A Recipe Signed, Sealed, Delivered

It's been about two weeks since my niece sent me an email asking for some of my old recipes. She's a college student here in town, but she's doing a semester abroad in Uruguay. When she's in town, here at the university, we have a standing date on Tuesday nights when she comes over for dinner, sometimes bringing a friend.

We catch up over dinner talking about her life as a university student, her classes, her quirky professors, her political activism.  I sigh to myself...how time has passed. I allow myself to imagine our son at the table with us too. At the end of the evening, we load Natalie down with her uncle's homemade bread and enough leftover meals to last several days.

When she asked me for a certain recipe recently, or even any of the things she's eaten here, there wasn't an obvious answer.  I needed to know what was available or seasonal. Cooking is about looking around to see what inspires you and it became difficult to narrow down my choices without imagining what she might find in what is currently the fall in Uruguay. And then there's the cooking paraphernalia that she may or may not have, not to mention the small amount of time she might have for cooking.

I settled on this recipe for huevo con calabacitas, a kind of Mexican style frittata.  It's easy, the ingredients are accessible, and it's what Natalie is hoping to make for herself.

Huevos con Calabacita a la Florentina

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Recipe Type: Appetiser, Entree

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 35 mins

Serves: 8

Ingredients

• Ingredients


• 6 eggs


• 3 regular sized zucchini or 6 baby zucchini (about 400 gr) cut lengthwise and sliced thinly


• 1 1/2 to 2 leeks sliced thinly, using only white and pale green parts


• 1 tablespoon butter


• 2 tablespoons olive oil


• 1/2 jalapeño sliced thinly


• bunch basil leaves sliced in ribbons


• salt and freshly ground pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat broiler.


2. Rinse the sliced leeks in a pot of water and swish around and separate to clean.


3. Drain well and dry well with paper towels.


4. In a large oven proof pan at medium heat melt the butter with the oil.


5. Add the leeks and cook until they soften, for about 4 minutes.


6. Raise the temperature slightly and add the zucchini and cook until slightly brown or golden, for about 5-8 minutes.


7. When everything is just about cooked, add the basil.


8. Arrange everything evenly with a spoon on the pan, then pour the beaten eggs on top.


9. Add salt and pepper.


10. Lower the heat and cook slowly, running a spatula or knife along the sides of the pan to keep it form sticking.


11. When the sides and bottom are set and the center is loose, put the pan under the broiler until the top is firm and golden, about 3 minutes.


12. Cut into wedges and serve warm or at room temperature.

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.