Hijo,
I want to tell you a story. It's been part of the lore of our family. It's about a molcajete. This is a story I would have told you, along with many others about our family but, child, we simply ran out of time.
So many years ago, your grandfather, Rogelio, returning safely to Laredo from the Second World War, proposed to your grandmother, Floria, or Lita, as you used to call her when you were learning to speak. A wedding was planned in a poor neighborhood just a few blocks south of the bridge in Nuevo Laredo. The bride's family was humble and, therefore, the wedding party was not large. As the story goes, or as Lita used to say, there was a little girl in the neighborhood who wanted badly to attend the wedding. This little girl, who must have been around eight years of age, according to Lita, appeared at the backyard wedding reception with her best dress and a wedding gift wrapped in newspaper.
The gift was a molcajete that Lita came to treasure probably more than any of the more costly gifts she received. The identity of the little girl is lost in time and hopefully no calamity befell the household in Nuevo Laredo that discovered its molcajete suddenly missing.
This pumice stone mortar and pestle has sat quietly resting on its three legs, when not in use, like a witness to the years we lived in your grandparents' house. I began to use it when I was just a child myself when I helped Lita cook. And when I left home, Lita let me have it. Its black porous surface has an almost smooth texture from so much grinding and I can attest to contributing to its smooth edges these past ten years. If it could talk, what stories it could tell.
Hijo, I'm writing you a recipe for Salsa Molcajete, a sauce Lito, your grandfather, made very often quite early in the morning. Lito was an early riser and he would inadvertently annoy his three sleeping daughters by getting up at 6 a.m. On a Saturday morning, he would roast serrano peppers for his breakfast sauce until they started smoking. Unfortunately, the smoke from the chilis would get us all coughing. Poor Lito...he just wanted to make a sauce quickly, not taking the time to slowly roast the chilis. I'm laughing at the memory of the commotion and yelling that would break out of the bedrooms as my sisters and I would wake up coughing to the smell of smoking chilis slowly wafting into our bedrooms. Throughout the house you could hear the three of us yelling "Papá!!!" Then Lita would join the fray, "Rogelio!!!"
Needless to say, the molcajete has been around for a lot of our family stories. It would have been around for yours too.
| Salsa de Molcajete |
Author:
Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 5 mins
Total time: 20 mins
Serves: 4
Grinding roasted tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and onion in a mortar, gives them a complexity of flavor you wouldn't otherwise get.
Ingredients
- 2 cloves peeled garlic
- 1/2 white onion
- 1 extra large tomato
- 1/4 teaspoon seasalt
- 1/4 cup cilantro
- juice from one lime
- 1 serrano pepper (or you can subsitute a jalapeño)
Instructions
- Dry roast the garlic, onion, serrano pepper, and tomato on a comal for about 5 minutes until they are slightly charred.
- Peel the tomato.
- In the molcajete grind the garlic, serrano pepper, onion (chopped fine) and cilantro with the sea salt.
- Empty the contents of the molcajete into another bowl to make room to grind the tomato.
- Mix everthing together again in the molcajete, squeeze the lime juice and fix for salt.
Notes
This makes a chunky sauce with intense flavors. You can add or diminish any of the ingredients according to your taste.
This stirred a memory of mi abuelita Maria in Laredo. She lived with mi tia Pico when we first came to Laredo from Mexico City. My mom Gloria Duran and tia Pico are sisters. Both single parents and very hard workers together had a total of 13 kids. We all went to the same school across the street from the colonia del govierno. I so much look forward to come home from school because mi abuelita had a pot of beans and fideo on the stove. She had a big metal bowl with fresh floured tortillas for all of us to enjoy. I'm thankful that abuelita had the sense and patience to teach me to use the molcajete. After following her instructions she asked me to run to the corner store for packets of kool-aide. "A comer"...gritaba mi abuelita upon my return and everyone would stand around the big table and one by one they would get their plate and of course hertortillas. After our delicious meal some of us would help clean up while the rest would go back to play " Mother May I". By the time our mom was picking us up. I would run in to kiss by abuelita y pedir la bendicion she would be sitting in her special chair cleaning a pot of beans for the next day. Not once did I ever hear her complaint about having to care for so many of us. As I would kiss her goodbye she would always compliment me on how much my salsa was improving.
ReplyDeleteGloria,
ReplyDeleteThe world is small (especially Laredo in the 60's) and we are all connected somehow. I actually knew your grandmother and thought the world of her. She was always busy around the house and I never really sat down to have a long talk with her, but I understood her sweetness and generosity. Thank for writing.
I still have the molcajete that belonged to my paternal grandmother I never met. My mother used it until she passed away and then I used it until the pits in the stone became too deep to make it an effective kitchen tool. I have promised my oldest nephew the molcajete will be his but I cannot part with it yet. Even now I love to take it in my hands and remember my mother using it. And I imagine what it would have been like watching Guelita Carmen using it too. There's a lot of love in that piece of stone and my nephew understands that. I hope he passes it down too.
ReplyDeleteRick,
ReplyDeleteMolcajetes are time capsules, they contain the dust of dried seeds ground up in the pores for years that document the passage of time and the hands that ground them in.
Gilda