Maria Elena Lorenzo | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Cook, restaurant owner  |
Maria Elena Lorenzo is an Afro-Mexican cook specializing in native cuisine from Costa Chica of Guerrero, Mexico. She is most known for her restaurant Tamales Y Elena Antojitos, heralded as the first Guerrero-style Afro-Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles.
Maria was born in Costa Chica of Guerrero, Mexico, a predominantly Afro-Mexican community. In 1992, Lorenzo and her husband Juan Irra moved to Los Angeles, California. [1]
After coming to the U.S., Maria and Juan began to cook and sell their native Afro-Mexican style tamales from a small cart in the Watts neighborhood of Bell Gardens, California. [1] [2] [3] Maria started off selling her tamales at the local Grape Street Elementary School and the Imperial courts housing projects, where her and her family resided. [1] In 2007, Maria upgraded to a food truck which continued to serve the Watts neighborhood with an expanded menu. [3] [1]
In July 2020, Maria opened a restaurant called Tamales Y Elena Antojitos, specializing in Guerrero-style cuisine passed down through the Lorenzo family. Maria and her five daughters all work to cook and run the restaurant alongside the food truck, while Juan Irra helps supply restaurant goods. [3] [1] Tamales Y Elena Antojitos is most known for their tamales and moles, but also serves other traditional Guerrero-style food such as pozole, elopozole with elote, lengua stew, and chilate. [1] [3] It is heralded as the first Guerrero-style Afro-Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles. [4] [3]
In 2022, Lorenzo's Tamales Elena y Antojitos was featured in the Netflix series Taco Chronicles. [5]
Mexican cuisine consists of the cooking cuisines and traditions of the modern country of Mexico. Its earliest roots lie in Mesoamerican cuisine. Its ingredients and methods begin with the first agricultural communities such as the Olmec and Maya who domesticated maize, created the standard process of nixtamalization, and established their foodways. Successive waves of other Mesoamerican groups brought with them their cooking methods. These included: the Teotihuacanos, Toltec, Huastec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Otomi, Purépecha, Totonac, Mazatec, Mazahua, and Nahua. With the Mexica formation of the multi-ethnic Triple Alliance, culinary foodways became infused.
A taco is a traditional Mexican dish consisting of a small hand-sized corn- or wheat-based tortilla topped with a filling. The tortilla is then folded around the filling and eaten by hand. A taco can be made with a variety of fillings, including beef, pork, chicken, seafood, beans, vegetables, and cheese, and garnished with various condiments, such as salsa, guacamole, or sour cream, and vegetables, such as lettuce, onion, tomatoes, and chiles. Tacos are a common form of antojitos, or Mexican street food, which have spread around the world.
Tex-Mex cuisine is a regional American cuisine that originates from the culinary creations of Tejano people. It has spread from border states such as Texas and others in the Southwestern United States to the rest of the country. It is a subtype of Southwestern cuisine found in the American Southwest.
A tamale, in Spanish tamal, is a traditional Mesoamerican dish made of masa, a dough made from nixtamalized corn, which is steamed in a corn husk or banana leaves. The wrapping can either be discarded prior to eating or used as a plate. Tamales can be filled with meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, herbs, chilies, or any preparation according to taste, and both the filling and the cooking liquid may be seasoned.
The cuisine of California reflects the diverse culture of California and is influenced largely by European American, Hispanic American, East Asian and Oceanian influences, and Western European influences, as well as the food trends and traditions of larger American cuisine.
California cuisine is a food movement that originated in Northern California. The cuisine focuses on dishes that are driven by local and sustainable ingredients with an attention to seasonality and an emphasis on the bounty of the region.
Pozole is a traditional soup or stew from Mexican cuisine. It is made from hominy with meat, and can be seasoned and garnished with shredded lettuce or cabbage, chili peppers, onion, garlic, radishes, avocado, salsa or limes. Known in Mesoamerica since the pre-Colombian era, the stew is common across Mexico and neighboring countries, served both as a day-to-day meal and as a festive dish.
Menudo, also known as Mondongo, pancita or mole de panza, is a traditional Mexican soup, made with cow's stomach (tripe) in broth with a red chili pepper base. It is the Mexican variation of the Spanish callos or menudo. Similar dishes exist throughout Latin America and Europe including mondongo, guatitas, and in Italy Trippa alla romana.
The cuisine of the Southwestern United States is food styled after the rustic cooking of the Southwestern United States. It comprises a fusion of recipes for things that might have been eaten by Spanish colonial settlers, cowboys, Native Americans, and Mexicans throughout the post-Columbian era; there is, however, a great diversity in this kind of cuisine throughout the Southwestern states.
Cuajinicuilapa is the head town of the municipality of the same name in the Costa Chica region of the Mexican state of Guerrero. A low-lying area, it borders the Pacific Ocean and the state of Oaxaca. The municipality has the state's largest population of Afro-Mexicans with most of the population of this ethnicity. The town and municipality are highly socioeconomically marginalized and it is the poorest municipality of the state, with the economy dependent on livestock and fishing.
Mexican street food, called antojitos, is prepared by street vendors and at small traditional markets in Mexico. Street foods include tacos, tamales, gorditas, quesadillas, empalmes, tostadas, chalupa, elote, tlayudas, cemita, pambazo, empanada, nachos, chilaquiles, fajitas, tortas, even hamburgers and hot dogs, as well as fresh fruits, vegetables, beverages and soups such as menudo, pozole and pancita. Most are available in the morning and the evening, as mid-afternoon is the time for the main formal meal of the day. Mexico has one of the most extensive street food cultures in Latin America, and Forbes named Mexico City as one of the foremost cities in the world in which to eat on the street.
A burrito in Mexico is, historically, a regional name, among others, for what is known as a taco, a tortilla filled with food, in other parts of the country. The term burrito was regional, specifically from Guanajuato, Guerrero, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí and Sinaloa, for what is known as a taco in Mexico City and surrounding areas, and codzito in Yucatán and Quintana Roo. Due to the cultural influence of Mexico City, the term taco became the default, and the meaning of terms like burrito and codzito were forgotten, leading many people to create new meanings and folk histories.
Afro-Mexicans, also known as Black Mexicans, are Mexicans who have heritage from sub-Saharan Africa and identify as such. As a single population, Afro-Mexicans include individuals descended from both free and enslaved Africans who arrived to Mexico during the colonial era, as well as post-independence migrants. This population includes Afro-descended people from neighboring English, French, and Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean and Central America, descendants of enslaved Africans in Mexico and those from the Deep South during Slavery in the United States, and to a lesser extent recent migrants directly from Africa. Today, there are localized communities in Mexico with significant although not predominant African ancestry. These are mostly concentrated in specific communities, including the populations of the Oaxaca, Huetamo, Lázaro Cárdenas, Guerrero, and Veracruz states.
The cuisine of Veracruz is the regional cooking of Veracruz, a Mexican state along the Gulf of Mexico. Its cooking is characterized by three main influences—indigenous, Spanish, and Afro-Cuban—per its history, which included the arrival of the Spanish and of enslaved people from Africa and the Caribbean. These influences have contributed many ingredients to the cooking including native vanilla, corn and seafood, along with rice, spices and tubers. How much the three mix depending on the area of the state, with some areas more heavily favoring one or another. The state has worked to promote its cuisine both in Mexico and abroad as part of its tourism industry.
Carmen Ramírez Degollado is an internationally recognized expert on traditional Mexican food, head of the El Bajío restaurants located in Mexico City. She grew up in the rural area of Xalapa, Veracruz with no intentions of becoming a restaurateur. However, when her husband died in 1981, she took over the restaurant he founded and expanded it adding dishes from her native Veracruz and other Mexican states along with the carnitas and barbacoa that he made. Carmen’s international recognition began when she accompanied her daughter who went abroad to study to become a professional chef. This led to classes, consulting and participation in gastronomic events principally in the United States and Europe.
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