Chipotle Lentil Soup

Chipotle chili peppers are items that are a complete must for your pantry, if you're going to cook Mexican food. In fact, they're a unique flavor to add to just about any meat, if you are adventurous. Growing up in Laredo Texas, chipotles were peppers we occasionally used to make a salsa, but I knew these were not well known outside of the Spanish speaking community, for the most part. The word chipotle has become well known because of the restaurant chain by the same name, and even if you don't know how to pronounce it (chee-poh-tleh) chances are, you've eaten there and at least know it has to do with Mexican food.

Chipotle is a nahuatl word, meaning smoked chili pepper. No one knows for how long the indigenous peoples of Mexico have used the technique of dry smoking a pepper both to preserve it and for the flavor. But the flavor the chipotle imparts to a dish is like no other spice: it is the essence of the earth and of fire encapsuled in these dried, wrinkled pods, coming to life in the warm moisture of another substance. This lentil soup has the signature flavor of chipotle. I made it with dried pods, reconstituted in the soup, although you can also use chipotle from the can.

Lentil soup is eaten often during this period of Lent and was introduced to me by the Godinez family in San Miguel de Allende.

Chipotle Lentil Soup

Recipe Type: Soup

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 1 hour

Total time: 1 hour 20 mins

Serves: 6

This is a totally vegetarian soup, its personality comes from the smokiness of the chipotle pepper.

Ingredients

• 3 cups dry lentils, rinsed
• 2 or 3 dry chipotles washed
• 1 tsp cumin powder (or grind your own)
• 1 poblano pepper, seared over a gas flame on your stove, peeled, seeded, and cut into strips 1 inch strips
• 3 roma tomatoes cut into small cubes
• 1 large yellow onion, minced
• 1 tsp oregano
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• cilantro for garnish in each bowl
• 1/4 cup olive oil, or more if necessary
• salt to taste

Instructions:

1. Sear, peel, seed, and cut the poblano into strips and set aside.
2. Place the poblano, tomato, onion, garlic, oregano, and cumin in a large pot to cook slowly in the olive oil, about 15 minutes.
3. Add about 5 cups of water and the lentils to the pot.
4. When it comes to a boil lower the heat and add the chipotle peppers and cover partially.
5. It should cook for about 1/2 hour or until all the flavors come together.
6. You can take 2 cups of the soup out with the lentils, place in the blender to cool for a moment, then blend, and replace into the soup, for added thickness to the soup, if you prefer.
7. Also, you can take the pepper out and chop them up to replace in the soup, if you want a spicier taste.
8. Serve with a cilantro garnish.

Fava Bean Soup

After a week's worth of splendid weather in San Miguel de Allende and festivities with family and friends leading up to Easter Sunday, getting back to the classroom has been, frankly, difficult. I love my job as a teacher and always delight in seeing my students after a long break. But I'm also thinking of my trip over Spring Break, the recent memories like the sun warming my back.

In San Miguel, the furiously twittering birds entice you out of your bedroom early in the morning. From the rooftop you observe the glory of each morning and consider the day's promises. Time's awastin', mi vida, levántate, the melodious birds also seem to be telling me.

This year, we had a special visitor. An elderly aunt who took a nine hour bus ride all the way from Monterrey to be with us. Tía Leyla is our regiomontana (a native of Monterrey, Mexico) Mary Poppins. She has the profound wisdom of her years and the exuberant energy of a 20 year old. She's a powerful storyteller, weaving tales from a remote past, she vividly brings to life the village where my father was born in Mexico. Each morning we made coffee and set the table, taking pleasure in small things, reminiscing, grateful for the opportunity to be together for what was left of our vacation.

Tía Leyla is the kind of person who makes you believe things will be alright; she calls everyone hijo or hija, even the cabdrivers. She has a wise nugget of wisdom for every occasion. She writes poetry (and recites it!). She is kind, intelligent, and a devoted Catholic. If you suspected that she is perhaps is little overzealous in her religious devotion, you would see her differently after a few days in her company. She doesn't preach, she practices and does so quietly. You will never hear a cross word or complaint coming from her.

So, if I bring you these Lenten specialities after Easter, you will forgive me because I did 'seize the moment' by spending this quality time with my aunt.

Let's start first with fava bean soup. Fava bean soup is something eaten in Mexico especially during the period of Lent and it's something we ate often this past week. My aunt and I prepared it with fava beans we bought at the Tianguis outside of San Miguel. There is a buttery, creamy texture to this bean soup that makes it very special.  You will find it very easy to make with the dry fava beans you find at the grocery store here. You can even make it with canned fava beans, but you will get a creamier texture if you make them yourself.

Fava Bean Soup

Recipe Type: soup

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 3 hours

Total time: 3 hours 15 mins

Serves: 6

It is magic to watch these homely looking dried beans become this velvety, elegant soup. If you can make your own chicken broth for this, it's better, if not, use commercial broth. If you can make your own beans, it's also better, if not, use canned beans. But just try this soup, it's delicious!

Ingredients:

• 5 cups dry fava beans
• 3 roma tomatoes, chopped finely
• 1 medium sized onion, chopped finley
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• olive oil to cook tomatoes, onion, and garlic
• 3 cups chicken broth
• salt to taste
• cilantro for garnish

Instructions:

1. Soak the fava beans overnight.


2. Place them in a pot and cover them completely with fresh water.


3. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat, cooking them for about 2 hours.


4. Add the chicken soup; it should be a soupy, lumpy, creamy texture.


5. Separately, cook the onion slowly until it is almost transparent.


6. Add the tomatoes, and garlic and cook this mixture covered until it is practically dissolved.


7. When it is completely cooked, add this mixture to the pot of beans.


8. Cook for another 20 minutes, adjust for salt.


9. Serve in bowls as a first course, or in ramekins, as an appetizer, garnished with cilantro.

3.2.1230

Memory in a Soup - Dia de los Muertos

I have lived seven Novembers without him and somehow survived them in different ways.

We knew that November 2005 could be the last with our son, Alex. He was about to deploy to a raging battleground in Iraq for the second time. Our hearts were heavy and so he asked that we celebrate Thanksgiving twice, once on the Thursday and again on Friday. So we did. We went around the table articulating our thanks for special things in our lives. When it came to Alex, he looked at us and thanked us for having been his parents and loving him as we did. Then he left, and we would never again be blessed with seeing this child, this man, whom we loved so much.  We would never see him grow old, become a father, raise children and teach us things only our children can teach us. Our lives would change dramatically.

Last year I began to practice a remembrance of Alex through the Día de los Muertos tradition, finding comfort in the connection to this prehispanic ritual. I made pan de muertos and set up an altar with ofrendas arranged with things Alex might have liked. In fact, I have begun doing this with the children I teach. They also set up altares to their loved ones in my classroom, gaining a hands-on understanding of the spirituality of this day and the mystery of life.

This year I've made the usual things in remembrance: empanadas, hojarascas, capirotada, and pan de muertos. The empanadas, especially, are for my mother, who comforted me in this loss through her profound understanding of my sorrow. But today I'll post something that can't be put in an ofrenda: a soup I began to make for Alex after he started eating solid food as a baby.

Last night I ate this soup, savoring slowly the taste and texture of the alphabet-shaped pasta, the flavors of the vegetables, and I was transported back to those days that went by much too quickly.

Memory in a Soup - Dia de los Muertos

Recipe Type: Soup

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 40 mins

Serves: 4

The browning of the vegetables enhances the taste of the soup, but if you prefer not to have the additional olive oil in the soup, just skip this step and throw the vegetables directly into the boiling broth until they are soft.

Ingredients:

• 8 cups of chicken broth, either homemade (preferably) or commercial
• 3-4 carrots, minced
• 1 stick celery, minced
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3/4 cup alphabet pasta
• 1 onion minced as finely as possible
• cilantro or parsley for flavoring at the end
• 2 leaves of any greens like kale or escarole (chopped very finely)
• olive oil to coat the pasta and brown it in a pan (about 2 tablespoons)
• olive oil to soften the onion, carrot, celery, and green leaves, (about 2 tablespoons)
• Salt to taste
• Pepper grindings to taste
• Optional: one lime and a few crumbled totopos (corn tortilla that you fry yourself, don't bother buying any)

Instructions:

1. Brown the pasta with the oil in a thick pan at a low heat, about one minute, it will brown quickly.


2. Brown the peeled garlic, onion, celery, carrots, and green leaves separately in the other 2 tablespoons of oil with a low flame for about 5 minutes. Add a little oil if you need to.


3. Combine the pasta and the vegetables in a large pot with the broth already boiling and boil together for about 15 minutes.


4. Check for salt, add pepper grindings if you like, and garnish with cilantro or parsley.


5. Serve in a bowl for your child and add fried, crunchy corn tortilla, and a few drops of lime juice squeezed into the soup at the last minute.

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. 

Carrot Soup

My mother was born near the beginning of the Great Depression in the dusty cattle town of Sonora, Texas, to parents who never quite assimilated. My Mexican grandparents had crossed the border into the United States to escape the violence of the Mexican revolution but, for a variety of reasons, they never returned to their mother country.

I've often wondered how the family handled Thanksgiving in those early years, whether they celebrated it at all when they first arrived in Sonora.  I'm sure the turkey thing bewildered them and pumpkin pie, too, since in Mexico pumpkin was something they put in their empanadas or made into calabaza en tacha, not into an open-faced pie. Who knows if my grandparents ever prepared a Thanksgiving meal such as we know it today, Norman Rockwell-style. Their main concern was finding a way to feed eleven hungry mouths in a place where Mexicans were regularly rounded up by the U.S. authorities and sent back to Mexico.

Years later, when we celebrated Thanksgiving in our home in Laredo, my mother would invite my aunt and her family who  lived at the time in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. My Mexican relatives joined us for what was a yearly American tradition in our family. It didn't surprise me as a child; I took it for granted. But it fascinates me now to know that my mother absorbed Thanksgiving and other American traditions so readily.

This year, I spent Thanksgiving in Houston with my sister and her family.  I immediately noticed that she'd unwrapped and placed on the table the whimsical ceramic Puritan figurines that once graced my mother's table.  I chuckled and remembered  past Thanksgivings, thinking of loved ones and how, even absent, they influence our lives.

My son would have loved the recipe here, an elegant carrot soup that my good friend, Doña Beatriz of Casa Carmen, makes  from chicken stock.  I made it after Thanksgiving with a stock made from leftover turkey bones.

Carrot Soup

Recipe Type: Soup

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 30 mins

Serves: 8

Ingredients

• Turkey or chicken stock


• 1 ¾ lbs of carrots unpeeled, chopped in 1 inch sections


• 2 tablespoons thyme


• Sea salt to taste

Instructions

1. Boil the chopped carrots in the clear stock until they are completely soft, about 10 minutes.


2. Strain them out of the soup and place in a blender with a few ladles full of the soup.


3. Blend until it is completely smooth, then return the blended carrots to the soup pot.


4. Add thyme and boil for another 15-20 minutes until the soup acquires a velvety consistency.

Fideos y Frijoles

Basil sprouting out of the stone next to a wild milkweed plant in Casa Carmen Bed and Breakfast in San Miguel de Allende.

To be in San Miguel is to experience total hospitality, civility, gentlity, and beauty. Whatever this maligned country of Mexico is undergoing, this place is certainly an oasis. I am once again enjoying the warmth of Casa Carmen, the bed and breakfast here in San Miguel de Allende where I bring my students for a Spanish immersion program every summer.

This week, my husband and I are here together, visiting friends and enjoying the many culinary delights the city has to offer.  My husband is an Italian who is passionate and knowledgeable about cooking.   Being married to him these many years, it is no surprise that in this Mexican-Italian marriage there is so much blending of what we both love.  For example, pasta and beans.

In Mexico, it is hard to avoid beans in all their different forms. Here at the market, I always find pale green frijoles peruanos (Peruvian beans) and make a dish that would be welcome on any table in Italy. It is a replication of a dish called pasta e fagioli, an Italian peasant food.  All of the necessary ingredients can be found in Mexico or in the States. Of course, the pasta itself can be any kind of small pasta. This dish is a marriage of cultures and convenience and, I must say, a love match. I'll call it Fideos y Frijoles a la Italiana.

Fideos y Frijoles a la Italiana

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Recipe Type: Soup

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 3 hours

Total time: 3 hours 20 mins

Serves: 4 to 6

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of olive oil
• 1/2 cup chopped pancetta or bacon
• 1 stick celery, minced
• A few celery leaves roughly chopped
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 large carrot, chopped or minced
• 3 tomatoes, chopped finely
• 4 cups (approximately) of white navy beans or cannellini, or pale green Peruvian beans
• 1 cup small pasta or broken spaghetti
• Salt to taste in sauce and in pasta water
• 1 cup basil leaves

Instructions:

Beans

1. Drop them in boiling water and turn down the heat.


2. When the water is at a low simmer, lower the heat and cover the pot with the lid slightly shifted to allow some steam out of the pot.


3. Let them cook at a low temperature for about 3 hours. About midway through the cooking, add a clove of garlic and salt to taste.


4. If you run out of water, add more, but you should only add boiling water. Adding cold water will make the beans hard.


5. The beans should be soupy when they are ready and very soft.

Sauce

1. In a pan, brown the bacon in the olive oil until golden brown.


2. Sauté the celery and carrot in the same pan for a few minutes then add the garlic.


3. Add the tomatoes and continue to sauté for a few minutes, then cover and keep on low heat until all the ingredients are "guisados" (cooked in the oil).


4. Take a small portion (about a cup) of the beans and put them in the blender so that you can thicken the soup in the beans.


5. Put these blended beans back in the pot.


6. Add the bacon, carrot, tomato, etc. sauce and cook for 5 minutes.


7. Put the pasta in boiling, salted water in a small pot and, before it is completely soft, strain it and add it to the beans. Let it cook for another 5 minutes. Don't let the pasta get too mushy.


8. Serve in deep bowls and garnish with sprigs of basil.

Notes

My mother always cooked beans in a clay pot, but any stainless steel pot will do the job. You can shorten cooking time by soaking the beans overnight, throwing out the water the next day and cooking them in fresh water. Also, if you have a high quality extra-virgin olive oil on hand, drizzle a bit on the served plate. You will get the scent of the oil plus the fresh basil as you take your first spoonful.

Gazpacho a la Mexicana

When my mother was newly widowed, my sisters and I encouraged her to take a trip to Spain with people her age and that is how she came to visit that country for the first time. Our mother, with her youthful and positive attitude was soon the star of the traveling group and the tour guide's pet. Speaking Spanish certainly was a plus; she was the one septuagenarian in the group who was linguistically and culturally independent.  She returned from this month long trip full of stories of her adventures in Spain.

One day, a few months after she had returned, we sat on her bed, chatting about the trip as we went through brochures of places in Spain she had visited. Among the piles of papers was a recipe typed with a Royal typewriter on onion skin paper.  A recipe for gazpacho. I wish I could remember what she told me that day about the exact circumstances in which she was given this recipe by a waiter in a restaurant.

The truth is, my mother always had a way of inspiring people to do things for her. Apparently, as best I can recall, my mother had so much enjoyed this gazpacho—something she had tasted for the first time in Spain—that she had asked the waiter how it was made. The waiter, an old gentleman, disappeared long enough to type out the recipe and proudly hand it to her. I still have the original copy of the recipe.

For me, also, it was the first time I had eaten gazpacho and I found it to be such a perfect way to blend the bounty of summer into one fresh taste. My husband adores this, but when he's not around, I add chile to it (He doesn't tolerate chiles.) to give it a bit of Mexican flavor.

Gazpacho a la Mexicana

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Recipe Type: appetiser, soup

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 5 medium tomatoes or an equivalent quantity of cherry tomatoes (they're sweeter)


• 1 quarter medium yellow or red onion


• 1 large peeled cucumber (save the other half for garnish)


• 1/2 of a red bell pepper


• 1 clove garlic


• 2 slices old French bread


• Jalapeño or serrano pepper added as needed


• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (the best quality you have)


• 2 tbls white vinegar (or more if you prefer)


• Sea salt to taste

Instructions

1. Blend all the ingredients starting first with the tomatoes, then the bell pepper and garlic


2. Add the oil and vinegar and then the rest of the ingredients.


3. Serve chilled with garnish of chopped, sliced, cucumbers, fresh corn kernels, and croutons sprinkled on top of each bowl of gazpacho.

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. 

Planting Seeds and Promise

April memories of Laredo are of citrus trees, the creamy colored azahar (orange blossom) opening to the sun with the promise of glossy ripening oranges in the fall.  How fickle I was back then when I took for granted the proliferation of orange, grapefruit, tangerine and lime trees our father planted around the house. Is it any wonder that today I am so partial to food with a hint of orange or lime zest?  How could I have known then that I would spend the next 35 years in a place where these trees do not thrive?  This has not, however, stopped me from trying to grow them in pots in my sun room.

Three years ago, I was in San Miguel de Allende at the home of a friend, eating oranges and limes from her trees. I stashed some of the seeds in my jacket, intending to dispose of them only to find them in my pocket months later after I'd returned home. On a whim, I planted them.  And low and behold, three years later, I have a tree two-feet high growing safely in a pot indoors. It's still a mystery as to whether it will bear oranges or limes.

Were I still living in Laredo this April, I would not be craving Sopa de Lima, the recipe I am posting here. The weather there this time of year is too warm. Besides, I was not familiar with it as a child. I learned to eat this soup in the Yucatan when I traveled there as an adult. But here in Maryland, as in other northerly places, it is still chilly and a warm soup is welcoming, especially one with the fresh taste of lime.

I would have loved this soup as a child.  But I worry about children today. I'm always amazed when a child prefers a meal out of a jar over a good, warm, healthy meal.  As a teacher at a school for boys, I see this everyday.  A steaming platter of herbed roasted chicken on a bed of rice is brought to our table. And, yes, Dios mío! One or two boys at the table will turn it away, preferring instead to nibble away at peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or processed meats and cheeses.

We are grappling with a tremendous childhood obesity problem in this country for which there are many contributing factors.  I, for one, do everything I can to encourage my students to reject a diet of packaged, processed foods and jumbo-sized, sugary drinks. And while it may fall on deaf ears at the lunchroom table, I reserve hope that they will eventually develop a distaste for junk food.  It's up to us to teach our children well, as the song goes.

What strategies do you use to encourage your children to eat homemade soups or more fruits and vegetables?

Sopa de Lima

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Recipe Type: Soup

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 30 mins

Cook time: 1 hour

Total time: 1 hour 30 mins

Ingredients

• 1 ½ qts. chicken broth


• 3 chicken breasts without skins


• 3 corn tortillas cut into strips and fried to a golden brown


• 2 bell peppers


• 2 onions


• 5 sprigs cilantro, chopped


• cup (approximately) corn oil for cooking the bell pepper and onion


• 2 or 3 limes (preferably Mexican or Key Limes)


• A slice of Meyer lemon, for garnish (optional)


• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Boil the breasts in the broth until they are completely cooked.


2. Remove them and cut into small, bite-sized pieces.


3. Finely chop the onion and bell pepper and cook in the oil until they are soft.


4. Squeeze the juice of a lime into the soup and drop in the other two limes, sliced thinly. Assemble fried tortilla strips, chicken bits, cilantro, and onion/bell pepper mixture in the plate.


5. Pour the steaming soup over each bowel.


6. Garnish with avocado slices and a slice or lemon or lime.

Notes

This soup has a wonderful zesty punch. To make it more appealing to a child's palate, add small alphabet pasta or their favorite seasonal vegetables, chopped finely and boiled into the soup at the last minute.