Fall Pickling

A harvest moon will soon be hovering over the horizon, imbuing us with the golden, hazy memories of autumns past. We will sit by our bonfire, warming ourselves as every orange tongue of flame lights our faces and the images of years gone by come to life. Sitting around a fire in the fall with friends and family is a custom we never tire of. In this circle around the fire, gazing into those hypnotic flames, as surely it's happened since the beginning of time, we reflect, we laugh, sometimes we sing, and, certainly, we always eat.

This past weekend, with the hint of fall weather in the air, spectacular blue skies and crisp weather, we decided at the last minute, to have a carne asada for friends in the garden. There were salsas to prepare and grocery shopping to do.  Never backing away from further complicating my life, I decided to make pickled vegetables and serranos for us to nibble on while the fire got going. My parents always had jars of these things in Laredo. (Who would ever show up to our house without a jar of pickled peppers in hand?) My parents ate them in great quantities, plus you found them on every restaurant table in Nuevo Laredo, it was the equivalent of the ketchup bottle you would find here in a fast food restaurant. But it's not fast food, and it is something good to have in your refrigerator (or pantry if you trust your canning skills).

So, if you have a bounty of peppers, now is the time to put them in vinegar along with carrots, small onions, cloves of garlic, and marble sized potatoes, if you can find them.

Fall weather pickling

Recipe Type: appetiser

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 10 mins

Total time: 20 mins

Serves: 8

As you canning experts know, you can add or subtract any variety of vegetables to this, for example zucchini and pearl onions, etc.

Ingredients

• 4 cups marble sized potatoes


• 1 cup serrano or jalapeño chiles


• 6 cloves peeled garlic


• 5 carrots, cut into thick slices


• water to boil the vegetables


• white or apple cider vinegar to add to the boiled vegetables


• aromatic herbs: bay leaf, oregano, and thyme

Instructions

1. Place the potatoes, chiles, carrots, and garlic in a pot of boiling, salted water that is about one inch over the level of vegetables.


2. Cook slowly, uncovered with a low boil.


3. They should be cooked after about 10 minutes: check the carrots, or the potatoes for doneness.


4. Drain most of the water and add the vinegar. It should be approximately half water, half vinegar.


5. Cook for another 5 minutes, adding the bay leaf, sprigs of oregano and of thyme.


6. Pour into canning jars and store in your refrigerator after they've cooled.


7. Serve in bowls as an appetiser.

Simply Rajas

Poblano peppers, roasted with the outer skin removed

Rajas. They’re not your everyday condiment. They don’t come in cans or jars (at least not the good kind). And they don’t make themselves. You have to intend to make them. You must plan ahead. At least a little. Why is this, you ask? Because the main ingredient is a fresh chile poblano.

Cooking fresh (or dried) chiles usually requires roasting, de-seeding, and de-steming. The roasting process is important in that it's easy to burn the chiles. The goal is to char them so that the flavor seals in and the skin is easy to remove when cooled. If you’ve never worked with fresh chiles before, I suggest you “cut your teeth” on a rajas recipe.

Now, there are many different rajas recipes out there. Some include sautéed garlic and onions, others a mixture of cream and white cheese. The recipe included here is typical of Zacatecas, a state in central Mexico, and one that I prefer because it highlights the flavor of the poblano pepper.

And best of all, you only need three ingredients.

Rajas

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Recipe Type: Condiment

Author: Gilda Claudine

Prep time: 30 mins

Total time: 30 mins

Ingredients

• 6 Poblano peppers


• 1 white onion


• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed Key Limes


• Salt to taste

Instructions

1. In a broiler or on a griddle, roast the peppers.


2. Allow them to char slightly and remove from the heat.


3. Place them in a plastic bag and allow them to "sweat."


4. Once the peppers have cooled, remove them from the bag and pull away the outer skin.


5. Cut in half and remove the stems and seeds.


6. Cut into 1/4 inch strips and set aside.


7. Cut raw onion into 1/8 inch thick slices so that they are slightly thinner than the peppers.


8. Marinate the peppers and onions in the freshly squeezed lime juice for at least one hour in the refrigerator.

Notes

Serve as a complement to tacos, eggs, enchiladas. Sprinkle with a bit of queso fresco.

Sour Orange Marmalade

This summer, while traveling in Italy, I came upon a wild sour orange tree at a friend's house. Since sour oranges are hard to come by, I couldn't pass up the chance to grab a few and to make sour orange marmalade.

In Mexican cooking, sour orange juice is used, among other things, in cochinita pibil. Since it's difficult to get access to sour oranges, we buy the bottled sour orange juice for this. But here I was in Italy, loaded up with these superb oranges, and not exactly in the mood for cochinita.

Even though we were surrounded by all types of citrus trees in Laredo, where I grew up, my mother never made jams or marmalades. From my own experience, however, there are few things more appealing than spreading your own marmalade on a piece of buttered toast. The bright orange, purple and ruby shades of apricot, raspberry, strawberry, or plum jams in little jars are a summer bounty and an opportunity not to be squandered.

Needless to say, I've had to learn on my own the art of jam/marmalade making. It's not hard unless you decide to make jam for an army. My advice is to make a manageable amount, so the task doesn't become a total chore and to experiment with different fruit/sugar ratios until you find the balance you like. But remember, it's the sugar that makes the fruit transparent and gorgeous, as well as providing the 'preservative' so your jam won't spoil. The rule of the thumb is one to one, in other words, the same amount of sugar to the amount of fruit.

Sour Orange Marmalade

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Recipe Type: Condiment

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 30 mins

Cook time: 1 hour

Total time: 1 hour 30 mins

Serves: 10

Reaching in your pantry or refrigerator for a jar of your own jam or marmalade is just pure magic. Opening the lid brings back the summer sun under which that fruit grew to warm you later in the winter.

Ingredients

• 7 sour oranges (or regular oranges)


• Sugar (a quantity that after measuring the amount of orange peel is the equivalent amount, approximately)


• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

1. Wash the oranges thoroughly, using a brush to scrub well.


2. Cut the oranges in half and juice them well, setting aside the juice and seeds.


3. After juicing, cut the peel into thin strips with a sharp knife.


4. Boil the seeds in a cup of water for about 10 minutes, in order to use the pectin from the seeds for your marmalade liquid.


5. Strain the liquid from the seeds (discard the seeds) and put in a pot along with the orange juice and the orange strips.


6. Simmer the orange strips for about 20 minutes.


7. Add the equivalent amount of sugar as the amount of orange slices you had and cook for another 30 minutes.


8. When it looks translucent and the liquid has a certain thickness to it when you spoon it out into a place, it is done.


9. Stir in the vanilla.


10. Spoon into sterilized jars (boiled in a pot of water for about 15 minutes) and seal.

La Madrina's Salsa Recipes

At last Thursday's cooking class at Casa Carmen in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, I taught students how to make three salsas: basic, well-known, can't-do-without salsas. I decided on pico de gallo, salsa verde, (and its variation with avocado), and a dried chile salsa made with chile guajillo and chile cascabel. After all, what is basic to me may be exotic to others.

In my childhood home in Laredo, fresh salsas were as common at the table as the salt and pepper. It was my job to make the salsa while my mother prepared breakfast. I remarked to my students about the ease of making these salsas, and how unnecessary it is to buy a commercial sauce, not to mention the fact that it's a totally different thing, with all kinds of additives, sometimes including corn syrup. (¡Dios mío!)

Mercado Ignacio Ramirez

Mexican food markets are an assault on the senses with their glorious colors, sounds and smells. As part of the class, I took the students to the Ignacio Ramirez market.  We arrived just when a truckload of camomille was being unloaded. The scent overwhelmed us. My friend and neighbor, Canadian travel writer, Anne Dimon, of www.traveltowellness.com was on hand to photograph the scene.

Photo by Anne Dimon

Inside, there were the homemade cheeses: requesón, ranchero, panela, and queso de Oaxaca. There were the women with the nopales (cactus), the blue tortillas, the regular tortillas, fresh eggs, fried empanaditas made with piloncillo, candied chilacayote, three types of dried beans, herbs,  the place where you buy all grains and special spices, and an endless array of strange and unusual ingredients. It's a Pandora's box opening up a world that is unknown and undiscovered by many who travel to markets such as this. I am still trying to get a better understanding of the medicinal herbs sold there. Remarkably, for all the tourism this town has endured, it has retained its own authentic flavor.

We took it all in and headed back to Casa Carmen for class.

Back in the kitchen, my students laughed when I referred to the molcajete as the pre-columbian food processor while they took turns grinding on it. In fact, the molcajete connects us to the indigenous people of the Americas and to the method they used to prepare foods. It fascinates me to think about this three legged pumice bowl and how long people have used it as a cooking tool. Finally, we took turns tasting our finished product. Yikes! Are chilies spicier in Mexico?

My thanks to Cynthia Kulander, owner of Casa Carmen for inviting me to teach this class.

La Madrina's Salsa Recipes

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Recipe Type: Salsa

Author: Gilda V. Carbonaro

Ingredients

• Pico de Gallo


• 1 large tomato


• 1 small white or red onion


• 1 serrano chile


• ½ cup chopped cilantro


• Salt to taste


• Salsa verde


• 1/2 lb. tomatillos (about 4 green ‘tomatoes’ in their husks)


• 1 Serrano pepper (or more if you prefer)


• 1/2 to 1 clove of garlic


• Bunch of cilantro leaves (about 1/2 cup)


• 1/4 of a mid-sized onion


• Dried Guajillo/Cascabel Sauce


• 3 or 4 combination of chile guajillo and/or cascabel (these are dry chilis)


• 3 or 5 midsized tomatillos


• ½ garlic


• Salt to taste


• Salsa de Molcajete


• 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

Pico de Gallo

1. Mince everything and mix.


2. Serve on grilled meats, or even on your scrambled eggs.

Salsa Verde

1. Brown the tomatillos on a ‘comal’, a stove top griddle, for about 10 minutes until you see black patches on all sides.


2. Remove most of the black peel.


3. Throw the tomatillo and the rest of the ingredients, which are raw, into the blender and liquify.


4. Garnish with a sprig of cilantro.


5. Note: A variation of this sauce is to add about half of a ripe, mashed avocado.

Dried Guajillo/Cascabel Sauce

1. Toast the chilis and tomatillo on a comal for about 15 minutes.


2. Throw in a blender and liquefy.


3. Serve in a salsa bowl.

Salsa de Molcajete

1. Dry roast the garlic, onion, serrano pepper, and tomato on a comal for about 5 minutes until they are slightly charred.


2. Peel the tomato.


3. In the molcajete grind the garlic, serrano pepper, onion (chopped fine) and cilantro with the sea salt.


4. Empty the contents of the molcajete into another bowl to make room to grind the tomato.


5. Mix everthing together again in the molcajete, squeeze the lime juice and fix for salt.


6. Notes: This makes a chunky sauce with intense flavors. You can add or diminish any of the ingredients according to your taste.


7. Grinding roasted tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and onion in a mortar, gives them a complexity of flavor you wouldn’t otherwise get.

Message in a Molcajete

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

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Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

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

1. Dry roast the garlic, onion, serrano pepper, and tomato on a comal for about 5 minutes until they are slightly charred.


2. Peel the tomato.


3. In the molcajete grind the garlic, serrano pepper, onion (chopped fine) and cilantro with the sea salt.


4. Empty the contents of the molcajete into another bowl to make room to grind the tomato.


5. 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.

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2.2.1

Salsa Pico de Gallo

Molcajetes are a type of mortar (molcajete) and pestle (tejolote) made from basalt.  Use of the molcajete in Mesoamerica dates back 6,000 years and remains ubiquitous in Mexican cooking today. Molcajetes are versatile tools;  they can be used to grind chiles, herbs, and spices, thereby releasing essential oils and flavors.  Because they are made from volcanic rock, they may be heated and used to serve stews, meats and other foods that taste better at higher temperatures.  They also function as attractive serving pieces for guacamole and salsas.

Pico de gallo, for instance, is a quick salsa that can be found on nearly every Mexican table at mealtimes, whether breakfast, lunch or dinner.   (La Madrina recalls that preparing it was the first duty she was given as a child.)  It's simple, fresh and zesty and the perfect accompaniment to a variety of Mexican dishes.

Pico de Gallo

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Recipe Type: Salsa

Author: Gilda V. Carbonaro

Prep time: 10 mins

Total time: 10 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

• 3 firm, large tomatoes, chopped small, into cubes


• 1 regular-sized white onion, minced


• 1 serrano pepper, minced


• 5 or 6 sprigs of cilantro, roughly chopped


• salt to taste
• 
  

Instructions:

1. Grind the minced serrano pepper into the molcajete.


2. Add the chopped ingredients: tomato, onion, and cilantro to the molcajete, add salt to taste and stir.

Notes

Add or diminish the amount of serrano pepper, as you prefer. Or use another type of pepper, like jalapeño if you can't find serrano.

A Salsa Challenge

In the U.S., most restaurants serve a variation of salsa ranchera and sometimes salsa verde, but there are many other exquisite and nuanced salsas to explore.  Diana Kennedy's The Essential Cuisines of Mexico contains recipes for over twenty different salsas, including a fiery salsa de chile habanero.  She writes

It would be unthinkable to sit down to an authentic Mexican meal and not find a dish of sauce or some pickled jalapeños on the table; they are as common as salt and pepper.  I suppose it is not surprising given the great variety of chiles that are cultivated--and some grow wild--throughout Mexico.  There is a great difference, too, in the heat level, color, taste in chiles both fresh and dried.  The ways in which chiles are prepared, and the ingredients with which they are combined, are highly regional...I doubt that any other cuisine has such a variety of "condiments."

I enjoy making homemade salsas.  I find that the taste tends to vary slightly with each batch, the outcome dependent upon the ripeness of the tomatoes, the types and amounts of chiles I use and whether the vegetables are roasted or blended raw.

Homemade salsas, whether green or red, raw or roasted are utterly fresh.  Which is why it's hard to understand the seemingly huge demand for bottled salsas sold in stores.  (Some even claim that salsa outsells ketchup as America's favorite condiment!)  It takes very little time to blend the vegetables raw or roast them first and throw them into a blender.

Readers are hereby challenged to reach for the fresh tomatoes, tomatillos and chiles in lieu of who-knows-how-long-they've-been-on-the shelf bottled salsas!  Here are a few recipes to get you started:

Salsa Three Ways

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Recipe Type: Salsa

Author: Gilda Claudine

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 25 mins

Serves: 4 to 6

Ingredients

• 5 Ripe Tomatoes


• 5 tomatillos


• 2 avocados


• 1 habanero


• 2 Jalapeños or chiles serranos


• Cilantro


• 1 small onions


• 1 clove garlic


• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. On a comal or cast iron pan without oil, roast the tomatoes and chiles.


2. Once the vegetables charred, cool and remove some of the burnt skin.

Salsa de Habanero

1. Place 1/2 of a habanero (de-seed for less heat), 1/2 clove of garlic, 1/4 raw onion and 3 large tomatoes in a blender or food processor.


2. Blend until the ingredients are smooth.


3. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Salsa Roja

1. Place 2 jalapeños, 1/2 clove of garlic, two large tomatoes, a bunch of cilantro in a blender or food processor.


2. Blend until the ingredients are smooth.


3. Add salt and pepper to taste

Salsa Verde with Aguacate

1. Place roasted tomatillos, roasted serrano peppers, 1/2 clove of garlic, a bunch of cilantro, 1/4 onion (optional) and 2 ripe avocados in blender or food processor.


2. Blend until smooth.


3. Add salt and pepper to taste

Notes

A few things to keep in mind:
The jalapeños and serranos can be used interchangeably.
Adjust the spice level accordingly by using more or less chiles in each recipe.
The salsas may be stored in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days.

The Luscious Taste of Verde

My mother always commented on the "greenness" of a taste when she added her serrano pepper to something or tasted the 'greenness' of a tomatillo sauce.  Es el sabor a verde que me gusta en esta salsa, she would say. (It's the green taste that I like in this sauce).

Here is a sauce that celebrates that fresh, green taste. I recently tried it at La Posadita in San Miguel de Allende where they first roast the tomatillo, giving it a smoky flavor. It's a perfect sauce for eggs (huevos rancheros), can be added to guacamole, slathered on meat after grilling or simply eaten with totopos (chips).   When the "greenness" hits your mouth, your tastebuds tremble with pleasure as the sauce mixes with the other tastes in your mouth.

Green Tomatillo Sauce

Ingredients:
1/2 lb. tomatillos (about 4 green 'tomatoes' in their husks)
1 Serrano pepper (or more if you prefer)
1/2 to 1 clove of garlic
Bunch of cilantro leaves (about 1/2 cup)
1/4 of a mid-sized onion

Preparation:
Brown the tomatillos on a 'comal', a stove top griddle, for about 10 minutes until you see black patches on all sides. Then remove most of the black peel.
Throw the tomatillo and the rest of the ingredients, which are raw, into the blender and liquify.  Garnish with a sprig of cilantro.