A definite taste for travel, different cuisines flavor Schaumburg mom's cooking
When Susana Guevara was a little girl living in a port city on the Gulf of Mexico, she remembers how her father always brought home unique foods from work. As a chemist, it was her father's job to test the oil on the large tankers in the harbor. The tankers came from places all over the world and this is how he would bring home tinned fish from Russia or cheese from Europe. He would also bring home recipes for his wife to try. One that Susana still has is a recipe for fish soup, hastily written on a piece of corrugated cardboard.
"And this is the story of my life," laughs Susana, our Cook of the Week from Schaumburg. "We did not eat very much Mexican food at home!"
Still, she says her mother was a wonderful cook and Susana learned to cook at her side.
"We were in a port city so we ate a lot of seafood and one of my father's best friends was from Spain. He would share recipes with my mother. I loved this food."
Every year, during the month of December, Susana's father would take his family on vacations all over Mexico. She learned about the different cuisines of Mexico and why Susana grew up with a thirst for travel. Susana graduated from college with a degree in agricultural business and then went on to study at a kibbutz in Israel for six months. Susana also traveled through Europe and Greece.
"One of the very best foods is Mediterranean food. The people in Cyprus were so nice and the food is very good," Susana's next spot to visit was the United States, where she met her husband at a party in Chicago. She has been here now for twenty-three years; she and her husband have three teenage boys and Susana works as a bilingual program assistant in an elementary school.
"What I like so much is helping the students, not just teaching, but helping them. For many this is their first experience and they need someone to talk to, someone to trust."
If you asked her co-workers about Susana, they would tell you that she is always singing, always smiling and always bringing in delicious food to share. Despite her claim to not being able to cook traditional Mexican food, Susana's green salsa is one that her co-worker particularly love. She loves to cook all sorts of ethnic foods, Italian, Mediterranean and even Romanian food. And everything she brings for lunch, she shares, whether it is shredded pork tenderloin on tortillas, lemon chicken or any number of breads or cakes.
"I love to bake, especially in the fall. I bake banana bread, vanilla cake, everything fresh." Her three boys like everything she bakes and are pretty Americanized in their tastes - which means according to Susana, that they like all sort of ethnic foods as well.
Today, Susana shares her recipe for cilantro soup, a brilliantly green soup that's a family favorite every Easter.
Although Susana doesn't have the opportunity to visit harbor ships and exchange exotic recipes, she does love to search them out.
"I find them everywhere! Even at the doctor's office, I am always copying a recipe." No doubt she uses the back of receipts in her purse, and not corrugated cardboard … but, whatever works!
• To suggest someone to be profiled here, send the cook's name, address and phone number to food@dailyherald.com.