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Chapter 2. Saz
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C H A P T E R 2 Sazón The Flavors of Culinary Epistemology Irma: The rice needs to be fried, but only until it is light brown. Then, once the rice has reached its exact degree of frying, you just add the tomato sauce and water. Well, you have to know how much water to add, because if you add too much water the rice will have a watery texture. And if you do not add enough water, then the rice will not cook. María Luisa: How do you know the amount of water? Irma: Well, I think that is something you learn because I never measure anything. I just add water, and the rice comes out perfect. I guess I learned well. I feel it. I stir the water in the frying pan, and I know. Meredith: You can calculate just by seeing the water, right? Irma: No, I think it is in my hand because I just mix the rice [with a spoon] and I know when it needs more water or when it has enough. When I add the water, I stir it. I know. I don’t know how I know. That, I could not explain to you.1 By using her hand as the measuring utensil, Irma Vásquez knows how much water she needs so her rice cooks to perfection. While confident in the efficiency of her sazón, a sensory way of knowing, Vásquez cannot explain the intrinsic logic of her touch. She only knows it works. Vásquez’s sensory utensil, in this case her hand, reflects an epistemology based on the faculty of all of the senses: the sazón, the language spoken in the kitchen. Once practiced by individuals , the sazón becomes their culinary discourse to conceptualize and articulate aspects of their personal and social cultural environment . The kitchen and the sazón represent a form of a “sitio y lengua,” to quote Emma Pérez, that offers a site of power (the kitchen) and a discourse of empowerment (the sazón) to those historically silenced by colonialist, imperialist, and patriarchal social mechanisms. Yet, finding ways to theorize the sazón’s conceptual process, a nonverbal cognitive logic, creates something of a challenge. Speaking metaphorically, a cook’s sazón is like a gardener’s green thumb. With this metaphor, we can understand that the sazón refers to the ability someone has to create a rather savory meal out of the simplest ingredients, just as a person with a green thumb can make anything grow. This metaphor, however, does not explain the ability a cook has to know how to create a meal out of the simplest ingredients . I am not referring here to the creative/artistic process of cooking; that topic is explored in chapter 3. The question at hand is twofold: how do women guided by their senses, as Irma Vásquez says, know if a meal is cooking at the right temperature, if it has enough water, if it has enough salt; and how do their culinary epistemologies reveal personal aspects of their life stories? What exactly is the sazón? Liduvina Vélez in a number of our charlas defines other people’s sazón as “un don” (a gift some people are born with). For Imelda Silva, what contributes other people’s buen sazón is their ability to cook non-traditional working class Mexican meals. Talking about her cousin Alicia, Silva says, “My cousin taught me to make ham with pineapple. Macaroni salad. Ribs in barbecue sauce. These are things that I would have not learned because we don’t eat them from where I come from. For me, my cousin was a very good cook. I considered her as a very good cook.”2 For Raquel Merlo, it is “la mano de la experiencia” (the hand of experience), and Erica Morales defines it as “el sazón de la mano” (a hand’s knowledge). If having a sazón is a gift, perhaps Liduvina Vélez’s inclination to humility prevents her from seeing her own buen sazón as such. At the age of twenty-three when she sold food out of economic necessity, she says, “Sí tenía clientela. Nó sé, que les gustaba mi sazón. Malaya para el sazón que haya tenido yo, pero sí les gustaba” (Yes, I had customers . I don’t know, they liked...