April, 2013 Beyond the pupusa: Chef brings ’s kitchen to life Por Johanna Mendelson Forman

Instructor Chef Mariano Ramos teaches immigrant students from several countries how to prepare Salvadoran dishes. Students leave the Carlos Rosario Center with several career skills once they’re done with courses. (Johanna Mendelson Forman/VOXXI)

Bringing the flavors of Salvadoran cooking, executive chef Ben Velasquez is on a mission in Washington D.C., combining his love of his mother country with his gifts as a teacher to help young Latino immigrants at the Carlos Rosario Center.

The school was named for a Puerto Rican educator who in 1970 thought the city did little for its underserved immigrant population. Chef Velasquez teaches at the brand new Sonia Gutierrez campus, taking his students on a culinary journey of Salvadoran food and beyond.

Gutierrez, an educator for whom the new building is named, was the driving force for getting a special building dedicated to hands-on vocational training in a range of subjects including culinary arts, nursing skills, and computer literacy. The Center also offers GED programs in both the afternoon and evenings.

Chef Ben Velasquez brings El Salvador’s Kitchen to Life at this demo kitchen. (Johanna Mendelson Forman/VOXXI)

Velasquez did not start out thinking he was going to be a chef. In El Salvador he was at the university, a law student, thinking of a career at the bar: “As the war grew more intense, and death squads targeted university students, it was clear that I would not be able to continue my studies.”

He would have been drafted in the army.

“Being in El Salvador during that time was like being a war criminal. All of us were suspect,” Velasquez told VOXXI, when we visited him at the Sonia Gutierrez campus.

A natural teacher and leader, Velasquez brings the lessons of someone who left El Salvador in the midst of a bloody civil war to make a new life for himself in Washington, D.C. That was thirty years ago. He has never looked back, but history is a lesson to all who come in contact with him.

Teaching immigrants with a purpose

For Velasquez, teaching immigrants is about helping those who come to the , often with few or no friends, or extended families. Students who attend the school speak different languages. They share very different cultural attributes from the new ones they find in their adopted home.

More than 50,000 immigrants, not only from but from all over the globe, have been trained in this award-winning program.

The brand new Sonia Gutierrez campus at the Carlos Rosario Center in Washington, D.C. offers a variety of classes and services for immigrants. (Johanna Mendelson Foreman/VOXXI)

At a school such as this one, those who attend find an instant community. The students and instructors understand how hard it is to adjust to a new environment. So schoolmates become more like a family, as teachers work to manage not only the educational needs of immigrants, but also their social and psychological needs too.

The new facilities, which were built by the government of the District of Columbia in 2013, also represent the commitment that this city has to its immigrant population. Today the campus where Chef Velasquez teaches is a state of the art building (LEED Platinum) that is not only high tech, but architecturally unique. Its cafeteria windows overlook the symbol of United States democracy, the U.S. Capitol.

On any given day, Velasquez and his team of instructors teach young men and women seeking a vocational high school degree the fine points of teamwork, while honing their skills as cooks in the modern kitchens of this training facility.

Students not only learn the basics about cooking and nutrition, but they as also given instruction in basic computer skills, thus preparing them for this wired society, and providing them with a marketable skill for employment.

Mariscada is one of the dishes Chef Ben Velasquez teaches his students how to make at the Carlos Rosario School. (Johanna Mendelson Forman/VOXXI)

Cooking Salvadoran dishes beyond pupusas Recently I was invited to bring a group of students from my American University course on Conflict Cuisines to the Sonia Gutierrez Center to learn more about the connection between the war in El Salvador and the evolution of their cuisine. Chef Velasquez opened his kitchen and his heart as he explained how the civil war affected people in his country.

He told students that is was customary in El Salvador to recite the Lord’s Prayer before a meal. During the war it was more common for people to pray after they ate, thanking god that had been able to eat at all! “Gracias a dios que yo comi.”

It was enough to have lived another day in such a war that took 75,000 lives over the course of more than a decade of fighting. In a country the size of the state of Vermont, with 4.5 million citizens, more than one million left, refugees of a civil war.

As students watched chef instructor Mariano Ramos demonstrate the preparation of several Salvadoran dishes, Chef Velasquez explained how the spices for seasoning the food represented an amalgamation of indigenous community flavors with newer ones that the Spaniards brought to the New World from Europe. He pointed out that the Salvadoran kitchen did not use as much fat as the European one, relying more on techniques such as slow cooking, pickling, and stewing. Both Ramos and Velasquez offered a background in culinary history with a basic understanding of how such elements as fire, salt, and fermentation formed the triad of techniques upon which most Salvadoran cooking is based.

The menu he created went beyond the pupusa, a stuffed dish that is synonymous with El Salvador in the Washington eating scene. The class was treated to the most delicious of menus: aMariscada- a cream based soup with shrimp, mussels and lobster meat; a Pan de pollo en escabeche, a stewed and pickled chicken served at Christmas that is stuffed into a roll and served with beets, hard-boiled eggs, and greens.

History of the food

Panes de Pollo en Escabeche is a typical Salvadoran dish served for Christmas. (Johanna Mendelson Forman/VOXXI)

While no meal in El Salvador would be complete without rice and beans, a “casamiento” as this combination is lovingly called, Velasquez also served up salpicon, a mince meat that reflected a technique of slow cooking to yield a tender, tasty chopped beef.

Traditional desserts also abounded, with Ayotes, a squash, cooked in a syrup of brown sugar, andTorrejas, a fried bread in a sugar syrup and also quesadilla. The latter is not the cheese filled tortilla of Tex-Mex origin. Instead it turned out to be a luxurious sweet bread made with rice flour and cheese, baked to perfection and sprinkled with sesame seeds.

As the students tasted this feast of El Salvador’s most famous dishes, it also became apparent how food for these immigrant chefs was not only a means of providing sustenance, but also a way of communicating a culture and history. It made an indelible impression on these young palates.

After tasting these dishes prepared by immigrant students it was clear that they would never look upon a pupusa as a fast food snack on a food truck, but rather a labor of love that also embraced the history of a war-torn society in every bite.

Johanna Mendelson Forman is a scholar-in-residence at the American University, School of International Service, Washington, D.C. where she teaches a course on conflict cuisines.

Link: http://voxxi.com/2014/04/08/salvadoran-cooking-carlos-rosario/