Cinthia Flores is the head chef at Wollongong's Amigos Mexican Restaurant.
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Flores has been an executive chef in Mexico, Argentina and North America and is passionate about her homeland of Mexico.
What is your background as a cook?
I've been working in the industry almost nine years now. My first job was in a kitchen when I was 14 years old while I was in high school in a small cafe just at the corner of my parents' house in Sayula, Jalisco. Officially, my career in the food industry began in the summer of 2002 in the Mexican hotel franchise Camino Real as a hand cook in El Puerto de Veracruz. A year before finishing university I had my first opportunity as a head chef in Cafe Barra Cafe in Guadalajara.
I moved to Cordoba, Argentina, and spent a year there studying a Master in Contemporary Cuisine. I went back to Mexico and joined TOKAI Sushi Bar as executive chef. After I worked as a corporative chef for a US-based company and was able to travel around Latin America and the Caribbean. A few months later I was back working as an executive chef in Guadalajara City.
What is your earliest cooking memory?
When I was a child my mum and I used to bake in the afternoons. She actually bought me all the utensils and moulds in a small size like a toy so I was cooking like her.
Have you served any celebrities or had funny incidents in a restaurant you have worked at?
I served to some Mexican celebrities, but if I say the names nobody's going to know them. And well, any funny incidents? Laughter is the food of the soul, you have to laugh and enjoy what you do or instead of getting better at your work you start getting bitter. At Amigos there is always something funny happening, we have an amazing work environment.
What are the main flavours that distinguish Mexican food from other dishes?
Definitely I have to say maize dough flavour and the the mix of tomato, onion, coriander and any chilli. Plus the flavour of the characteristic dry chillies like chipotle, ancho or guajillo.
What is the best advice another chef has given you?
I remember my first year of school one of the chefs told me all the awful things about being a chef. Things like "you don't have a personal life, that 70 per cent of chefs are divorced, when your friends have a free time, you are working, when you have free time, everybody else is working, you spend almost all your day in a kitchen, some fuzzy customers and lazy employees are going to make your life hell." You have to love what you do.
Where do you get your inspiration for your cooking from?
For cooking Mexican here my inspiration comes from love and the proudness of my culture and sometimes a little bit of homesickness. I try to recreate the food that I used to eat in Mexico - food for the soul.
RECIPE | Pollo al Huerto
This recipe for pollo al huerto (which translates to orchard chicken) is special for Flores as she regards it as a memorial for her grandmother, who died recently.
It is a typical dish for Flores's family, and she describes the meal as subtly-spiced and easy to make.
INGREDIENTS
1 tbsp oil
1 chicken in pieces
2 tbsp salt
1 tbsp black pepper
6 roasted tomatoes
2 cups orange juice
1 cup crushed pineapple
2 garlic cloves
1 tbsp oregano
3 potatoes sliced
3 carrots sliced
½ cup peas
1 small can of jalapeno pickles
METHOD
Season the chicken with black pepper. Heat the oil in a fry pan and seal the chicken. Blend the tomatoes, orange juice, pineapple, salt, garlic with the juice of the jalapenos and put it in with the chicken. Add the potatoes, carrots, peas, ½ can of jalapenos, oregano, and let it cook for 1 hour in low flame.
Serve with rice and corn tortillas.
Buen provecho!