GUEST WRITER TODAY:

I'm happy to introduce you to one of my favorite people in the world -- Herbert Piekow.  He's a wonderful friend, a brilliant floral designer, and a gifted novelist.  Several years ago he moved to Mexico from our beloved, rainy Oregon, and the transplant seems to have worked very well.

I'm quoting from a letter he wrote to me, and as you see, among his other talents is cookery, dear to this bloggers heart!  (And I will get back to the meat- grinder on another day.)  P.S., for many years, he and his partner Jack Richardson did indeed provide the floral displays for the Academy Awards!


This weekend is the BIG wedding in my Mexican
family. Ramón, or Junior is getting married fulfilling his mother´s
dream, and I hope his as well. His bride is lovely and we all truly like
her. My covered terrazzo looks like the prep area for the Academy Awards,
it is filled with buckets of red and white roses, lilies and other
flowers and greens. Martha, the mother, has been busy prepping for the
main dish, which she will cook over an open fire in her back yard. She is
making bieria, a type of stew, she will cook it over an open fire.
Already she has stemmed and seeded about 80 pounds of chilies. Today we
start boiling about 150 lbs of tomatoes, that they need to be skinned and
run through the liquidora to turn them into pulp. Usually bieria is made
with goat, but we bought a cow which has been slaughtered and after being
cooked she and the four daughters will shred by hand. Earlier we bought
about 20, or more, gallons of tequila, other family members bring other
foods and things. We have made at least twenty trips to Guadalajara,
about an hour away, to buy specially decorated tequila bottles, party
favors, have the wedding dress made, this required about five trips. We
went to the wholesale jewelry district and had the rings made and I don´t
know how many other trips for various causes, my poor Jeep needs a rest.

the wedding was perfect in every way. After the wedding Mass
the priest commented, from the altar, about the floral designs. We did
run out of tequila, which is a good sign, we went out and bought more.
There was just enough food for all 400 guests, the following day, Sunday
we ate left over rice with bieria sauce, no meat left.
The mariachi band played for three hours, then Uncle Juan had a sound and
light show followed by the Banda that played until nearly 4 AM. I danced
so much I wore a blister on my ankle.

This is Jane again:  I won't bother asking for the recipe for bieria -- the scale is a little formidable -- and this must be one of those cases in which you simply had to be there.  But I did find a recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks, Authentic Mexican, by Rick Bayless:  Birria de Chivo o de Carnero, kindly translated for us as "Slow-Steamed Goat or Lamb" in the event you are hosting a wedding sometime soon.  No, I'm not going to print it here, but you can get it from the library, or probably on line.

Many thanks to you, Herbert, and I hope to have you on my blog again soon!