In the spirit of full disclosure, Lily Cervantes and her husband, Alvar Diaz, used to live across the street from me in Greenbrae.
   

But we were not neighbors of the “nodding and hi ya” variety. I am godmother to their 13-month-old daughter, Catalina. Because of our friendship, I have had the opportunity to taste Lily’s cooking many times.
   

What I didn’t know, until I began to write about her cooking, was her complete life story.
   

Lily was born in Veracruz, Mexico. When she was 3, her family moved to a rural area in the state of Puebla, about two hours from Mexico City.
   

Her life in a tiny house with her parents and two brothers in the 1970s was akin to life in the United States in the 19th century. Their little house, she says, had a sleeping area, a table, a couple of chairs, and a space on the floor where they built a fire and cooked. (It was vented.) There was no electricity and no running water. Wood had to be gathered and water carried from her aunt’s well to cook and bathe.
   

When she was 12, her mother began to teach her how to cook.
   

“My first job was washing the rice and beans, making sure there was no dirt or stones,” she explains.
   

Her mother worked outside the home as well as inside: ironing, growing vegetables and making tortillas. On Tuesdays, which was the big market day, her mother would sometimes barter her tortillas for meat or other foodstuffs.
   

“We ate meat two or three times a week,” Lily says.
   

Puebla, like all Mexican states, has it’s own culinary specialties. This state is the home to mole poblano, tortas, chile relleno, many types of bread, and a sweet roll, called conchas. 
  

When she was 18, Lily moved to Mexico City to live with a cousin. She got a job cashiering in a supermarket and sent money home.
   

Through her cous-in, she heard that a Mexican-born architect, who lived with his French-born wife and infant son in San Francisco, wanted to hire a nanny. That was her lucky break. Unlike many of our Latino neighbors, she came to this country through the front door. In fact, she and the architect used to travel to Mexico City every six months to renew their visas. During those trips, she saw her family and he saw his.
   

The architect’s Parisian wife taught Lily how to cook French food and that is what she cooked for the next 15 years. She kept the house clean, cooked five nights a week, and took care of the children.
   

“I learned how to make beef bourguignon, crème brulee, crepes and much more,” says Lily.
   

The only Mexican dish the architect ever asked her to make for him was black beans.
   

Lily has a funny story about cooking with the French wife. “One day, she said to me, ‘I am going to make a gateau [cake].’ But it sounded like she said, ‘gato,’ the Spanish word for cat. I was very confused,” she says with a laugh.
  

Besides living in San Francisco, twice a year she accompanied the family to Paris for visits of two months, and then later in the year for two weeks.    

When she talks about these trips, she smiles broadly.
   

“I loved Paris and French food,” she says enthusiastically.
   

After a couple of years, the couple had a second child, a girl. Lily spoke French and Spanish to the kids.
   

I met Lily when she was dating Alvar Diaz, my neighbor. Soon they married, and Catalina came along a year later.
   

Today, Lily is mostly a home-mommy, making fresh purees for the little one, but she still works a couple of days a week for the architect.
   

I had to ask her if she ever cooks French food for Alvar.
   

Oh, yes, she says. When she mentions one dish, tomate farci, her husband exclaims, “I really like that!”
   

In the future, Lily would like to go to school and become a pediatric nurse. In the meantime, another baby is on the way, and like lots of people, Alvar works two jobs.

Here is Lily’s recipe for Tomate Farci:

    4    good-sized tomatoes*
    1    pound of lean ground beef
        salt and pepper
    1    small yellow onion, minced
        finely
    1-2    cloves of garlic, minced
        finely

   

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cut off the top of the tomatoes, reserving the lid. Scoop out the juice and seeds and reserve. Mix together the remaining ingredients with your hands. Form into four balls. Place one ball in each tomato, top with lid. Spread the reserved juice and seeds in the pan and place the tomatoes on top. Bake for 15 minutes or until the meat is cooked.
   

Serve as a main course with steamed asparagus and white rice.

   

*You don’t have to wait until tomatoes are in season because you are cooking them.

Know someone who can wail in the kitchen? E-mail GraceAnn at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it