**The Tradition of Noche: A Family Gathering**

For me, there's something special about the pre-party gathering in the kitchen, where everyone gets together, getting ready for the celebration ahead. My sister used to bake every now and then, and I would always enjoy snacking on raw cookie dough while waiting for things to be ready. The excitement of Mexican standard time, which is always late, was palpable as people started arriving. When everyone was finally there, we all sat down to a feast-like sit-down potluck. After lunch, we had a sober mesa – a quiet moment to socialize and enjoy each other's company over dessert or coffee.

As I look back on these gatherings, I'm reminded of the importance of tradition in our family. We've been trying to keep this tradition alive here in America, where life is so different from what it was when we were growing up. It's not always easy, but we're committed to passing down the recipes and stories that have been passed down through generations. One dish that holds a special place in my heart is our family's take on Mexican cuisine, which has become known as "Noche."

**The Secret to Noche**

So what makes Noche so special? For me, it all starts with the foundation – a rich and flavorful tomato sauce made by deglazing the pan with a little bit of oil and then adding in fresh tomatoes. We caramelize those sweet tomatoes to bring out their natural sweetness, which is essential to balancing the acidity of the dish. To add some depth and umami flavor, we cook down some potatoes until they're tender, but still hold their texture. Then, we carefully chop up some red bell peppers that have been fire-roasted to bring out their smoky flavor.

The key to making Noche is cooking these ingredients slowly over low heat, allowing each component to meld together in harmony. The cod, which adds a salty and tender element to the dish, is added towards the end of cooking, so it stays nice and flaky. When everything comes together, you get this beautiful balance of flavors that's both familiar and exciting.

**The Making of Noche**

As I start preparing the ingredients for Noche, I'm reminded of how much work goes into making this dish come together. First, we need to boil some cold water with a little salt to cook our potatoes until they're just tender enough to hold their shape but still retain their texture. While the potatoes are cooking, I fire up the stove and get my tomato sauce started by sautéing some onions in oil and then adding in fresh tomatoes. I let that simmer for a while before stirring in some chopped bell peppers.

Once the potatoes are done, I chop them into bite-sized pieces and add them to the stew pot with our tomato sauce. Now, it's time to prepare the cod – we shred it by hand, making sure to remove any bones or spines. As we cook everything together, you start to notice how all the flavors begin to meld together in harmony.

**The Moment of Truth**

As I taste the final product, I'm hit with a rush of emotions and memories. Noche is more than just a dish – it's a connection to our past, a symbol of tradition, and a reminder that family comes first. We're bringing this dish back to life here in America, where life can feel overwhelming and complicated at times. But when we come together to share a meal like Noche, all of that fades away.

I hope that by sharing my love for Noche with you, I've inspired you to try making it yourself. It's not always easy, but the end result is well worth the effort. As I sit down to enjoy this dish with loved ones around me, I'm reminded that life is truly about the little moments we share together – over a delicious meal, surrounded by family and friends.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enmy name is fermi nunez and today we're serving the taste of nochewena for noche buena i am cooking bacalao a dish that i used to hate when i was a kid only to be reunited within 15 years later as a chef as a dish that i like cooking because it brings me back to the joys of when i was a kid having noche buena christmas eve in mexico the gathering of all the families the celebration of the christmas spirit it's in the noche buena it literally translates to just christmas eve i always say if you want baccalau today you have to start yesterday you have to soak it overnight salted cod is a way of preserving fish they pack this cod in a lot of a lot of salt and it allows it to dry out all the moisture so it can be very shelf stable so after it's soaked overnight you're gonna rinse it drain it put it in the fridge come back to it later as you're cooking the rest of the stew let's get started with our sauce so you're building a jacuzzi of flavors for the fish to come take a dip in we're going to add a generous amount of olive oil you can't have a jacuzzi without too much water you can't have bakala without too much olive oil when i was growing up at home in torreon people would come to our tour house and we hosted parties and we all kind of divided things up and in the kitchen my father at the time used to cook a lot my mom used to do a little bit of the sides or sometimes the bacalao and then sometimes friends of the family or aunts would come in and kind of help prep pretty much like a soccer team right we had the goalie we had the keeper we had the midfielders and stuff like that everybody knew their role because we were all the team and we all wanted to win just the white part cut into big chunks because we're going to stew this for a good amount of time it's all going to cook down it's going to be really nice and tender you're cooking this and somebody walks into your house someone's gonna be like wow that smells so good and you literally just have onions oil tomato paste put that into a candle the meal growing up for noche when i was kind of like divided in three different things there was like the pre-party in the kitchen right where everybody was getting together getting ready my sister used to bake every now and then and i would like snack on raw cookie dough people will start arriving mexican standard time is always late on arrival and when kind of like everybody was there we all sit down have a feast kind of like a sit down potluck after that we all kind of like had a sober mesa which is just kind of like sitting down after your meal and have dessert or just have a coffee or a nightcap before you went to bed that's how like the noche when i went around and it's something that i'm very excited to keep the tradition going here in america so we can deglaze that bring that sweetness from the wise and caramelize that now we're going to put in the time and let this tomatoes stew down we're pretty much making a sauce i'm gonna turn it down to medium heat medium low i'm gonna put a lid and we're gonna start cooking our potatoes salted cold water one and a half two inches they're not gonna break down so you see if we were gonna cut them really small diets they would kind of get lost in that dish if we wanna cook them to the perfect doneness we're gonna have a better chance of achieving that in a separate pot i took some red bell peppers fire roasted them put them in a plastic bag to trap in all that heat and kind of allow them to steam when i start peeling them all that roasted red color it's in there we have our potatoes boiling now it's time to choppy choppy it doesn't have to be perfect seeds are totally okay in my book this is also going to add sweetness to the dish a little bit of that pepper flavor and that char flavor that i always enjoy in mexican cooking all the work is being done right now you can enjoy family time if you're cooking you literally just bring this to the table and say what's up baccalau's done let's do this the potatoes are done the reason i know that is because i poke my knife and they don't fall apart while they kind of fall away from the from the knife and i'm going to turn them off now we're going to add our potatoes to the stew the stew is still on low heat just kind of coasting i'm gonna get my salted cod we're gonna pick the cod we're just gonna go through it just shred it the best way to find out if you have any bone spines in there is use your use your hands this is the part where you're gonna have more bones right so i just kind of looked through here uh it was only until i became a chef when i was around 1819 that i started being more adventurous in cooking and then i started trying food just because i kind of had to if i wanted to become a good chef my rule was i might as well try everything once and then if i don't like it i'll have to figure out why i don't like it and be able to express that and when i finally got back to salted cod and i realized that it was same fish that i would use for bakalao and then i did bakalao and i said this is actually not a bad dish we're going to come back 15 to 20 minutes you know when we put the lid on it was very clumpy it was like just like a paste now we have stew situation population one cod right now i'm gonna turn it off it's cooked for as long as it needs to cook i'm going to add the olives and a little bit of liquid i kept it in there we want that brininess to come into the party and have that little boom zooms of flavor a little bit of that brine too is hanging out there tops of the green onions it's really important that you don't add any heat if you turn on the heat or forget to turn off the heat when you add all these things these things are gonna they're gonna lose their brightness this is going to be the best part of my day and it should be yours too i'm going to make sure i get a little bit of everything top it up with a little bit more of the green onions and then we taste it it's going to taste like noche when i can already i can already feel it hmm do you know i don't know why i hated it as a kid it's a combination of all the ingredients together the cod just have that little texture saltiness of fish sweetness umami freshness from the green onions like whether you're making this for nochewena for special occasion challenging yourself if you grow up with this and you hate it and you want to just make it again i hope you enjoy making it and eating it as much as i did today youmy name is fermi nunez and today we're serving the taste of nochewena for noche buena i am cooking bacalao a dish that i used to hate when i was a kid only to be reunited within 15 years later as a chef as a dish that i like cooking because it brings me back to the joys of when i was a kid having noche buena christmas eve in mexico the gathering of all the families the celebration of the christmas spirit it's in the noche buena it literally translates to just christmas eve i always say if you want baccalau today you have to start yesterday you have to soak it overnight salted cod is a way of preserving fish they pack this cod in a lot of a lot of salt and it allows it to dry out all the moisture so it can be very shelf stable so after it's soaked overnight you're gonna rinse it drain it put it in the fridge come back to it later as you're cooking the rest of the stew let's get started with our sauce so you're building a jacuzzi of flavors for the fish to come take a dip in we're going to add a generous amount of olive oil you can't have a jacuzzi without too much water you can't have bakala without too much olive oil when i was growing up at home in torreon people would come to our tour house and we hosted parties and we all kind of divided things up and in the kitchen my father at the time used to cook a lot my mom used to do a little bit of the sides or sometimes the bacalao and then sometimes friends of the family or aunts would come in and kind of help prep pretty much like a soccer team right we had the goalie we had the keeper we had the midfielders and stuff like that everybody knew their role because we were all the team and we all wanted to win just the white part cut into big chunks because we're going to stew this for a good amount of time it's all going to cook down it's going to be really nice and tender you're cooking this and somebody walks into your house someone's gonna be like wow that smells so good and you literally just have onions oil tomato paste put that into a candle the meal growing up for noche when i was kind of like divided in three different things there was like the pre-party in the kitchen right where everybody was getting together getting ready my sister used to bake every now and then and i would like snack on raw cookie dough people will start arriving mexican standard time is always late on arrival and when kind of like everybody was there we all sit down have a feast kind of like a sit down potluck after that we all kind of like had a sober mesa which is just kind of like sitting down after your meal and have dessert or just have a coffee or a nightcap before you went to bed that's how like the noche when i went around and it's something that i'm very excited to keep the tradition going here in america so we can deglaze that bring that sweetness from the wise and caramelize that now we're going to put in the time and let this tomatoes stew down we're pretty much making a sauce i'm gonna turn it down to medium heat medium low i'm gonna put a lid and we're gonna start cooking our potatoes salted cold water one and a half two inches they're not gonna break down so you see if we were gonna cut them really small diets they would kind of get lost in that dish if we wanna cook them to the perfect doneness we're gonna have a better chance of achieving that in a separate pot i took some red bell peppers fire roasted them put them in a plastic bag to trap in all that heat and kind of allow them to steam when i start peeling them all that roasted red color it's in there we have our potatoes boiling now it's time to choppy choppy it doesn't have to be perfect seeds are totally okay in my book this is also going to add sweetness to the dish a little bit of that pepper flavor and that char flavor that i always enjoy in mexican cooking all the work is being done right now you can enjoy family time if you're cooking you literally just bring this to the table and say what's up baccalau's done let's do this the potatoes are done the reason i know that is because i poke my knife and they don't fall apart while they kind of fall away from the from the knife and i'm going to turn them off now we're going to add our potatoes to the stew the stew is still on low heat just kind of coasting i'm gonna get my salted cod we're gonna pick the cod we're just gonna go through it just shred it the best way to find out if you have any bone spines in there is use your use your hands this is the part where you're gonna have more bones right so i just kind of looked through here uh it was only until i became a chef when i was around 1819 that i started being more adventurous in cooking and then i started trying food just because i kind of had to if i wanted to become a good chef my rule was i might as well try everything once and then if i don't like it i'll have to figure out why i don't like it and be able to express that and when i finally got back to salted cod and i realized that it was same fish that i would use for bakalao and then i did bakalao and i said this is actually not a bad dish we're going to come back 15 to 20 minutes you know when we put the lid on it was very clumpy it was like just like a paste now we have stew situation population one cod right now i'm gonna turn it off it's cooked for as long as it needs to cook i'm going to add the olives and a little bit of liquid i kept it in there we want that brininess to come into the party and have that little boom zooms of flavor a little bit of that brine too is hanging out there tops of the green onions it's really important that you don't add any heat if you turn on the heat or forget to turn off the heat when you add all these things these things are gonna they're gonna lose their brightness this is going to be the best part of my day and it should be yours too i'm going to make sure i get a little bit of everything top it up with a little bit more of the green onions and then we taste it it's going to taste like noche when i can already i can already feel it hmm do you know i don't know why i hated it as a kid it's a combination of all the ingredients together the cod just have that little texture saltiness of fish sweetness umami freshness from the green onions like whether you're making this for nochewena for special occasion challenging yourself if you grow up with this and you hate it and you want to just make it again i hope you enjoy making it and eating it as much as i did today you\n"