As a kid, Enrique Olvera spent hours in his grandmother's bakery in Mexico City. He loved watching everyday ingredients (原料) like flour, sugar and eggs mix into something entirely different. For Olvera, even the simple act of baking a cake felt like magic. He absorbed every detail as his grandmother was cooking. On Sundays, he joined his father in the kitchen, chopping onions and tomatoes for breakfasts of scrambled eggs and dry beef.
These advantages drive Olvera's new cookbook, Tu Casa Mi Casa：Mexican Recipes for the Home Cook. But Olvera, the chef behind Mexico City's Pujol, one of the world's top restaurants, almost turned away from a career in the kitchen.
Despite the draw of the family bakery, Olvera's father didn't want his son to spend too much time there. He wanted Enrique to go to college and get a degree. Olvera made a compromise with his dad. He found a cooking program that offered a bachelor's degree—at the Cooking Institute of America—and left Mexico for New York.
In New York, Olvera buried himself in the curriculum (全部课程) at the top cooking school. Like most training grounds for professional chefs, Olvera's lessons were stuck in the cooking of Europe. For example, he dutifully learned to spot the edges of his dishes with little dots of sauce--drawing on the traditions of France, not Mexico. "Mexican food doesn't respond to any of that," he says. "So if you see how we cook, we don't saute (快炒) ,we're burning things down, we're using the stems (茎) .The only thing that you can apply to Mexican technique is the passion for the craft. But the techniques are entirely different."
At 24, Olvera returned to Mexico City—and opened Pujol. Olvera's flagship has repeatedly made lists of the best restaurants in the world —its success built on the techniques he learned as a kid in his grandma's bakery and his parents' kitchen. With Pujol's success, Olvera went on to open four more restaurants in Mexico and two in New York. Now, he's getting ready toroll outtwo more—this time, in Los Angeles.
