Message in a Molcajete

Hijo,

I want to tell you a story. It's been part of the lore of our family. It's about a molcajete. This is a story I would have told you, along with many others about our family but, child, we simply ran out of time.

So many years ago, your grandfather, Rogelio, returning safely to Laredo from the Second World War, proposed to your grandmother, Floria, or Lita, as you used to call her when you were learning to speak. A wedding was planned in a poor neighborhood just a few blocks south of the bridge in Nuevo Laredo. The bride's family was humble and, therefore, the wedding party was not large. As the story goes, or as Lita used to say, there was a little girl in the neighborhood who wanted badly to attend the wedding. This little girl, who must have been around eight years of age, according to Lita, appeared at the backyard wedding reception with her best dress and a wedding gift wrapped in newspaper.

The gift was a molcajete that Lita came to treasure probably more than any of the more costly gifts she received. The identity of the little girl is lost in time and hopefully no calamity befell the household in Nuevo Laredo that discovered its molcajete suddenly missing.

This pumice stone mortar and pestle has sat quietly resting on its three legs, when not in use, like a witness to the years we lived in your grandparents' house. I began to use it when I was just a child myself when I helped Lita cook. And when I left home, Lita let me have it. Its black porous surface has an almost smooth texture from so much grinding and I can attest to contributing to its smooth edges these past ten years. If it could talk, what stories it could tell.

Hijo, I'm writing you a recipe for Salsa Molcajete, a sauce Lito, your grandfather, made very often quite early in the morning. Lito was an early riser and he would inadvertently annoy his three sleeping daughters by getting up at 6 a.m. On a Saturday morning, he would roast serrano peppers for his breakfast sauce until they started smoking. Unfortunately, the smoke from the chilis would get us all coughing. Poor Lito...he just wanted to make a sauce quickly, not taking the time to slowly roast the chilis. I'm laughing at the memory of the commotion and yelling that would break out of the bedrooms as my sisters and I would wake up coughing to the smell of smoking chilis slowly wafting into our bedrooms. Throughout the house you could hear the three of us yelling "Papá!!!" Then Lita would join the fray, "Rogelio!!!"

Needless to say, the molcajete has been around for a lot of our family stories. It would have been around for yours too.

Salsa de Molcajete

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Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 5 mins

Total time: 20 mins

Serves: 4

Grinding roasted tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and onion in a mortar, gives them a complexity of flavor you wouldn't otherwise get.

Ingredients

• 2 cloves peeled garlic


• 1/2 white onion


• 1 extra large tomato


• 1/4 teaspoon seasalt


• 1/4 cup cilantro


• juice from one lime


• 1 serrano pepper (or you can subsitute a jalapeño)

Instructions

1. Dry roast the garlic, onion, serrano pepper, and tomato on a comal for about 5 minutes until they are slightly charred.


2. Peel the tomato.


3. In the molcajete grind the garlic, serrano pepper, onion (chopped fine) and cilantro with the sea salt.


4. Empty the contents of the molcajete into another bowl to make room to grind the tomato.


5. Mix everthing together again in the molcajete, squeeze the lime juice and fix for salt.

Notes

This makes a chunky sauce with intense flavors. You can add or diminish any of the ingredients according to your taste.

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2.2.1

Food is Bond

Food binds us to each other on an intimate level.  This is undeniable.  So-called “comfort foods” remind us of our childhoods when we felt safe, perhaps enveloped in a grandparent’s affection.  Sometimes the dishes we prepare remind us of loved ones we’ve lost, their once palpable enthusiasm for a homemade meal now relegated to a bittersweet memory.

When we spend the day kneading dough together or drawing a new family member closer by sharing an old family recipe.  When we puzzle over a recipe and wonder how the art of cooking came so easily to those who came before us.  Well, these are the ways in which we deepen our relationships to one another and uphold our traditions.  Food lies at the heart of it all, as something we need for both physical and spiritual survival.

Case in point.  I’ve spent the entire day making empanadas.  The recipe is simple but the assembly arduous.  Gilda (la Madrina) and I made the first few together while we sipped wine and contemplated the chemistry of pastry.  But this recipe belongs to an auntie I acquired, along with several other lovable and adoring family members (most of whom hail from Argentina), when I married The Saint.  My Tía Raquel and her sister (my mother-in-law) recently treated me to a talk about their childhood memories of Argentina:

Like the gift that keeps on giving, a discussion about food resulted in my Tía Raquel sharing her recipe for empanadas, a “comfort food” staple in many Latin American countries and Spain.  Now, forever a food that will remind me of her and of this moment.  The gesture of remembering together, sharing a recipe, cooking and talking — these are profound ways we strengthen our ties to one another, almost without even noticing we're doing it. Beautiful, isn't it?

Raquel's Beef Empanadas

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Recipe Type: Appetizer

Ingredients

• Filling


• 1 pound ground beef


• 1 cup chopped onions


• 1 cup chopped tomatoes


• 1 cup chopped green peppers


• 1 clove finely minced garlic


• 1½ teaspoons corn starch


• 1 teaspoon salt


• 1 teaspoon sugar


• 1 teaspoon black pepper


• A “touch” of red pepper


• 1 cup of water


• 2 hard boiled eggs (optional)


• 1 egg yolk, beaten (optional)


• Dough


• 3 cups of flour (I used whole wheat flour here)


• 1 teaspoon salt


• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Instructions

Filling

1. Brown the beef over medium heat.


2. Add the onion, green pepper, tomato and garlic.


3. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally and until the onions are transparent. Stir in the corn starch, salt, sugar, and pepper.


4. Continue cooking for another 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Here, I also added two chopped, hardboiled eggs, something I really like in empanadas.

Pastry dough

1. Stir together the unsifted flour (I used whole wheat flour, different from my aunt's recipe.), salt and baking powder.


2. Combine ¾ cup of olive oil and ½ cup of water and add to flour mixture.


3. Stir until dough is soft and cleans the side of bowl. (Note: I used a food processor to mix the dough.)


4. Roll the pastry and use a cookie cutter to cut out circles more or less the size of your palm.


5. Place about 1 tablespoon of the beef mixture in the center of each circle (more if circles are larger) and fold the dough over, gently pressing the dough at the seam.


6. Seal the edges (In a pinch, use the tines of a fork, as I did here.).


7. Place the empanadas on an ungreased cookie sheet and brush each with a beaten egg yolk.


8. Also, don't forget to poke a few small holes or make small slits in the dough to allow the moisture inside to vent.


9. Bake at 425 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.

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1.2.4

If and when you embark on the mission of making homemade empanadas — well, let’s just say there’s ample time for bonding.

Postscript:

After my Tía Raquel read this post, she sent me these additional tips:

I should have mentioned you can add almost anything you like to the filling.  In Argentina it is common to add eggs (as you did) as well as olives and raisins.  It’s just a matter of taste.

I always roll the pastry between sheets of waxed paper instead of on a floured surface.  You will find that by not adding additional flour the crust is crispier and flakier.  The olive oil in the dough mixture is not absorbed with additional flour which makes the empanadas “fry” in the oven.

If you like a juicier filling, don’t cut slits to vent; enough vapor escapes from the edges to prevent them from splitting. You do need venting slits if you make a pie instead of individual empanadas.

Our mother used to make a beautiful braided edge to seal. I can flute the edges but I haven’t been able to master the braid. When I was little, I used to eat the crust only. I wasn’t interested in the filling and to this date the crust is my favorite part.