\u201cIn my family, we say the border crossed us,\u201d says Trevor Baca, photographer and founder of the Mexican ingredient and supply import shop Poctli. His ancestors moved from Mexico City into Chihuahua and then farther north to New Mexico, where his grandfather was born and raised. A culinary school grad, Baca connected with his family history by traveling to Mexico and exploring the culinary landscape, where the comal is ubiquitous. \u201cWhen you cook on a comal and flip the tortilla, it brings me back. It reminds me of my grandma,\u201d Baca says. The earthenware comals that he now imports from a community in San Marcos Tlapazola, Oaxaca, called mujeres de barro rojo (\u201cwomen of the red clay\u201d) are burnished but left unglazed so the clay\u2019s bold natural sienna color remains the star. \u201cI wanted to see if there were other Mexican Americans like me looking to get back to their roots through this ancestral way of cooking,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I use a comal to roast the chiles, it makes the meal taste better\u2014because of all the love I put into it.\u201d(Clay Comal, $75; poctli.com) \u2014Abbey Stone<\/em><\/p>\n Photograph by Hugo Yu, Prop Styling by Andrea Bonin<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cIn Ukraine, they say bread is the head of everything,\u201d says ceramicist Serhii Martynko, who fought on the front lines of Ukraine’s war with Russia following Russia’s invasion in 2022. Though Martynko relocated to the United States following his military discharge, his pottery shop still operates from Dnipro, Ukraine. His red clay cookery channels ancient pottery used to bake sourdough in wood-fired ovens by the Trypillian people who lived in the region millennia ago. All his ceramics are both useful and deeply personal. \u201cWorking with clay is a kind of meditation,\u201d he says, \u201cwhere you sit at the potter\u2019s wheel with your thoughts.\u201d (Homemade Ceramic Cooking Pot, $106; clayproductsshop.com) \u2014Noah Kaufman<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nPlovnik, Ukraine<\/h2>\n
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