Tortillas by Hand, Taught by a Sor Juana Graduate

The host tells you where she learned to cook in her first sentence: next to her grandmother, which is where the best Mexican cooks learn.

The rest of the CV is unusual for a home cooking class. Degrees in baking and pastry from the Claustro de Sor Juana, which is one of the serious culinary schools in this country, gastronomy studies just finished, and a cafeteria she runs with her mother. As she puts it, the kitchen is not her job, it is her world.

Two and a half hours, and the subject is the two things everything else in Mexican cooking sits on: tortillas made by hand, which is a technique and not a recipe, and the sauces that go with them.

It starts at the San Cosme market in San Rafael, for the ingredients.

Ten people at most, in English or Spanish, with the guide, the kitchen equipment and the food, which the operator lists as breakfast, snacks and lunch, meaning you will not need to eat afterwards.

She has been running these for a couple of years and says every one is different, because every group is. What she wants you to leave with is not the recipe: it is the sense that you have a friend in Mexico.

Prams fine, service animals allowed. Private transport is not included.