While he’s on the road or in the kitchen, Chef Andrew Gerson is always investigating the cultural and culinary landscapes of the cities around him. The Mash Files are snapshots of each city on our Mash Tour in Chef Andrew’s own words. Read about Chef Andrew’s tour of one of New England’s leading oyster producers while visiting Boston, then check our Mash site for when he’ll be in your neighborhood.
The Mash Tour is about celebrating community, and the community we have developed in Chicago is nothing short of amazing. Hanging with Daniel Espinoza, the chef de cuisine of Dinner Lab and one of my best friends, was my favorite part of the Chicago tour. Our official focus was collaborating on a menu for our Secret Supper with Dinner Lab, but the highlight of my week was making tamales with Danny’s mother. I had a chance to meet Señora Espinoza in her home in Humboldt Park and spend an afternoon hearing stories from her childhood growing up in Mexico and the rise of her family’s tamale empire just north of Mexico City.
As we folded fresh masa into banana leaves, she explained how at age eight her mother used to wake her up at three in the morning to roll tamales until sunrise, when they would be steamed and loaded into bicycle baskets to be hawked on the street by her uncles and cousins. What started out as a way for Danny’s grandmother to afford school supplies for her children grew into a full fledged business selling the authentic Michoacan tamales. Danny’s mother was such an integral part of the tamale business that her mother was enraged when she decided at twenty three to marry her husband and embark on a new life in America.
Danny was born in Chicago, but his passion for food derives from celebrating and reinterpreting his mother and grandmother’s cuisine and infusing the rich influence of Mexican cooking. Each year Danny returns to Mexico to hang with family and, most importantly, cook with his grandmother.
Danny squares off against a piñata at a family birthday party.
Although Danny is known for his Mexican inspiration, he also folds in themes from the New American food movement sweeping Chicago and the diverse latino community of Humboldt Park alike. When I asked his mother about how Mexican cuisine had been reinterpreted in her own cooking, she was quick to tell me that it has become intermingled with Puerto Rican lechon asado, Peruvian ceviche, Dominican plátanos, and a myriad of other cultural influences creating a melting pot of flavors that span the reaches of Latin America with some Chicago classics intermingled.
When we sat down to feast on these plump steamed orbs I couldn’t help but make parallels to the airiness of my grandmother’s matzo balls, but the adobo chili and pork infused sauce that drenched these tamales was certainly outside of my jewish grandmother’s wheel house. I gorged myself between bites drenched in this smoky pork sauce, and others covered in a green tomatillo salsa dotted with sour cream and then ate some more.
One of Danny’s tamales.
We joked and cried over Danny’s baby pictures and stories of the struggles and successes of a first generation Mexican experience in the rough neighborhood of Humboldt Park. I left full, emotionally drained, inspired, and excited to see Danny’s take on his mother’s classic tamales of Michoacan. It’s true that Danny might use more creativity than his mother and grandmother, and his tamales were amazing. But when it comes to tamales, that boy has nothing on his momma.