Delicious New Mexico, a homegrown non-profit dedicated to creating a strong and sustainable regional food economy, has joined with New World Cuisine, on view at the Museum of International Folk Art, to celebrate New Mexican flavor. The two will combine efforts Sunday, June 2, 2013 on Museum Hill, with an event featuring New Mexico businesses, demonstrations, books, and, of course, food.

While the exhibition has drawn crowds delighted with the historical focus on chocolate, mate, and more, Delicious New Mexico will bring today’s local food community into the mix with a host of members who have prospered through network building, innovation, and best practices. Their success can be seen—and tasted—at the celebration.

In the museum atrium, locally owned New Mexico business will have booths with food for sample and sale.

Rocky Durham of Santa Fe Culinary Academy will demonstrate cooking techniques and offer tasty tidbits.

A book fair will feature New Mexico cookbooks and authors reading about their favorite food.

The outdoor horno will be fired up for baking demonstrations.

Museum Hill Café’s menu will reflect New World cuisine made with ingredients from New Mexico food growers and suppliers.

And, under Museum Hill Café’s portal will be a tasting of locally brewed beers and wines from both New Mexico and South America. Enjoy tasty passed foods inspired by New World Cuisine prepared by Chef and café proprietor Weldon Fulton. Tasting commences at 1 p.m., ends at 4 p.m., and costs $20.

Admission to the Sunday event at the Museum of International Folk Art is free for New Mexico residents with ID, children sixteen and younger, and members of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation.

Enjoy a special series of hands-on New World cuisine classes at the Santa Fe School of Cooking, where you’ll

Meet the Three Sisters. A home-grown trio fundamental to all New Mexico cooking. Transform humble corn, squash, and beans into memorable quesadillas, posole, and calabacitas.

Explore and cook with chocolate—entrées to desserts. Mesoamerica’s molli is today’s mole sauce.  Make and taste your chocolate main course and you’ll discover the millennial-long chocolate love affair.

Classes include:

Thurs, Jan 10 @ 5:30—New World Cuisine Series: Chocolate and Mole

Tues, Feb 5 @ 10:00—New World Cuisine Series: The Adobo Trail

Thurs, March 7 @ 5:30—New World Cuisine Series: The Three Sisters

Thurs, April 25 @ 10:00—New World Cuisine Series: Chocolate and Mole

The exhibition runs a year and so do the classes.

20% of class proceeds benefit the Museum of International Folk Art.

An exploration of the dawn of world cuisine as we know—and consume—it today opens December 7, 2012 at the Museum of International Folk Art with New World Cuisine: The Histories of Chocolate, Mate Y Más. The exhibition runs through January 4, 2014.

New World Cuisine explores how foods around the world developed from mixing the old and the new, and how many of the tastiest dishes and desserts came to be associated with New Mexico.

The mixing of peoples and foods—the fusion of cultures and traditions referred to as mestizaje—began in August 1598 when Juan de Oñate’s 500-strong expedition of soldiers, families, and Franciscan friars settled in New Mexico.

But the ingredients for change were tossed into the melting pot a century before by Christopher Columbus when foods from the Old World were mixed with those of the new and brought improvements from farm to table.

The Old World gained new staple crops, including potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize, and cassava. Tomatoes, chili peppers, cacao, peanuts, and pineapples also were introduced, and some became culinary centerpieces in many Old World countries: the tomato in Mediterranean countries Italy, Greece, and Spain; the chili pepper in India, Korea, Thailand, and China, via the Philippines; and paprika made from chili peppers, in Hungary.

On view are more than 300 objects objects from the museum’s vast collection of historical culinary items related to food harvesting, preparation, table settings, and utilitarian and decorative implements. Some examples are Asian and European spice jars retrofitted with intricately detailed locking metal lids in Mexico City to protect a household’s cacao from thieves; traditional pottery cooking vessels reimagined by metal smiths using hammered copper to accommodate the molinillo used to froth chocolate; talavera kitchen and tableware modeled after Chinese import porcelains; fine antique and contemporary silverware from Europe and the Americas. All provide insight into the importance placed on crafting exquisite food vessels and implements—and that you are what you eat with.

“It’s such a fabulous history,” curator Nicolasa Chávez said. “We’re borrowing one little teeny tiny pottery sherd from Chaco Canyon that was tested for theobroma (chocolate’s scientific name). I wanted that in the exhibit to really bring home to New Mexico that we’ve had a 1,000-year-old love affair with chocolate.”

The exhibition, which remains open through January 5, 2014, is about cultural heritage, nourishment, and regeneration—perfect subjects to begin a New Year.