Pepián cooking workshop in San Miguel Escobar

Pepián is the national dish and almost no outsider knows how it's built. Here you make the whole thing, from toasting the seeds on a clay comal to grinding and cooking the recado.

First there's an ingredient session: you taste and learn to recognize pumpkin seeds, sesame and the different dried chilies, raw and roasted. Your host translates in Spanish, English or Portuguese so nothing gets lost.

It closes with you eating the pepián you made, with rice, tamalitos de viaje and tortillas straight off the comal. A digital recipe book lands in your inbox so you can make it anywhere.