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.

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. 

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.

1.2.4

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