Eye-of-the-Storm Enfrijoladas

Beans.  They’ve been on my mind.  Specifically, pintos that, in a refried state, rank high on my list of comfort foods.  This is probably because my grandmother always had a pot on the stove.  Always.

She served them with everything: with fried eggs for breakfast, mounded next to enchiladas at lunch, slathered across a tostada for a snack and dolloped on a milanesa-dominated plate for dinner. But my favorite variation? My grandmother’s enfrijoladas, corn tortillas warmed on a comal, then dredged through mashed, refried beans and topped with a crumbling of queso fresco.

As I’ve mentioned before, I spent my summers and different periods of my life living in Laredo with my grandmother.  I wish I’d paid closer attention to the world then.  I didn't know until years after I'd left Laredo, for example, that my grandmother's house was located in the "El Cuatro" section of Laredo, west of downtown.  The battered barrio has historical significance and recently caught the attention of The National Trust for Historic Preservation.

As a child growing up, I probably knew on some visceral level that most of the buildings on Lincoln Street were dilapidated.  But I was oblivious to the fact that the area was home to some of Laredo's poorest families, including my own.

A Spanish colonist founded Laredo in 1755.  Laredo remained a part of New Spain until the land port was ceded to the United States in 1848 at the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.  Another historical tidbit that I learned on one of my visits to Laredo as an adult:  in the late 19th century, Fort Macintosh (now the site of the Laredo Community College and one of my childhood "playgrounds") was home to some of the first peace-time, African American U. S. Army units known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

El Cuatro was another early barrio which sprang up west of the centro. The name, El Cuatro, was derived from the city voting precinct in which the barrio was located - the "Fourth Ward." Many early residents were employed with the railroads, and their box-shaped board and batten houses are still present throughout the neighborhood. Due to its proximity to Fort McIntosh, the neighborhood attracted a small enclave of blacks. For a short time in 1865, the post was manned by a company of the 62nd U.S. Colored Infantry. Since that time a number of black units were stationed at the fort, including Company K of the Black Twenty-fifth U.S. Infantry in 1906. The soldiers' families and their descendants made their homes in El Cuatro and the small barrio across the tracks called El Tonto. Saint James Tabernacle and the Grayson school remain as the only architectural relics of Laredo's black history. (http://tiny.cc/xlyx5)

I don't recall learning about Laredo's rich history while I was in school there and I wonder now whether it was taught at all.

Also out of my intellectual reach at the time were the complexities of life.  My grandmother was the matriarch of a sprawling family and ran a household that was made for a high-ratings reality show.  There was always a stream of visitors, old friends from Mexico, cousins from California or my assorted aunts and uncles and their children, some of whom also lived with us.  There were borders at the house from time-to-time.  A man named Cecil who parked his car in front and stamped out social security cards from the back of his camper. The boy with liquid-green eyes who lived around the corner, one of my first childhood crushes who, years later, was stabbed in a bar fight.

Along with a bustling, busy household came the concomitant family crises and commotions, garden variety goings-on whose meanings I did not comprehend at the time.  Those were the long, hot summers of my innocence and I observed it all from the center of my grandmother's universe.  There was always so much activity that I now realize my grandmother was a quintessential multi-tasker.  She could negotiate a great deal on a used appliance while strategizing about its resale.   Listen empathetically to a neighbor whose son was in serious legal trouble while watering the lawn and tending to her plants.  Yield to the demands of her large family while shopping and cleaning and cooking for them—from scratch.

There were rare moments of quiet.  The old house was without air conditioning most of the time, the little window unit in the front room turned on only for special visitors, if it worked at all.  This meant that the windows and doors were always open.  The oscillation of stand-alone fans provided a relaxing rhythm for a summer borderland soundtrack: the cooing of pigeons, trains rumbling by, the thwack of a neighbor’s screendoor, cicadas in the trees and crickets in the grass, the clucking of chickens in a nearby yard.

And I am ten again, sitting at the oval, formica table top in my grandmother's kitchen.  I notice the way the sun spills into the window above the sink and how the light dances in the sudsy water.  I’m sorting tomorrow’s beans, separating the shriveled and broken ones and the bits of sediment from the rest.  Meanwhile, my grandmother stirs freshly-squeezed lime juice, water and a little sugar in a plastic glass because she knows a limonada is my favorite drink.  I take a sip and watch her at the stove, turning the dial and perfecting the gas flame.  I smell the oil warming in the pan and hear the spit of onions in the moment before they succumb to sizzling.  She ladles beans from yesterday’s batch into the pan and effortlessly squashes the macerated and formerly-speckled seeds into a brown pulp.

I’m done discriminating against imperfect pintos and my grandmother thanks me with a kiss, placing in front of me a plate of earthy and savory enfrijoladas.  A little something just for me in the eye of the storm.

Eye of the Storm Enfrijoladas

#ratingval# from #reviews# reviews

Print

Recipe Type: Breakfast/Desayuno

Author: Gilda Claudine

Ingredients

• 1 lb pinto beans


• 1/2 small onion, finely chopped onions


• 2 or 3 slices of bacon, cut in pieces or diced


• Salt to taste


• 1/2 cup of Canola oil


• Corn tortillas


• Queso fresco


• 1/2 avocado (optional)

Instructions

1. Soak the beans in 4 cups of water overnight.


2. In the morning, drain the beans.


3. Over medium heat, warm the bacon until it yields some fat.


4. Add half of the onion and simmer.


5. When the onions and the bacon are almost cooked through, return the beans to the pot.


6. Add another 3 or 4 cups of water.


7. Add salt to taste and cover.


8. Allow the beans to cook at a low temperature for several hours or until they reach the desired consistency.


9. The beans should be soft and easy to mash.

Refried Beans

1. In a skillet, heat the Canola oil.


2. When the oil is hot, add the rest of the onion.


3. Sweat the onion until it is completely translucent.


4. Add three or four ladles of the beans in their liquid.


5. Raise the temperature and when the liquid begins to bubble, mash the beans.


6. Add water as needed to keep the beans from drying out.


7. Once the beans are mashed to the desired consistency, turn down the heat.


8. In a separate pan or on a comal, heat a corn tortilla. (Optional: warm the tortilla in a bit of oil here).


9. Using tongs, place the hot tortilla in the pan with the refried beans.


10. Dredge and/or coat both sides with the bean mash.


11. Using a spatula, remove and place on a plate.


12. Crumble the queso fresco on top and add avocado.


13. Serve hot.