A visit to the Teotitlán del Valle market, with Reyna Mendoza

The highlight of my trip to Oaxaca was the one-day cooking class I took with Reyna Mendoza. She’s a Zapotec woman who lives in Teotitlán del Valle, a small town about 45 minutes from Oaxaca City. She’s been making Mexican food by hand since she was a little girl.

Mendoza has impressive credentials. She is heartily endorsed by Rick Bayless; she’s also worked with Ricardo Muñoz Zurita and Pilar Cabrera of Oaxaca’s Casa de los Sabores. I wanted a course in Spanish, and Reyna’s class seemed like a good fit for me. We’d get to cook in her outdoor kitchen, grind mole by hand on her metate and shop at the Teotitlán market.

I showed up at her house bright and early one weekday morning, around 9 a.m. (Just a few minutes late because I actually believed the “shorcut to the Teotitlán Centro” sign off the main road.) She grabbed her straw basket and we set off for the market, which was about five minutes from her house. We passed other women in aprons and braids and rebozos, their market baskets tucked under their arms, too.

Unlike the market in Tlacolula, the Teotitlán market seemed quiet and full of locals. I only saw one woman with European features; everyone else had mocha skin, inky hair, braids and rebozos.

The market comprised two to three large, open rooms. Chiles, purple ejotes, purple tomatillos, onions and other produce lay stacked on large concrete tables. Prepared food sat in another room, with bundles of flautas and pots of rice and black beans. In the room beyond that, vendors sold herbs and roots and piles of sweet bread.

The shoppers, almost exclusively women, loaded their baskets with everything they needed for the day. (Reyna specifically mentioned that to me: cooks here prepare everything fresh daily.) People talked and laughed and greeted each other in Zapotec. I made the mistake of saying “Buenos días!” to one vendor and she looked at me strangely. Reyna murmured to me: “People speak Zapotec here.” She taught me how to say “buenos días” in Zapotec: zac xtili. (I pronounced this Sock SHEEL-ee.)

Suddenly I longed for a market basket too, and I asked Reyna if she knew where I could buy one. We walked to a stand in the next room, where I spotted a grand, oval thing with a sturdy handle, perfect for carrying a day’s worth of provisions from my local tianguis. The price was steep — 250 pesos. Did I really need this basket? I tried to picture myself walking down the street in Roma, clutching the basket amid the street vendors and rumbling peseros. It could work, I decided. I bought it and didn’t try to bargain.

We bought sweet bread to snack on, and we picked up the tomatillos, cilantro and avocados we’d need for the salsa later. I bought some purple-tinged ejotes, just because they looked kind of like dragon’s tongues.

We walked back to Reyna’s house clutching our baskets. In front of us, three women carried their provisions on their heads.

I’ll get to the cooking portion tomorrow, but here are a few more pictures of the market.