You say guava, I say guayaba

Escaping the snowy Washington D.C. March winter for a few days in San Miguel de Allende, I was drawn to the sun-kissed, aromatic, tropical fruit found in abundance at the market here: guayaba or guava, as it's called in English. The name guava has always confused me because in Laredo where we grew up everyone called it by its Spanish name, guayaba. A bowl of these, with the floral scent of the tropics and redolent of the warm sun under which they grew, make the most inviting fruit one can have arriving from a frigid nothern climate.

Use firm guayabas so they are easy to peel

At Casa Carmen where I'm staying, the devoted cook of this bed and breakfast, Doña Beatriz, prepared a dessert with guayaba today. This is just one of the ways to eat this delectable fruit, but really, you can simply eat it raw when it's sweet and ripe, have it as an agua fresca, make it into dried fruit paste, marmalade, ice cream or even a sauce to accompany meats. Guayaba is an antioxidant and is a great way to get Vitamin C. It doesn't get any better. Here is Doña Beatriz' recipe.

Guayabas literally bursting with flavor

The sugar/water should syrup have turned pinkish from the cinnamon before you add the peeled guayaba

You say guava, I say guayaba

Recipe Type: Dessert

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 25 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 55 mins

Serves: 6

This dessert can be easily prepared several days ahead of time and stored in the refrigerator.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs guayabas (approximately 12 small guayabas
• 2 sticks cinnamon
• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 1/2 cups water

Instructions:

1. Peel the guayabas and pierce them to the center with a sharp knife and set aside.


2. Boil the water with the cinnamon sticks until the water turns pinkish.


3. Add the sugar and boil for another 10 or 15 minutes.


4. Add the peeled guayabas and boil them until they feel soft when you pierce them with a fork.

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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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Remembering a Mesquite Tree and a Recipe

A venerable, old mesquite tree grew in front of our yard, almost obstructing the so-called street. This unpaved street would remain that way until 30 years later when I was long gone and far away from my hometown. The ubiquitous mesquites that grew near the Rio Grande were usually shrub height, but this one was old, its branches reaching probably 15 feet up into the blue skies. There was nothing better on a hot, dry day than biting into the red-striped mesquite pods that dangled from its branches to get to the sugary juice. The wood from it's fallen branches was perfect for our wood fires, and some of my father's carpenters sometimes made boxes for us out of this hardwood.

In recent months, I've had the faintest of memories about that mesquite appear, like little pieces of the puzzle of long ago events. A white dishtowel blows softly from a branch, hung there by my mother in expectation of a delivery. But a delivery of what? I've wondered lately if it was a delivery of corn masa, or corn tortillas. I even called my 99 year old aunt in San Antonio.

I've come to the conclusion, actually, that it was probably the barbacoa man. Early on Sunday mornings, I could hear his call: barrrbacooaaah. If the towel was out, it meant we would be wanting a delivery. In Laredo, this was a traditional Sunday breakfast for many people. This must be the case for all of northern Mexico as well, because I remember also, that when I visited my aunt Oralia in Monterrey, I would hear the same call early on Sunday mornings.

So, the white dishtowel on our mesquite would guarantee a delivery. This mesquite tree also offered shade for another old man who often passed our way selling frozen fresh fruit popsicles that he sold out of a cart with dry ice. When he got to our house, exhausted, he would spread a cloth under our mesquite and take a nap. The mesquite is gone now, chopped down in the early eighties, when the street was finally paved; Laredo, itself, is a completely different place. Only the spirits of all those who climbed this old tree, walked around it and slept under it remain. Part of me is always there, even though I've lived in and traveled to so many other places for so many years. But this is the place that made me what I am, this is the place that gave me a sense of what is right and wrong, the radar for false or authentic. This is where I learned that comfort, in part, comes from good food and the love that accompanies it.

I was thinking about the Taco Bell debacle last night as I wrote this. So, does it have more meat, less meat..where's the beef...blah, blah, blah...Why in the world would people eat food like this? Why would we addict our children to food like this? Why aren't there laws that regulate this industry more efficiently? Why don't we have the sense to know that we shouldn't put junk like this in our mouths or offer it to our children? Whew! Enough ranting for today. I had to get that out. So, where was I?

My mother never let us out of the house without breakfast. There was a variety of different things we would find at the breakfast table: atole, huevos a la mexicana, huevos rancheros, frijoles, etc., all served with warm tortillas. It's taken me years of living with my Italian husband to wean myself away from this hearty breakfast and have a simple Italian breakfast of cappuccino and a minuscule piece of bread. But sometimes...he's the one craving for huevos a la mexicana for breakfast. So, today, let me put out a typical breakfast served in most parts of Mexico: huevos a la mexicana. This is what I usually order for breakfast in San Miguel de Allende at Casa Carmen as Doña Beatriz, the cook, prepares them. When I was growing up, we just called them huevos revueltos con salsa.

The tortilla I try to eat with all my (Mexican) food is the traditional corn tortilla. The tortilla in Mexican food is a "spoon" used to pick up food. You can use the one-handed approach or use two "spoons" to scoop your food into the folded tortilla wedge.

Huevos a la Mexicana

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Recipe Type: Breakfast

Author: Gilda V. Carbonaro

Serves: 2 to 4

Ingredients:

• 2 tbl Canola oil


• 1 small onion (minced)


• 1 large tomato (chopped in small cubes)


• 1 serrano pepper (minced)


• 5 eggs

Instructions:

1. Coat the bottom of a non-stick pan with canola oil and cook the onion at low heat until it's almost transparent.


2. Add the serrano pepper and continue to cook for about 3 minutes.


3. Add the tomato and cook for only about 3-5 minutes.


4. Don't wait until the tomato dissolves: you don't want runny tomato sauce in this dish.


5. Add the eggs straight into the pan.


6. Pop the yokes, add salt, stir and wait until all the egg has cooked.

Notes

This is not a bad thing to have as a lunch or light dinner, (not just breakfast), as long as you've got these basic ingredients.

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Serve with hot corn tortillas that have been warmed on a comal (griddle). Enjoy!

Answer: Totopos

From time to time, too-far-away cousins email me questionnaires that solicit information about my favorite things, likes and dislikes and other random trifles. What socks are you wearing right now?  Great Dane or Chihuahua?  When was the last time you cried?  I take these inquiries very seriously, knowing that my relatives are trying to bridge the distance between us. None.  Great Dane. When I chopped onions this morning.

Then there are the questions about my favorite book, movie or food. These stump me. I agonize over the answers.  These questions are like asking me to choose between my children or to decide what I want to be when I grow up.  It’s much easier to articulate answers about the books I have no interest in reading, the movies that put me to sleep in the first twenty minutes or the few foods that motivate my gag reflex (e.g. liver).  There is, however, one exception.

My answer to the food question would be chips and salsa, but not the kind you find in the grocery store.  I’m talking about homemade fried or baked tortillas, called totopos in Mexico and a fresh salsa verde.

In The Art of Mexican Cooking, Diana Kennedy offers several variations for making totopos: fried, salted, baked, whole. raspadas or thin pieces.  I made last night (It's so easy!) and served them with some salsa verde.  Here’s what I did:  (Diana Kennedy’s directions are a bit more detailed than mine, but you may also want to consult her cookbook.): I cut 15 blue and white corn tortillas into triangles and heated about a cup of canola oil in a medium-sized frying pan.

I dropped the triangles into the oil (Test the oil by putting only one triangle in the pan; if the oil bubbles around the edges of the tortilla, it is hot enough.) and let them fry on each side for about a minute and a half.  I then scooped them out with a slotted spatula and placed them on three or four paper towels to drain the excess oil.

Next, I tossed them with some coarse salt and served with GVC's salsa verde.

Here also is my extremely simple guacamole recipe; this will make a nice dip for totopos

Guacamole

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Recipe Type: Appetizer

Author: Gilda Claudine

Prep time: 15 mins

Total time: 15 mins

Serves: 4 to 6

Ingredients:

• 3 to 4 ripe avocados


• 1 small tomato, diced


• 1 small clove of garlic, mashed and minced (optional)


• 1 or 2 Serrano or jalapeño peppers, cut in thin slices or minced (optional)


• A pinch of coarse salt


• The juice of 1/2 fresh lime

Instructions:

1. Mash the avocados with a fork into a chunky pulp.


2. Add the tomato and the garlic (and chiles), the salt and lime.


3. Top with cilantro and a couple of the totopos.

What socks are you wearing right now? Great Dane or Chihuahua? Your favorite totopo accompaniment?

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.