has tons of chi
Speaker 1: lessons of spices, vinegar, wine, m she has three different
Speaker 1: recipes for chi laki les. She has fourteen recipes for tensis,
Speaker 1: were teen recipes for chila. How many ways can you
Speaker 1: make chili? You could do you could do meet, you
Speaker 1: could do cheese, you could do vegetables, different sun size,
Speaker 1: different cheeses. UM ten of recipes for codfish, including the
Speaker 1: bacca now, the Christmas baccan now. And she has fifty
Speaker 1: seven different size sas fifty fun sizes. This is all
Speaker 1: in one book. This is all in one book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is all in one book. And so was she
Speaker 1: the first Spanish cookbook in the US or there was
Speaker 1: a couple others before hers? This is the first Spanish
Speaker 1: language cookbook in the US. There were other Spanish sort
Speaker 1: of Mexican cookbooks that had been printed in Mexico that
Speaker 1: were then printed in the US and more in the
Speaker 1: East Coast. And then there were other recipes like UM
Speaker 1: Junior League sort of little cookbooks that were published by churches,
Speaker 1: and they included some Mexican recipes that were attributed to
Speaker 1: the housekeepers of the women that we're writing this cookbook.
Speaker 1: But this is the fall on first Spanish language cookbook
Speaker 1: published by a woman. Wow, what I love that UM
Speaker 1: in the cookbook. She assumed the readers knew how to cook,
Speaker 1: so a lot of the directions were like, and make
Speaker 1: it in the usual manner. Do you imagine reading a
Speaker 1: cookbook today, going and you know, salte those mushrooms in
Speaker 1: the usual way. Yeah, the way that you do. Don't
Speaker 1: go anywhere. Hungry for history will be right back. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show. Here's more on the first Latina
Speaker 1: to publish a Spanish language cookbook in the United States.
Speaker 1: She leaves this heirloom to her nieces, and she says,
Speaker 1: you should consider your needs because if a woman is rich,
Speaker 1: she needs to manage, and if she is poor, she
Speaker 1: needs to know how to work. So she's giving this,
Speaker 1: but she cites these ancient Roman you know, cookbooks, and
Speaker 1: she cites these ancient Persian parties and and I mean,
Speaker 1: she was clearly an incredibly educated woman that decided to
Speaker 1: do this, and this is you know, food as this
Speaker 1: badge of identity, and she wanted her nieces to keep this.
Speaker 1: And then when she died, the book fell into obscurity
Speaker 1: like many things do that were at the time. You
Speaker 1: know that we're published by women, by latinas it should
Speaker 1: have fell into obscurity. I know in La there are
Speaker 1: at least two copies of this book, the Huntington Library
Speaker 1: and Pasadena has one in the LA Public Library Downtown
Speaker 1: also has a copy. Wow, she was like the first
Speaker 1: Martha Stewart also because she gave like, um, tips about
Speaker 1: you know, outside of the cooking knowledge. She gave tips
Speaker 1: like kitchen cleanliness the cardinal virtue of every cook or
Speaker 1: select your ingredients carefully and know what your animals were fed. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean she had a lot of like these amazing consejos,
Speaker 1: what do you advices, a lot of different a lot
Speaker 1: of advice. Yes, you know, even like you know, mushrooms,
Speaker 1: like make sure that you if your mushrooms tripped yellow,
Speaker 1: they're poisonous. If they're black, they're God. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: guess we could, Yeah, we could call her an early
Speaker 1: and early Martha Stewart, early Martha Stewart. Do you have
Speaker 1: this cookbook? Do you have it? I don't have the
Speaker 1: actual cookbook, but I have this book. It's called In
Speaker 1: Garnacion's Kitchen, and this was published in the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: So's here she is. There's look at her, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: look at her. I know she's beautiful, but this like
Speaker 1: a very very fluffy dress. This is clearly that's a
Speaker 1: very Spanish Spanish dress. That's a very Spanish attire. But
Speaker 1: this is called in Garnessian's Kitchen Mexican Recipes from nineteenth
Speaker 1: century California. So this is the book that I have.
Speaker 1: And she was amazing. She also used to write for
Speaker 1: newspaper columns. I mean, she was an incredible, incredible woman.
Speaker 1: So what about Elena Zela Yetta. I told you about
Speaker 1: her because somebody sent me a script about her life.
Speaker 1: She was a celebrity chef before celebrity chefs existed. Her
Speaker 1: life is fascinating, her life is amazing. When you told
Speaker 1: me about her, I was like, how do I not
Speaker 1: know about this woman? And I now I have like
Speaker 1: all of her books. You know, she was up an
Speaker 1: absolute force. And Lena was born in Mexico. Her parents
Speaker 1: were Spanish from Barcelona and moved to Mexico and that
Speaker 1: at the end of the nineteenth century, you know, to
Speaker 1: make it in America, write for better opportunities. They were
Speaker 1: not a well to do family at all. She was
Speaker 1: born after her parents had been in Mexico for about
Speaker 1: a year and a half at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: Mexican Revolution, people were targeting Spaniards. They weren't wealthy Spaniards,
Speaker 1: they just happened to be Spaniards. So they left Mexico
Speaker 1: and moved to San Francisco. So she was she was
Speaker 1: eleven years old when the family moved to San Francisco,
Speaker 1: right before the revolution broke out. Well, what I love
Speaker 1: about Elena, Like you know, she did speak English. She
Speaker 1: was obsessed with cooking though and learning new dishes, and
Speaker 1: she created a restaurant out of her home and it
Speaker 1: was pretty successful. But she didn't have like the best
Speaker 1: husband at the time, so she had kicked him out
Speaker 1: and then she let him back in and she kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, was this force of a woman in the household.
Speaker 1: Like she was. She was a mom and she was
Speaker 1: a wife, and she was also super entrepreneurial. She was
Speaker 1: incredible at One thing that happened is that when she
Speaker 1: was pregnant with her second child, with her second son,
Speaker 1: she went blunt, like almost immediately went blunt and yeah.
Speaker 1: And then she of course as she went into this deep,
Speaker 1: deep depression and she left to cook. Like you said,
Speaker 1: she had this very successful restaurant from her home and
Speaker 1: she actually wrote her first cookbook. She was encouraged to
Speaker 1: write her first cookbook. She didn't want to do it,
Speaker 1: but she only agreed to do it so that she
Speaker 1: could buy Seeing Eye Dog. So she wrote a cookbook
Speaker 1: to get enough money to buy the dog. And then
Speaker 1: what I find fascinating about Elena was her career took
Speaker 1: off after losing her sight. Is czy, that's crazy, it's
Speaker 1: mind blowing. Yes, after losing her sight is when she
Speaker 1: agreed to write the first cookbook to buy Thing Eye Dog,
Speaker 1: and she ended up selling ninety thousand copies. And then
Speaker 1: she went on to you know, five different cookbooks. She
Speaker 1: wrote an autobiography as well, and she was a teacher.
Speaker 1: She had a pooking show, Yeah, she did. This is
Speaker 1: what was fascinating to me was this story that I
Speaker 1: told you about because she was the first woman, or
Speaker 1: one of the first people to have a cooking show
Speaker 1: on TV and she was blind and the audience didn't
Speaker 1: believe it because she had strings attached to her ankles
Speaker 1: to alert her to witch camera to look towards and
Speaker 1: she would set out all the bowls in front of her.
Speaker 1: And if you see a footage of this show, you
Speaker 1: can see how she touches the brim of the bowl
Speaker 1: and she kind of feels the ingredient in the bowl,
Speaker 1: like and then you take your flower and she's kind
Speaker 1: of double checking if she's touching the flower. But it's
Speaker 1: really remarkable that she was a woman. She was a Latina,
Speaker 1: she was blind, and she had a cooking show. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: She had her son was in her show with her
Speaker 1: as well, so he's sort of handing her things and
Speaker 1: you can't tell because she looks at the camera based
Speaker 1: like you said it based on web ankle what what?
Speaker 1: What is stragas being pulled and she's really engaging with
Speaker 1: the with the viewer. Yeah, she was, you know, a powerhouse.
Speaker 1: She also had a frozen food business. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: what I don't know that she had a frozen food
Speaker 1: business and Lena's food specialty. She sold frozen thirtia said chiladas,
Speaker 1: a mans and and she run this speciess with her
Speaker 1: two sons. Her husband died tragically, um, even before all
Speaker 1: of this started really happening. Yeah when also she had
Speaker 1: she had a lot of hardship in her life. I
Speaker 1: mean she was blind and then her husband was tragically killed,
Speaker 1: um in a car accident. And despite all that, you see,
Speaker 1: like the forward in her book by her friend, and
Speaker 1: like newspaper articles that her life view or her outlook
Speaker 1: in life was so awe inspiring. Like she she the
Speaker 1: foreward in her book by Helen Brown was to know
Speaker 1: z or to know easy is to have a favorite friend,
Speaker 1: to know as a very special person. That she had
Speaker 1: quick wit. She had thousands of friends. I wish I
Speaker 1: could invite her to a dinner party. And they used
Speaker 1: to say, she wrote this book in Nnaza Fiesta recipes,
Speaker 1: the party recipes, this is the one that was The
Speaker 1: foreward is by Helen Evans Brown, who was a powerhouse
Speaker 1: in her own right. I mean she's known as the
Speaker 1: sort of mother of California cooking. They were good friends,
Speaker 1: and she said an e mail out and Lennaz is
Speaker 1: a party. I love that. Every male is going to
Speaker 1: be a party. She was not a fussy cook. She
Speaker 1: was just fun. She was just nice. Um yeah, everybody,
Speaker 1: everybody loved her. I love this, like you said, this,
Speaker 1: this outlook on life, this view of life, it was
Speaker 1: just so positive. I love. Also in her cookbooks, she
Speaker 1: really made a point to differentiate Mexican cooking from Spanish
Speaker 1: cooking and how it was very different, and so she
Speaker 1: was like, well, you know, massa is not used in Spain.
Speaker 1: Spain uses olive oil and saffron, and Mexican recipes can
Speaker 1: be subtle, not everything is hot. But like she really
Speaker 1: made clarifications between Spanish food and Mexican food. Absolutely, And
Speaker 1: she does that in the first cookbook that she published,
Speaker 1: which is the Swan that and in that's famous Mexican
Speaker 1: and Spanish recipes. This is the one that she bought
Speaker 1: for so that she could buy her Seeing Eye Dog.
Speaker 1: And I love that. Different than the Spanish cook that
Speaker 1: has Mexican recipes, this one she really breaks down what
Speaker 1: is what, which was quite which was quite new, quite
Speaker 1: groundbreaking at the time. How many cookbooks does she have?
Speaker 1: I think she had five different cookbooks plus an auto
Speaker 1: the biography. Yeah. So she died in nineteen seventy four. Wow,
Speaker 1: oh year before I was born. What I found so
Speaker 1: crazy was in the nineteen seventies her food line supplied
Speaker 1: to weight Watchers. She was part of weight Watchers or
Speaker 1: food at some point she was part of weight Watchers.
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? And her granddaughter lives in the Bay
Speaker 1: Area and still remembers her grandmother as being just do
Speaker 1: this fireball. This is this amazing, amazing woman. And she
Speaker 1: always had a lot of a lot of dichos in
Speaker 1: her cookbooks. What do you call a lot of proverbs?
Speaker 1: Proverbs all of that. Yes, And there's one actually, they
Speaker 1: all of her cookbooks. I just opened it up to
Speaker 1: this one and there's one proverb right here with a
Speaker 1: little illustration. And she always had that. And she and
Speaker 1: they said that she always spoke that way. She was
Speaker 1: always saying that the chosen people were like, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? Because a lot of them don't really translate.
Speaker 1: And it's one of the things that people find so
Speaker 1: charming and funny about her. When we come back, award
Speaker 1: winning Chef Claudet Sea, a San Diego, California based culinary entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: sends us a message welcome back to Hungry for History.
Speaker 1: On this very special episode celebrating Women's History Month. We
Speaker 1: wanted to feature a female chef making waves in the
Speaker 1: culinary world, and who better than Chef Claudet Sea, a
Speaker 1: first generation daughter of immigrants who is known for her
Speaker 1: fearlessness in the kitchen and beyond. Queenie must Tebela I
Speaker 1: am a first generation Mexican American self proclaimed border kid.
Speaker 1: I was born in San Diego and raised between Tijuana,
Speaker 1: San Diego and Mara. At eighteen, I had my son, James,
Speaker 1: and I realized when I looked at him that I
Speaker 1: had to figure out what I was going to do
Speaker 1: with the rest of my life to provide for him,
Speaker 1: and also I follow my passions and my love so
Speaker 1: I could tell him follow his And food was it
Speaker 1: for me. Food. It brings me the most unadulterated joy
Speaker 1: that I've ever had. It brings me a lot of pain,
Speaker 1: it brings me a lot of growth, and you know,
Speaker 1: twenty two years later, almost twenty three years later, I
Speaker 1: can seriously say that there's really nothing else that I'd
Speaker 1: rather be doing. Bringing my food, my Mexican food to
Speaker 1: Australia was such a such a churning point, such a
Speaker 1: point of pride, such an achievement not only for me,
Speaker 1: but for the generations before me. And to bring this
Speaker 1: a better name to Australia, you know, started off as
Speaker 1: a joke and idea. Yeah, I went in. When we
Speaker 1: got it off the ground in a month and a half,
Speaker 1: and the reception that we received by the people in
Speaker 1: Sydney was huge. I didn't know how many. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize how many Mexicans were living in Sydne in Australia.
Speaker 1: And we did a dinner in September where I went
Speaker 1: and we had Mariazi, we had a solo Madriatzi outside.
Speaker 1: It was just this really kind of coming of age
Speaker 1: for myself in my career and you know, twenty plus
Speaker 1: years in twenty two years in like this is something
Speaker 1: that I in my wildest dream that my ancestors wildest dreams,
Speaker 1: didn't think I'd ever was that it was possible. Didn't
Speaker 1: think that I'd achieved, but not because it's not being
Speaker 1: willing to take the chances. But I just didn't see
Speaker 1: it in my people. You know, I didn't see it
Speaker 1: in my surroundings. You know, having lost my father in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two and June, I wish he had been
Speaker 1: present for that moment. He always as a child, he
Speaker 1: always told me you were going to take a sea
Speaker 1: name to the highest places and the highest mountains, and
Speaker 1: he always wanted this for me as a child, and
Speaker 1: to see it come to life was much more than
Speaker 1: open at Ta Kadia in Sydney was really like it
Speaker 1: was a transformational breaking of generational curses that I can't
Speaker 1: even put into words what that meant to me and
Speaker 1: little Claudet. I do think the culinary world is predominantly
Speaker 1: male dominated across the world. I walk into kitchens to
Speaker 1: this day it was no matter how much I've achieved
Speaker 1: and how you know, TV articles, awards, and I'm still
Speaker 1: regarded as the lady. Especially in European kitchens, you know
Speaker 1: that chef is reserved for a male. So I think
Speaker 1: it's definitely room for education in those moments where you can,
Speaker 1: you know, tell this chef that maybe's working fifty years
Speaker 1: in this industry, that you'd like to be addressed this
Speaker 1: chef in a polite way, to draw those boundaries and
Speaker 1: tell people how you want to be addressed. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening to our Women's History Month episode.
Speaker 1: I love that we're celebrating these amazing women. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Hungry for History is an unbelievable entertainment production
Speaker 1: in partnership with Ihearts Michael Tura podcast Network. For more
Speaker 1: of your favorite shows, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.