I used to host students for seminar dinners a fair amount. I’ve drifted from it largely because my institution has sent a number of signals discouraging faculty from doing so (though we’re still perfectly glad to have alumni talk about how wonderful their past experiences were at said dinners). I do like to cook for my students now and again when I can manage it, though. I understand why treating teaching as something other than labor where there is there is a bill of lading for the arrival of all services rendered is a route to exploitation. But my sense of teaching is that it does take some more human kind of connection where we stop accounting. I feel gratitude to students when a class has gone well; making food and being a host is one way I express that.
This class has gone well, and since it’s called The Whole Enchilada (it’s an intellectual history of “universal history” as a genre), I thought I’d try making some enchiladas. I made four fillings: pork carnitas, some fried cod, some black beans and sweet potatoes, and some roasted mushrooms and hominy corn with a chili sauce. I made a slow-cooked red mole sauce and a verde sauce with tomatillos, the first with chicken broth, the second with vegetable broth.
The fillings all came out as planned, and I went ahead and made flour tortillas as well. The main issue at this point is that I really don’t want the fillings sitting in corn and flour tortillas all night. That will be a goopy mess. I certainly don’t want to put sauce on them—I have little microwavable restaurant trays but I’d basically be cooking some version of a tortilla soup in those if I made up everything tonight.
So, even though the class is The Whole Enchilada, we’re going to have tacos. It’s kind of like a good class discussion, right? I’ll bring all the fillings and nuke those to hot, along with the sauces, some grated cheese, some sour cream, some cilantro and some pumpkin seeds for toppings, along with flour and corn tortillas. Adaptability and flexibility are great when they don’t mean “let’s fire and outsource”!
I would eat all of this. Well, not the cod.