Cozumel: Home Cooking Class & Market Tour with Josefina

4.95

(150 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

Hands dusted with masa, I watched Josefina’s son, Jeronimo, show us how to press tortillas just right — not too thin or they’ll tear. My first one looked more like a map than a circle, but he just grinned and said, “It’s rustic.” We’d started the morning weaving through El Mercado, following Josefina as she greeted vendors by name. The air was thick with chiles and cilantro. She showed me how to pick the limes that feel heavy for their size — “más jugo,” she said, squeezing my hand around one. I still think about that smell of warm corn and lime on my fingers.

Back at her house, the kitchen windows were open and you could hear kids somewhere outside yelling in Spanish. There was this old molcajete on the table, rough stone against my palm as I tried to grind garlic for salsa. Josefina laughed when I flinched at the first splash of lime juice (it stung a tiny cut I didn’t know I had). She poured us agua fresca — sweet and cold — and let us taste everything as we went: guacamole that actually tasted like avocado instead of whatever passes for it back home. At one point someone asked about substitutions for epazote in the States and she just shrugged, “Try cilantro, but it’s not the same.”

I didn’t expect to feel so at home in someone else’s kitchen. Lunch was noisy and messy; tortillas piled up next to bowls of beans and chicken simmering in some sauce I can’t pronounce (I tried to say it — everyone laughed). We made margaritas too; Jeronimo salted the rims while telling us about his grandmother’s recipes from Veracruz. It all felt honest — not staged or rushed. There was time to ask questions or just sit quietly chewing slow bites of spicy rice while sunlight crept across the tablecloth. I left full but also kind of wishing siesta was a thing where I live.