A Hot Meal On the Go: Sincronizadas Gringas

This summer I will take my middle school students to San Miguel de Allende and already the menu of what they'll eat dances in my head. It should be authentic but not too exotic, healthy, but appealing to even the least adventurous 13-year-old. Some things are just going to look mysterious to them, but they will not leave Mexico without tasting mole in the Oaxacan style. The experience at the table is another facet of the culture,  another dimension of the country and its people. Hence, missing out on the gastronomic opportunities is a total loss, no matter how many hours of Spanish you offer students.

Pipian Verde with Guajolote (Turkey)

I appreciate Thanksgiving for the way in which the holiday brings together friends and family and reminds us to give thanks for each other and the goodness in life.  But I still often think about how Thanksgiving came about and the ways in which it misrepresents the relationship between America's first colonizers and its native people. (See our post about the origins of Thanksgiving here.)

Interestingly, none of the Hispanic countries (those colonized by Spain) of the Americas have such a holiday as far as I know. The Mexican mestizo soul is complex and opaque. Most Mexicans identify proudly with the indigenous people who blended with the Spanish colonizers to create the mestizo race. (However, don't be surprised to hear epithets hurled at either the indigenous culture or at their European ancestors when a little Tequila is going around. Mexicans know how to make light of these "problems of the psyche!")

This Thanksgiving, I thought it would be appropriate to give you a recipe that is quite possibly prehispanic and can be made with the native bird of the Americas and of this holiday: guajolote (nahuatl for turkey). I had to go through a stack of old handwritten recipes to find it. It's Tía Oralia's recipe for pipian verde, a kind of green mole, which is usually made for chicken. I see from my notes that she was dictating it to me and I was barely keeping up with my writing, but the essentials are here. It looks like my pipian sauce needed more broth, just add as you like to get the proper texture and serve this with a good white rice and warm corn tortillas.

To all those with a loved one who did not return from Iraq or Afghanistan, may your bounty of friends and relatives help dry your tears and  fill the void of the empty chair at your table.

Pipian Verde with Guajolote (Turkey)

Recipe Type: main, fowl, sauce, mole

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 30 mins

Cook time: 1 hour

Total time: 1 hour 30 mins

Serves: 4

Pipian verde goes perfectly on a bed of white rice, cooked Mexican style.

Ingredients:

• 1lb tomatillo
• 1 serrano chile
• ¾ cup raw, unsalted pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
• 2 cloves peeled garlic
• 1/2 onion
• 1 sprig epazote (optional)
• 3 green leaves, approximately, from radishes, swiss chard, kale, or collard greens
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup roughly chopped cilantro (without stems)
• 1 chicken cut up or 6 turkey drumsticks
• salt to taste
• 3 cups chicken or turkey broth

For broth:

• 3 carrots
• 2 sticks celery
• 1 onion
• salt to taste
• 1 cut up chicken or 6 turkey drumsticks

Instructions:

1. Bring water to a boil and place cut chicken pieces or turkey drumsticks, bringing the flame down to a low simmer.


2. After about ½ hour, place the vegetables in the skimmed broth and add salt.


3. Continue to cook at a low simmer for another 45 minutes, partially covered.


4. Set the broth aside when it's ready, strain it and pull out the chicken or drumsticks, placing them on a plate, to be used later.


5. Start preparing the pipian by browning the pumpkin seeds and the clove of garlic in half of the oil on a skillet for about 3 minutes, until they are puffy; take care not to burn them, as this will make them bitter; keep the flame low.


6. In the meantime, boil the de-husked tomatillos with the serrano pepper and onion for about 10 minutes. (You can also broil them if you prefer)


7. After this all cools, put the tomatillos, the serrano, the garlic, the sprig of epazote and the toasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas) in the blender with about a cup of the cooled broth, blending it until it's as smooth as possible.


8. Place this mixture on a skillet again with the last half of the oil and begin to cook it again, to amalgamate it for about 5 minutes.


9. Place the cilantro in the blender and the leaves of green along another cup of the cooled broth and blend together.


10. Add this to your mixture in the skillet and add remaining broth, slowly to get the consistency you want.


11. Add the pieces of chicken or turkey to your skillet and make sure you are able to turn the pieces so they can all be coated with the sauce.


12. Cover and cook for another 5 minutes at a very low flame, checking that nothing sticks or the sauce doesn't become too thick.


13. Arrange on a plate with a good white rice and warm corn tortillas.

3.1.09

Blue Corn Pozole

As I gathered the ingredients for this post, I thought about a woman my family once knew in Laredo.  Her name was Ana María.  She was born in Nuevo Laredo and moved to the U.S. side of the border after her marriage to a Laredoan. Ana María was an eccentric woman who made it clear in subtle and not so subtle ways that she belonged to Nuevo Laredo's well-connected families.  However, in Laredo, Ana María and her husband were as poor as church mice.  That is, until the 1980's when gas drilling along the Rio Grande made overnight millionaires out of ordinary people like Ana María and her husband.

My parents had become friends with Ana Maria and her husband some time after I left Laredo. But I remember many funny stories about her and how my mother tolerated some of her crazy ideas.  Finally, I met her during a trip to visit my parents. She was a natural beauty, albeit with a strong belief in heavy black eye liner and pitch-black hair dyed to match.  Within no time, she told me she knew all the "right" kind of eligible, young men from Nuevo Laredo for me to meet. She was truly from another time and place!

What brought Ana María to mind as I planned this recipe was how much she loved pozole.  She often invited my parents over for pozole--too often for my mother, who didn't care much for it. It's not a northern Mexican dish and my mother just didn't understand it. She would often describe how she had avoided another pozole dinner at Ana María's by offering to cook dinner at our home so that she could have some control over the menu. My mother had the nagging suspicion that  Ana María's real intention was to end up with a dinner invitation rather than have to cook.

I was always curious about the dish, never having tasted Ana María's famous pozole all those years. Later, during my trips to Mexico, I found many occasions to savor it. There are many versions of the hearty soup and, unlike my mother, I soon became a fan of pozole!

Last month, some friends from New Mexico brought me some dried blue corn kernels. I used them in this pozole recipe in place of canned hominy that is traditionally used. Normally, pozole is served with satellites of garnishes, little dishes of items that can be added to the soup: chopped white onion, sliced radishes, chopped cilantro, sliced limes, and thinly-sliced romaine lettuce. I like to add strips of fried tortilla as well.

Dried Chile Guajillo

My pozole recipe might be too spicy for little children who have not grown up with spicy food but it's substantial enough to serve as a main course. The flavors and textures are like few things I've ever had; the meat of the pork is tender, the corn kernels are chewy and the flavor of the chile guajillo cooked into this thick soup is deep and earthy.  And adding a squeeze of lime and the chopped cilantro creates a bright contrast with the savory flavors of the soup.

Blue Corn Pozole

Recipe Type: soup

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 1 hour

Cook time: 4 hours

Total time: 5 hours

Serves: 6

Fall and winter is the perfect time for a hearty soup like pozole.

Ingredients

• 6 or 7 guajillo chili pods, deveined and seeded


• 2 cups dried blue corn which has been soaked overnight


• 2 lbs pork shoulder cut into 1 inch cubes


• 10 cloves garlic roughly cut


• 1 1/2 tablespoons dry oregano


• 1 tablespoon cumin


• 4 bay leaves


• Garnish: finely chopped romaine lettuce or cabbage, minced white onion, limes, cilantro, radishes, and tostadas, or fried corn tortilla strips

Instructions

1. Soak the corn overnight and then add salt and boil it at a simmer, covered, for about two hours in about 1 quart of water or enough so that there is enough liquid to soften the corn; add more water if it begins to evaporate too fast.


2. While the corn is cooking, remove the seeds and stems and devein the guajillo chiles, then place them on a heavy skillet or a comal at low heat until they soften, about 5 minutes or less.


3. After the chilies are soft, place them in a pot of about 5 cups boiling water , set aside to soak, covered, in this water for about 20 minutes.


4. Place the cubes of pork in a large, heavy bottomed stock pot and brown for about 6 minutes on a medium to high flame.


5. For an additional 3 minutes and at a lower flame, add the cloves of garlic to sweat as the meat browns. Add salt.


6. Pour the boiled corn pozole along with its liquid into the stockpot with the seared pork and garlic cloves.


7. While this is cooking, place the chilies along with their liquid in the blender, and blend. Do this little by little so the blender lid doesn't pop off with the expansion of the liquid.


8. Add this red liquid into the stock pot and add the oregano, crumbled bay leaf and cumin.


9. Place the pot lid at a tilt, check for salt and cook at a simmer for about three hours. Check the liquid frequently to make sure the result is brothy.


10. Fill small plates with garnishes: minced white onion, chopped cilantro, thinly sliced radishes, sliced limes, thinly sliced romain lettuce, and fried strips of tortilla. 

Chiapas Pork Roast on Mexico's Independence Day

In the U.S., it's widely believed that Cinco de Mayo is Mexican Independence Day. However, Mexicans celebrate their independence on the 16^th of September, the day that the criollo, Father Hidalgo, rallied the indigenous masses in the town of Dolores with "el grito"-- the shout urging them to overthrow the oppressive yoke of colonial Spanish government.  The ensuing fight for independence would last ten years.

On the 15^th of September every year, the president of Mexico stands at the balcony of the Palacio Nacional to commemorate this moment. There is a sort of call and response that takes place before the explosion of fireworks. It goes like this:

¡Mexicanos!

¡Vivan los héroes que nos dieron patria!

¡Víva Hidalgo!

¡Viva Morelos!

¡Viva Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez!

¡Viva Allende!

¡Vivan Aldama y Matamoros!

¡Viva la independencia nacional!

¡Viva México!

¡Viva México!

¡Viva México!

The thunderous roar of the crowd's response is exhilarating and the excitement reminds them they are hungry and thirsty. Naturally, food abounds in celebrations like this where families have gathered afterwards at friends' homes for such traditional fare as mole or chiles en nogada. Further south, in the Chiapas area, perhaps you'll find a roast pork that's been cooking for hours ready for the moment when famished guests arrive after celebrations.

My sister, Laura, makes the best one I know of. Here's her recipe.

Photo by Laura Lee

Chiapas Pork Roast

Recipe Type: Main Course

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 4 hours

Total time: 4 hours 20 mins

Serves: 6-8

Ingredients

• 4 dried chiles anchos, cleaned of seeds and veins


• several sprigs fresh thyme


• 2 bay leaves


• 1 tablespoon peppercorns


• 4 cloves (whole)


• 2 tablespoons allspice


• 1 stick cinnamon bark


• 5 cloves peeled garlic


• 2/3 cup vinegar


• 1 ½ tablespoons salt


• 5 pounds pork roast (shoulder, with outer layer of fat, if possible)


• 1 cup very hot water


• 2 cups thinly sliced white or bermuda onion (for the garnish)


• 1 cup thinly sliced radishes (for the garnish)


• 2 cups thinly sliced romaine lettuce, dressed with oil and vinegar (for the garnish)

Instructions

1. Cover the chilies with the very hot water and leave soaking for 20 minutes.


2. Drain and place in a blender jar.


3. Crush the herbs and spices and add them, as well as the garlic, vinegar, and salt to the blender.


4. Blend until smooth, add water if necessary to blend into a smoother consistency: a loose paste.


5. Pierce the meat all over with the point of a sharp knife.


6. Smear the meat with this mixture and let it marinate in the refrigerator for about 4 hours, but preferably 24 hours.


7. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.


8. Put the meat in a covered casserole dish and cook for 1 hour.


9. Turn the meat, scraping the paste that is sticking to the bottom of the pan and diluting with about 1 cup of warm water and cook for another hour still covered.


10. Turn the meat again and cook for another 2 hours, or until it's very tender, but keep basting with the pan juices.


11. There will be plenty of sauce left in the casserole when the meat is cooked.


12. Serve the meat sliced with some of the sauce from the pan drizzled on top and with plenty of onion rings, cilantro, sliced romaine lettuce and warm corn tortillas.

A Recipe Signed, Sealed, Delivered

It's been about two weeks since my niece sent me an email asking for some of my old recipes. She's a college student here in town, but she's doing a semester abroad in Uruguay. When she's in town, here at the university, we have a standing date on Tuesday nights when she comes over for dinner, sometimes bringing a friend.

We catch up over dinner talking about her life as a university student, her classes, her quirky professors, her political activism.  I sigh to myself...how time has passed. I allow myself to imagine our son at the table with us too. At the end of the evening, we load Natalie down with her uncle's homemade bread and enough leftover meals to last several days.

When she asked me for a certain recipe recently, or even any of the things she's eaten here, there wasn't an obvious answer.  I needed to know what was available or seasonal. Cooking is about looking around to see what inspires you and it became difficult to narrow down my choices without imagining what she might find in what is currently the fall in Uruguay. And then there's the cooking paraphernalia that she may or may not have, not to mention the small amount of time she might have for cooking.

I settled on this recipe for huevo con calabacitas, a kind of Mexican style frittata.  It's easy, the ingredients are accessible, and it's what Natalie is hoping to make for herself.

Huevos con Calabacita a la Florentina

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Recipe Type: Appetiser, Entree

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 35 mins

Serves: 8

Ingredients

• Ingredients


• 6 eggs


• 3 regular sized zucchini or 6 baby zucchini (about 400 gr) cut lengthwise and sliced thinly


• 1 1/2 to 2 leeks sliced thinly, using only white and pale green parts


• 1 tablespoon butter


• 2 tablespoons olive oil


• 1/2 jalapeño sliced thinly


• bunch basil leaves sliced in ribbons


• salt and freshly ground pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat broiler.


2. Rinse the sliced leeks in a pot of water and swish around and separate to clean.


3. Drain well and dry well with paper towels.


4. In a large oven proof pan at medium heat melt the butter with the oil.


5. Add the leeks and cook until they soften, for about 4 minutes.


6. Raise the temperature slightly and add the zucchini and cook until slightly brown or golden, for about 5-8 minutes.


7. When everything is just about cooked, add the basil.


8. Arrange everything evenly with a spoon on the pan, then pour the beaten eggs on top.


9. Add salt and pepper.


10. Lower the heat and cook slowly, running a spatula or knife along the sides of the pan to keep it form sticking.


11. When the sides and bottom are set and the center is loose, put the pan under the broiler until the top is firm and golden, about 3 minutes.


12. Cut into wedges and serve warm or at room temperature.

Cochinita Pibil

The banana leaf has been used in the Americas and elsewhere, for that matter, for millennia as the environmentally friendly aluminum foil used to keep food moist during cooking. This Yucatecan dish is a fusion of the Mayan and the Spanish, a love child of this blending of two contrasting worlds. It is a "surprise du chef" to be opened up at the table like a gift, revealing the achiote-colored meat flavored with sour orange and other spices.

Instead of using recado rojo or achiote paste, I have ground the achiote seeds myself with the rest of the spices because I don't like some of the additives in the commercial paste but you might want to take advantage of the convenience of the achiote paste, especially if that is all that is available to you. Add it to your mixture a tablespoon at a time until you get the desired consistency and color: about as  thick as porridge and a rusty red color.

The name, cochinita, means suckling pig and pibil in Mayan language is the underground pit.  Here, I've used pork shoulder and set my oven at 325 degrees for about 3 hours. I personally don't like the look of shredded meat, so I leave mine in large chunks. 

A a brief search online will show you there are a million ways to prepare Cochinita Pibil, but the similarity will always be in the length of cooking time. It does take time to cook, but you don't have to stand by the stove; it will take care of itself. This meat will be so tender and flavorful, you will not need a knife.

Cochinita Pibil

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Prep time: 30 mins

Cook time: 3 hours

Total time: 3 hours 30 mins

Serves: 2

You will need to marinate the meat for at least an hour with the achiote mixture and the sour orange juices. Leaving it to marinate overnight is even better. Many of these spices are available through our friends at Latinbag.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. pork shoulder cut into large chunks

For grinding together in a coffee grinder or molcajete

• 3 tablespoons achiote seeds
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons salt

Liquids for the marinade:

• 1 ¼ cup sour orange juice or juice from about 3 oranges and 2 (juicy) limes
• 1 tablespoon vinegar

Toast on comal

• ½ red onion cut into about 4 pieces
• 5 cloves peeled garlic
• 3 bay leaves
• 2 guajillo chiles split open (first simmered for 10 minutes)
• 1 package banana leaves

Instructions:

Achiote

1. For grinding in a coffee grinder (if you don't have a coffee grinder just throw them into the blender with the other sour orange juice and blend for about 3 minutes until it is no longer grainy)


2. In a blender mix the dry achiote ingredients above with the orange/lime liquid until it is blended into a thick sauce


3. Marinate the meat with this sauce in the refrigerator for at least one hour, but overnight is even better.


4. On a comal or iron skillet on a very low flame, toast the chunks of onion, the peeled garlic, bay leaves and guajillo chiles


5. Wash the banana leaves and heat them slightly on the skillet or comal to soften them.


6. Lay them out on the bottom of your baking dish leaving 'flaps' that will fold after you've placed your marinated pork into the dish.


7. Arrange your toasted spices on top of the marinated pork.


8. Fold over all your 'flaps' until the pork is completely encased in the leaves.


9. Cover the dish with a layer of tin foil for additional protection.


10. It will be ready from between 2 1/2 to 3 hours.


11. Serve it on a bed of rice or make tacos with the meat garnished with red onion that has soaked in lime juice.

Garnish for tacos

1. ½ red onion sliced thin and soaked in fresh squeezed lime juice

Tamales

Having promised an old family recipe for tamales previously in Never a Year without Tamales, I'm delivering on the promise now, just in time for Christmas.  As you will see in the ingredients section, ahem...yes, there is manteca (lard), I'm afraid. I do apologize for this, there's just no other way. Once a year is not going to hurt you, right? Be not afraid...eat and be merry and celebrate with these very special tamales.

Also, I feel I need to make a disclaimer about the work involved in making tamales. It will take you two days. And the first time they may not turn the way you want. You may have to "practice." On the positive side, it's a beautiful family tradition to cultivate. At this time, far flung relatives, young and old, will get together in one house and begin the tamalada, chatting, laughing, and sharing stories of the past and present, finally sitting down for a feast in the spirit of the season. (Photographs courtesy of Laura Lee)

Tamales

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Recipe Type: Entree, Main

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 16 hours

Cook time: 5 hours

Total time: 21 hours

Serves: 10

The recipe calls for a masa, (dough) purchased from Fiesta, a well known Houston chain of grocery stores selling Mexican products. This dough is fresh corn dough, nixtamal, but you can make your own corn masa following the instructions in a package of instant corn flour like Maseca, for example.

Ingredients

• 10-12 dozen:


• 6.0 lbs. Roast Pork if doing only pork tamales and/or portion of venison, if you are lucky enough to have some


• 10 lbs. Masa (buy the freshly made from Fiesta. It comes in a 10 lb. Plastic bag)


• You will just need to flavor it with salt, lard and pork stock)


• 2 tubs Armour Lard (1 lb.ea.)


• 12 chile anchos (shiny ones)


• 2 bags corn husks (6oz.bags ea.) or 1 lb. bag


• 1 box black raisins 15 oz.


• 1 tsp. Cumin


• 5 Garlic cloves


• Salt

Instructions

DAY ONE

MEAT

1. On medium heat, begin cooking the pork in a deep pan of salted water and 2 garlic cloves (about 2 tsp. salt).


2. Also cook the venison in a separate deep pan with 1 garlic clove and the salt.


3. Cook about 2-1/2 –3 hours or until the meat flakes off easily with a knife.


4. Save the stock from the pork. It will be used later.


5. Discard the stock from the venison. S


6. et the meat aside to cool off.

CHILE ANCHO SAUCE FOR THE MEAT

1. Use gloves to remove the seeds from the chiles.


2. Boil them in a pan of water.


3. Cook until skin begins to come off.


4. They will turn a pinkish color. (Do not rub your eyes!) You do not need to pull the skin off the chiles.


5. Put chiles in the blender or food processor with 1-1/2 garlic cloves.


6. Add stock from the pork pan.


7. Blend into the sauce. The sauce should not be very thick or very watery, just somewhere in the middle. It will be added to the meat.


8. Once the meat is done, chop up very very fine (use a cleaver) and cook together in approx. ¾-1 cup lard in a frying pan with the chile ancho sauce.


9. Add one level tsp. of cumin.


10. Add more stock and salt to taste.


11. Add enough stock so it’s like a picadillo, a little bit watery.

DAY TWO

CORN HUSKS

1. Put corn husks in warm water and let soak for a couple of hours, then rinse and separate.


2. MASA (10 lbs)


3. Put masa in large bowl and begin to knead with 1/8 cup salt, 1 cup lard and add pork stock little by little to make soft.


4. Keep kneading and add a little meat to add color.


5. Add more lard and salt to taste; you will build biceps doing this.

TAMAL ASSEMBLY

1. Spread masa all the way to the edge of each corn husk thinly, as if you were spreading peanut butter.


2. Add meat in a thin strip, not in center of tamal, but closer to the side that will be rolled first. Then dot with 3 or 4 raisins and roll up.


3. Use a tamal pot purchased from Fiesta.


4. This pot will have a steamer lid in it. Fill with water up to the line where the steamer lid goes.


5. If you do not have a tamal pot, get a very large deep pan, measure ahead of time how many cups of water it will take to fill up one inch inside of pan.


6. Then dump the water out of the pan. Line bottom of pan with a few left over corn husks. Start filling pan with tamales, standing up.


7. This can be done easiest by leaning them against one another.


8. Once you have a pot full of standing up tamales, add the number of cups of water you had counted before to the pan.


9. Place damp cloth over tamales, cover, bring to boil and then reduce to medium heat. Tamales should be ready in about 1-1/2 hours. However if you have another layer of tamales standing on top of the first layer, it will take approx. 3 hours to cook.


10. If you have masa left over and no more meat, fry a can of refried beans and make tamales with that.


11. If you still have masa left over, you can make sweet tamales.


12. Add sugar to the masa to taste, along with 2-3 crushed cinnamon sticks.


13. Make a little ball with the dough, add some raisins, flatten the ball of dough a bit and fold a corn husk around it.

Notes

*Get the masa that is already prepared at Fiesta and buy it on the same day you are spreading it on the corn husks.

Calabacitas de mi Casa

As a teenager, I had a plan: to graduate, leave home—and go to college to study art. It didn't exactly work out that way.  As John Lennon says in his song Beautiful Boy, Life is what happens when you're busy making plans. By the time I graduated from high school, my college fund had dried up; it had been used to tide us over after a family business reversal.

But, as the saying goes "No hay mal que por bien no venga."  It wasn't the end of the world.  In fact, there were advantages.  For one thing, I didn't pay a penny for my education at the local college where I ended up for two years, since I was on scholarship there.

Still, there were dramatic changes at home.  My mother, for the first time, went to work outside the home. It was traumatic for her as she had always been at home for  my father, two sisters and me. But dire necessity dictated this change.

Many problems arose from this sudden adjustment in the way we did things. The family, for example, was now in a terrific tizzy about who would prepare midday lunch for my father.  My sisters were still in school during the day and hiring a housekeeper to make his lunch was unthinkable.

My father awoke everyday at an ungodly hour to make his own fiery, chile-laden breakfast. Throat-burning chile vapors floated through the house at 6 am, waking the whole house. To our added alarm, he often left the frying pan on the fire as he left the house for work.  Certainly, my mother felt he could not be trusted to prepare his own lunch.  

Hence, the duty to uphold this family routine fell on me as the oldest but also because I finished my morning classes at the local college by 11 a.m. and had plenty of time to get home to prepare lunch for my father. By that time, I had learned at my mother's side how to prepare our typical family meals. One of these was calabacitas con pollo, which we always ate with corn tortillas hot off the griddle. My father liked his tortillas crackly and I liked mine soft.

I can imagine now so many years later that Papá, who must have felt in desperate straits at the time, was happy to arrive at noon and still find that some things hadn't changed. His eighteen-year-old daughter was home from classes with a meal waiting for him. We would sit down to a plate of calabacitas con pollo—with soft and crackly tortillas—and savor our new tradition.   After lunch he would lie down for a quick siesta before returning to work and I would rush off and still arrive on time for afternoon classes.

After two years at the local college, I finally left home  to continue my studies. As it turned out, I left art for my other love: language and linguistics. I married, had a child and the calabacitas dish soon become a part of our family tradition as one of the first solid foods (minus the chiles) I gave my baby, Alex. I used a food mill to give the zucchini and other vegetables a consistency a baby could handle.

What food traditions have you carried on to your children and grandchildren?  Are there any recipes that have special meaning for you?

Calabacitas con pollo

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Recipe Type: Main

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 35 mins

Total time: 55 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 1 lb of chicken pieces: wings, drumsticks, thighs etc.


• 2 lbs zucchini chopped into cubes


• 1 onion, chopped


• 2 medium sized tomatoes, chopped


• tsp comino powder (grind your own in a molcajete if you prefer)


• tsp ground pepper


• 2 serrano chiles


• 4 tablespoons (approximately) of olive oil


• Kernels cut from 2 fresh corn cobs


• Salt to taste

Instructions

1. In a large heavy pan, brown the chicken pieces in the oil over medium to high flame for about 15 minutes.


2. Add all the rest of the ingredients, lower the heat, cover and cook for about 20 minutes, until all the flavors have come together.


3. Be careful not to pop the serrano chiles, unless you want a spicier version. If you leave these chilies intact, they will provide flavor without making it overly spicy.

Note: I often cook this with pork, instead of chicken. If you use pork, be sure to cut it in small cubes, and brown them well, so that this flavor blends with the other ingredients. 

Como Chiles en Nogada

Chiles en Nogada always remind me of Laura Esquivel's novel, Como Agua Para Chocolate. When I taught students at a private all-girls school in Bethesda, May was the much-awaited month in our Spanish Conversation and Composition class where we would begin to read from the novel and watch the movie. I had watched the movie for all the years I had taught at that girls' school, sitting on the edge of my chair, commiserating with Tita, the heroine.   Each year felt as if it were the first time I watched her transform the cold wind that blew through her heart into a magical ritual surrounding the daily preparation of the family's meals. The thing that struck me in different ways as I watched the movie each year was what the ceremony of shared and lovingly prepared meals means as a spiritual 'glue' in a family.

I chuckle to myself now whenever I remember the impact of the ending on the entire classroom of girls, (yes, including me!).  Our feminine hearts beyond consolation, we would all sob loudly and with complete abandon, aghast at the realization that the happiness we wanted for Tita was a transcendental one.  She and Pedro, the man she had loved for so long but who had been married to her sister, would ignite at the moment of their union and would perish in an explosion of flames, throwing us into further spasms of emotion. Years later, teaching in an all-male equivalent of the girls' school, I decided to show the movie to the adolescent boys in my Honors Spanish class. My notion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus was confirmed! The boys broke out into hysterical laughter at the end of the movie.

In any case, besides the knowledge of Spanish gained from the study of the movie, I hope that my students, both genders, came to understand the role of food and its preparation in the life of a family. Undoubtedly, it is through food that many of the unwritten lessons of a culture are learned. Each year, I take a group of students to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for Spanish immersion. One of my favorite things is to introduce them to chiles en nogada.

Chiles en nogada is a dish originally from the colonial city of Puebla, but here in San Miguel, it is prepared in many restaurants.  Doña Beatriz' chiles at Casa Carmen are the best, in my opinion. Needless to say, there are a million ways to prepare stuffed chiles in Mexico.  Chiles en nogada is an elegant Mexican dish that is as beautiful to look at as it is delicious to eat. This version is adapted to make it slightly easier to prepare. The sauce is made without the walnuts, (no tedious peeling of walnut skins) they are simply added as a garnish. In fact, another variation is that the sauce has cilantro blended into it. It is, nevertheless, quite an elaborate affair, albeit all worth the trouble.

Chiles en Nogada

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Recipe Type: Entree/Plato Fuerte

Author: Gilda V. Carbonaro

Serves: 6

Adapted from Doña Beatriz's recipe at Casa Carmen, San Miguel de Allende

Ingredients

• 8 poblano peppers


• 2 ½ cups crème fraiche or clotted cream and some amount of milk to water it down


• cup parsley, chopped


• 10 sprigs of cilantro with the bottom part of stems twisted off


• 1 lb ground meat


• 2 or three chopped onions


• cups raisins


• Olive oil for the ground meat and for the green sauce


• Fresh pomegranate seeds (if they are available) for garnish


• Walnuts for garnish

Instructions

Chiles

1. Grill the peppers over an open flame and then put them either in a plastic or paper bag to sweat for about 15 minutes.


2. Peel them, slit one side, clean out all the seeds, rinse them well and set them aside. The more thoroughly you clean them, the less chance you will get a really spicy one. You can do this a day ahead of time. To avoid a really 'hot' pepper, rinse them in a mixture of vinegar and water.

Picadillo:

1. Cook the ground meat in about ¼ cup of olive oil for about 15 minutes at medium to high heat, add salt to taste, and pepper.


2. Lower heat and add the parsley, two of the chopped onions and continue cooking for another 15 minutes.


3. Finally, add the raisins and cover, cooking for another 10 or so minutes. This picadillo (pronounced picadiyo) is the stuffing for your chiles.


4. In a 1 quart saucepan cook the other chopped onion in about ¼ cup of olive oil until it is transparent.


5. Then, add ½ cup of the cream and continue to cook for another five minutes.

Sauce

1. In a blender combine the cilantro, roughly chopped so it doesn't break your blender, two of the peeled chiles without their stems and the rest of the cream.


2. Add salt and pepper to taste and blend this green mixture with the cream and onion mixture in your saucepan.


3. Cook for about 10 minutes until it is well-combined.


4. At this point, add the milk to make the sauce more liquid. This will be your sauce that you will pour on your stuffed chiles.


5. Stuff the chiles with your picadillo, then place the chiles in a pan where you will warm them covered for a few minutes so all the flavors meld. They are often served room temperature.


6. Variation: Add ½ chopped fennel bulb to the picadillo around the time you add the onions.

Notes

Chiles lose their fire when they are de-seeded and washed. This can be done a day ahead of time.

Also, for a thicker, greener sauce have extra peeled chiles on hand to add to the blender.

I Heart Mercados

One might assume that growing up in Laredo, Texas gave me the experience and pleasures of the open air farmers' market. In fact, the grocery shopping experience was sterile in Laredo; even H.E.B., that big Texas chain that seems to have every Mexican ingredient you can think of was just a small, sleepy, supermarket back in the day. The forbidden delights of ripe stacked mangos, wild avocados, chirimoyas, guayabas, canteloupe, and watermelon sweltering in the Nuevo Laredo market heat across the river from Laredo, was a temptation to bear stoically. What you could eat on the spot was all you were going to get; naturally, you couldn't take fruits and vegetables across the Rio Grande. But the luscious taste and smell of this fruit in the midst of the clamorous Nuevo Laredo market on a warm summer day with my parents was knowing that all was right in the world.

[caption id="attachment_1106" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="A typical mercado in Mexico"][/caption]

I'm fascinated by markets, in fact, I don't ever want to live too far away from one, as crazy as it may sound. I love the shouting, the bantering, the smells, the colors. I love not knowing what will surprise me and get my attention. I love knowing about the lives of those that grow my food. I'm lucky to live in the Washington, D.C. area, which has excellent access to locally grown food. And I'm especially fortunate that I travel extensively to two other places that have incredible markets: San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and Florence, Italy. When I arrive at either of these two places, I drop my bags and head for the market.

[caption id="attachment_1110" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="A mercado in San Miguel de Allende"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1109" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="A mercato in Florence"][/caption]

This week I am in Florence, ogling the spring vegetables that the old familiar farmers bring in from the hillsides of Tuscany here at the Mercato di Sant'Ambrogio. I have known many of these characters for years now and they know me...no matter how dumpy I might look as I head bleary-eyed to the market...I'm “signora bella” to them and I'm worth an extra sprig of basil or parsley thrown into my bag with a friendly smile and advice as to how to prepare my purchases. Today there's wild asparagus, harvested from the hillsides. Tiny round zucchini with flowers still attached. Wild strawberries (fragole di bosco) and baby artichokes. I could go on, but you get the picture. What really catches my eye today is that kind of green bean that is called Italian bean in the U.S. But it's the kind of green bean my mother used to make a dish she called ejotes con carne de puerco.

[caption id="attachment_1111" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="Italian green beans"][/caption]

I wanted to buy only a small quantity of the beans but there was no way this was going to happen. In the interest of freshness, some of the farmers here don't like to take the produce back at the end of the day. They would rather practically give it away. So, one of my favorite farmers packed up a two-kilo bag for which he charged me only one euro; he knew it was late and the chances of selling it were dwindling. Not bad. But I'll be eating green beans for a while.

[caption id="attachment_1108" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="Farmer at the Mercato di Sant'Ambrogio"][/caption]

So here I am, mixing it all up, keeping alive my memories of my mother and Laredo. Thinking of all the roads taken and not taken, as I quietly stir my ejotes here in Florence.



Ejotes en Carne de Puerco

Ingredients:
2 pork chops cut into small cubes
1 lb. Italian beans chopped ½ inch wide approximately (regular green beans will work too)
4 medium sized ripe tomatoes, chopped
5 cloves garlic, peeled and whole
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp. freshly ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste
corn or canola oil to cover ¼ inch of pan
corn tortillas to accompany this dish

Preparation:
Heat the oil in a pan and add the cubed pork along with the garlic cloves. Cook at medium heat until the meat and the garlic cloves are a golden brown, add the onion and cook for another 10 minutes. Add  the tomatoes and green beans and continue to cook for another 5 minutes, add salt and pepper to taste and the freshly ground cumin. Lower heat and cover, cook until the green beans have softened and the tomato has dissolved.

Note:  For a vegetarian version of this dish, simply leave out the pork.  The cumin gives this meal a fragrance that allows it to stand on its own simply made with vegetables.

Unfortunately, my dinner guest devoured the meal before I had a chance to take a photo of the finished product.  Perhaps this will inspire you to shop at your local farmers' market this weekend and make this recipe!  Let us know!

Black Beans for the Young and Restless

I have a friend, Liz, who is a half-Egyptian, half-Cuban beauty.  Tall and fit, she more like glides when she walks, ever mellow but always in step with the world around her.  The color of her eyes exactly matches her burnt-caramel skin.  The corona of springy, black curls that frames her face is her signature feature. She is blithe, guarded and possesses a disarming, sardonic wit.

And she reminds me of beans, so hard and stoic until you cook them down, slowly.  Patiently.  What is impenetrable at first eventually becomes velvety smooth, full of texture, hearty and dependable.  Also, we ate a lot of black beans and rice together when we were low-budget law students living in Baltimore.

It was 1995.  Our first year of law school.  We spent time on campus feigning self-confidence, eating free pizza and drinking cheap beer in the student lounge, and surreptitiously stalking the cutest boys.  Sure, we studied.  But we had a hell of a lot of fun—probably more than law students are supposed to have—running around Charm City.   And in between the parties and the lawyer preparation, we cooked.

Liz, a vegetarian, introduced me to lentils and Cuban-style black beans, soaked and simmered in hand-me-down pots on her microscopic gas stove.   We might spend an entire Sunday in her small Mt. Vernon apartment, complete with a rectangle kitchen reminiscent of the vintage, die-cast-toy variety.  We were two young women, gossiping and listening to Wu-Tang Clan, Albita and the Fugees playing in the other room, the boombox too big for the kitchen counter.  Without an island on which to alternately strand ourselves, we took turns chopping, stirring and leaning against the one-door jamb.  We drank red wine, feeling too hip to play the role of a stereotypical 1L.  In the next room, Liz would insert an incense stick into the soil of a lonely houseplant.  Its coco-mango smoke swirling into the air, mixing with the aroma of stewing legumes and carrying away our twenty-something laughter.

Those were the days.

Hipster Black Beans Inspired by Memories of Being Cool

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Recipe Type: Side Dish

Author: Gilda Claudine

Prep time: 2 hours

Cook time: 45 mins

Total time: 2 hours 45 mins

Serves: 4 - 6

Ingredients:

• 1 lb black beans


• 3 tbs olive oil


• 3 to 4 slices bacon


• 2 cloves garlic


• 1 small onion


• 2 or 3 serrano peppers (optional)


• 1 or 2 tomatoes


• 4 cups of chicken (Vegetarian option:  use vegetable stock or water)


• Salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste


• 1 1/2 tsp cumin


• 1 tsp ancho chili powder

Instructions:

1. Use fresh beans.


2. Sift through the beans and remove any broken pieces or sediment.


3. Soak them in water either overnight in a pot or cover beans in 2 to 4 cups of water (allow enough liquid for the beans to be completely cover and then some), bring to a boil and then allow to soak for 2 hours.


4. Once the beans have absorbed most of the water, drain and rinse in a colander. Set aside.


5. In a medium or large-sized pot, heat the oil, add the bacon and cook over medium-high heat until softened.


6. Add the onions, garlic, serrano peppers.


7. When the onions are translucent, add the tomatoes and cook for another few minutes.


8. Add the beans to the mixture, coating with the oil and bacon fat.


9. Add 2 cups of chicken stock, cumin, ancho chili powder, salt and pepper.  Cover and cook over medium-low heat.


10. Check on the beans and stir from time to time.  If the beans absorb most of the stock, add the remaining amount.  Taste for flavor.


11. Cook for several hours until the beans have become velvety smooth.


12. Serve over brown rice and top with some chopped red pepper, onions or nothing at all.

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