Sopes with Shrimp and Cactus

Nopales (cactus) boiled with cloves of garlic and strained

So much of what the indigenous people of Mexico eat is finger food, picked up gingerly and eaten with the hands, while it is hot, freshly made, and handed to those gathered around the hot comal. Freshly nixtamalized corn is shaped into small tortillas, gorditas, tlacoyos, huaraches, or sopes...all vessels that will carry the vegetables, the beans, or the meats to those hungry mouths. You simply can't eat some of these things with a fork. They won't even taste the same. The base of all 'wrappings' in Mexican food is, of course, this corn dough, sometimes thickly patted by hand, sometimes flattened thinly in a tortilla press...small, large, oval, round, fried, cooked on a comal, or steamed, but it's all corn dough.

Sopes fit into the category of small, edible 'plates' of corn with diverse toppings, usually offered ahead of a meal. You make your masa (dough) using commercial corn dough like Maseca if you're not lucky enough to live in Mexico where you can always find freshly ground corn dough. For your dough, use slightly more water than the recipe calls for so that your dough doesn't crack on the edges. Here's a recipe for sopes made in an oval shape. These are not fried the way you often find them sometimes and the topping is an amazing mixture of nopal (cactus, or prickly pear) with dried shrimp which is rehydrated with warm water. I've mixed a red chile ancho sauce.

We don't yet have all the evidence to call cactus a superfood, but we know it's part of a healthy diet:  it's high in fiber and antioxidants.

My aunt, Tía Leila, helped me make these in San Miguel de Allende last time we were there. Tía Leila, who is in her 80's, explained to me they were often eaten during Lent in our family when she was a child and later when she was raising her family.

Dried shrimp after rehydration

Sope topped with shrimp, cactus, and chile guajillo salsa

Sopes with Shrimp and Cactus

Recipe Type: Appetiser

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 1 hour

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 1 hour 30 mins

Serves: 4

Dried shrimp is an ingredient that is usually found in Latino stores, but you can substitute boiled fresh shrimp, of course. I've seen the cactus paddles very often now in regular grocery stores. I recommend you prepare a chile guajillo sauce ahead of time: http://culinarianexpeditions.blogspot.com/2012/04/la-madrina-salsa-recipes.html

Ingredients:

• 3 cups chopped cactus
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 cups small dried shrimp (or fresh tiny boiled shrimp)
• 4 cups commercial corn dough (following the recipe on the package)
• red chile guajillo salsa, see http://culinarianexpeditions.blogspot.com/2012/04/la-madrina-salsa-recipes.html
• chopped cilantro, optional

Instructions:

1. Place the dried shrimp in a bowl of hot water to soak for about 30 minutes.


2. Boil the cactus for about 10 minutes with the peeled cloves of garlic, then strain and set aside.


3. Drain the shrimp, peel it and chop it.


4. Place the shrimp and the drained, cooked cactus in a bowl.


5. Stir in enough chile guajillo salsa to your preference, see recipe http://culinarianexpeditions.blogspot.com/2012/04/la-madrina-salsa-recipes.html


6. Make the corn masa according to the instructions on the package, adding a few extra tablespoons of water to make it more pliable.


7. Shape balls of dough about ping pong sized into cylinders.


8. Flatten them between your hands until you have oval shapes about 1/8 inch thick. (Keep your hands slightly damp)


9. Place the oval shapes (sopes) on a medium comal (iron griddle) and cook them on both sides until you see spots on the dough.


10. Remove the sopes from the comal and pinch the sides so they all have ridges on the edges.


11. Spoon your shrimp/cactus mixture onto the sopes and place them on the comal again for a few minutes before placing them on a tray.


12. If you like, top the sopes with chopped cilantro.

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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.

Nothing Beets Olive Oil

The first time I tasted extra-virgin olive oil, I couldn't believe I had lived without it (Well, ahem, sort of.  See video.) for so many years. Now I hoard it like people hoard bottled water in fear of some catastrophic emergency. And, as insane as it may sound given today's travel restrictions, I even bring it back from Italy upon my frequent trips to Florence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwf9Q9nPgwA

So...it's true. I have said in a previous post that I don't like to mix my cuisines, that is, my Italian and my Mexican, but there are Mexican dishes that can only be improved with olive oil.

Vegetables, in general, are always perfectly enhanced with the flavor of a good quality extra-virgin olive oil drizzled over them.  Beets (betabeles), in particular, are a side dish my mother always served.  She prepared them in a simple way: boiled and salted.  In Laredo, at this time of the year our citrus trees were loaded with oranges, tangerines, limes, and grapefruit.  Here is a recipe that combines the beets—roasted, not boiled—with the citrus of the season, along with the very Mexican flavor of cilantro and the unmistakable mediterranean flavor of good olive oil.

Roasted Beets with Blood Orange Slices

Ingredients:
Approximately  1½ lbs beets
4 blood oranges (or regular oranges)
½ cup walnuts
½ cup chopped cilantro
½ cup water for the bottom of baking pan
½ cup extra virgin olive oil to drizzle
sea salt

Preparation:

Remove the greens and wash the beets thoroughly. Place them on a baking dish in which they all fit snugly.  Pour the water into the pan so that it covers about ¼ inch of the bottom of the pan. Drizzle the vegetables with the oil. Sprinkle with salt to taste and cover with aluminum foil. Cook at 350 degrees for approximately 45 to 60 minutes until you can pierce the beets with a fork all the way through.

While the beets are cooking, remove the peel from the oranges with a sharp paring knife. Cut in slices, starting from the end of the orange. Put aside.

Remove the beets from the oven and peel them. Quarter them and arrange them in a serving dish.  Add the orange slices, cilantro, and walnuts.  Taste again for salt, toss carefully, and drizzle with more oil if needed.

For further reading about olive oil, see this informative post by David Lebovitz.