What To Eat With Tamales?

My earlier blog tells about the origin of tamales and how to eat one, but if you want to make a supper party featuring tamales you might need some guidelines for a menu. A traditional meal in here in Mexico, the ancestral homeland of the tamale, is an accompaniment of Pinto beans (frijoles). Black beans would work well too. Where I grew up in New Mexico this meal would also include a simple tossed green salad with tomato, lettuce, a chopped avocado, some onion and oil and vinegar dressing. You would want to have a tomato salsa on the side to put on the beans. I would add a loaf of garlic bread as well. Lemon meringue pie would be my Mother’s pick to serve for dessert; I would probably have brownies with ice cream.

Pinto beans are to the Southwest what Boston baked beans are to the East Coast. In the 1930’s when my Mother taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Rocky Arroyo, New Mexico, she boarded with local ranchers. Their supper every evening was Pinto beans (without the tamales), served with fried salt pork, blackstrap molasses and sourdough bread. The beans were topped with canned tomatoes and fresh sliced onions. It is a simple meal and quite nutritious as well. Someone who didn’t grow up eating this kind of food might think it sounds awful or boring, but for me it is comfort food.

Colorado is lucky to have Adobe Milling, a grower of Pinto beans and Anasazi beans. When we are in town we bring back lots of bags of Anasazi beans that we get at King Soopers Market. They are also available from Adobe Milling on the internet. These beans have an interesting history. They are a 1,500 year old variety: the popular story behind their modern origin is unusual. In the 1980's a member of an archeological team from UCLA was looking for remains of Pygmy elephants that roamed the earth thousands of years ago in New Mexico and came upon these beans. The beans were in a clay pot sealed with pine tar and were determined by radio carbon dating to be over 1,500 years old, yet some still germinated and it is from those that we today can share the harvest of heirloom beans of ancient Americans! The beans are a beautiful splotched brown and white that taste a lot like Pinto beans but more buttery. When they are cooked they look alike.

I grew up eating Pinto beans at least once a week. My father always cooked beans with salt pork, and some people like to use ham hocks, but I tell you if you have never had beans cooked just for themselves you are missing out on a fabulous low fat meal. I consider Esperando to be a master bean cooker. Here is his recipe (--first a word of caution, we like our beans really garlicky so cut back on the garlic if that is not for you).


Esperando's Pinto Beans

2 c Pinto beans
1 bay leaf
1 T epizote (available at specialty Mexican markets and maybe Whole Foods)
1 T oregano
1 T thyme
1 can stewed tomatoes
1 T coarse ground black pepper
1 medium onion, chopped
6 cloves minced garlic
2 T salt

Pick over the beans (now and then a rock gets in there, great for tooth cracking!) and rinse them under water. Put everything except the salt together in pot, bring to boil and simmer for 3-5 hours until done, add salt at the last. Beans can also be prepared the night ahead by covering with boiling water and letting sit overnight shortening the cooking time the next day to 2 hours. They can also be cooked all day in a slow cooker. Beans should be cooked until they are completely soft and a few are showing signs of falling apart. This same recipe works for black beans as well.

Side Salsa
2 large ripe tomatoes
1 yellow onion
1 c packed fresh cilantro
1 serrano chile, stemed, seeded and finely minced
1 tsp salt
1 T olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon or lime

Put in food processor and process until pieces are bean sized.

Now you can have a tamale party! Buen aprovecho!

Flying out of Santa Rosalia--and Gingerbread

It is very blustery today. I’ll bet Winnie-the-Pooh knew nothing about rattling windows and blowing sand in the face! I hope the wind doesn’t affect Esperando’s flight. He is flying on Aero Califia out of Palo Verde today (airport 45 minutes south of Santa Rosalia) to Hermosillo to wing his way to meetings in Los Angeles. I am ‘batching’ it until Friday in our new house. Esperando had been waitlisted on the Aero Califia flight and also on Alaska Airline’s flight out of Loreto for the last month. The Aero Califia flight finally just cleared last night, Alaska Airline’s still hasn’t. We are finding it really difficult to get flights on Alaska out of Loreto anymore. Alaska Airlines flights have been solidly booked as far ahead as three months ahead with few cancellations recently. We don’t know why they haven’t added additional planes or brought down a larger one like they did last year to accommodate an obviously greater demand. I don’t think they realize how much revenue they are missing out on. Why would he want to drive 2 ½ hours to Loreto instead of 45 minutes to Palo Verde, you ask? Ah there’s the rub. Well if he gets to Loreto he will have a direct flight to L.A. When he goes the Palo Verde route he has to make a connection in Hermosillo to get to L.A., and the Aero Califia flight can often be several hours late arriving here to make the return flight back across the Sea of Cortez.

Down below at Casa Boleo, the guesthouse is full of guests from one of the engineering companies. So I voted not to have dinner with the guests but cook for myself this week. I am loving have the more privacy up here, even though Sr. Jueves is constantly knocking at my door. And I am not forgotten in the way of meals. Oh no, the cooks insist they must bring dinner up to me when I am alone. Talk about spoiled! Last night they brought a delicious meal of several new recipes including ropa vieja (shredded seasoned beef in a rich chile sauce) and a divine new recipe for gingerbread that I found online. One of the things Esperando and I were looking forward to was cooking our own meals so that we can stay skinnier. Without a lot of hurt feelings I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Here is the a delicious recipe from the San Francisco Chronicle

Very Gingery Gingerbread Bundt Cake with Caramel Glaze
Serves 12

This is a deep, dark, moist, spicy cake that's loaded with fresh ginger and coated with a rich caramel glaze. Dark baking pans retain the heat and can cause the exterior of a cake to get too brown. Watch baking time and if sides and top brown too quickly, reduce oven temperature 25°. Thick, heavy baking pans retain the heat more than lighter ones. If using a heavy pan, begin to test for doneness after 45 minutes. I find this is better served room temperature, rather than warm, with a dollop of whipped cream on top of each slice.

The cake
1 cup vegetable oil (such as canola oil)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup golden brown sugar, packed
1 cup mild molasses
3 large eggs
3/4 cup peeled and finely minced fresh ginger (about 4 ounces)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour + more to flour pan
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup boiling water

The glaze
1/2 cup golden brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter + more to grease pan
1/4 cup whipping cream
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Preheat oven to 325°. With room-temperature butter, grease a 12-cup Bundt pan with a paper towel, smearing butter into all the pan's crevices as well as the center tube. Add spoonfuls of flour and holding the pan over the sink, rotate it to coat it with flour. The inside tube will not be completely coated. Knock excess flour into the sink by tapping the pan lightly. In a large bowl, whisk together oil, sugars and molasses until combined. Add eggs and whisk until smooth. Whisk in ginger to incorporate. In another large bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, mustard and salt. Whisk in molasses mixture until combined. Stir baking soda into boiling water and whisk into batter until blended. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until sides begin to pull away from pan and cake tester inserted into cake comes out clean. Remove to a rack and cool in pan for 15 minutes.

For the glaze: In a small saucepan, stir brown sugar, butter, whipping cream and salt over medium-high heat until mixture comes to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and stir until smooth, about 1 minute. Remove from heat. Invert cake onto rack over a baking sheet. Using a small skewer, pierce holes all over top of warm cake. Very slowly pour glaze over top, allowing it to be absorbed before adding more. Cool cake at least 1 hour. Serve warm or at room temperature. (Cake may be stored at room temperature well wrapped overnight.) The cake may be baked in a 91/2-inch springform pan. Grease the pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Per serving: 505 calories, 5 g protein, 67 g carbohydrate, 26 g fat (5 g saturated), 70 mg cholesterol, 391 mg sodium, 1 g fiber.

Making Christmas Cookies

A pan of cookies gone wrong!

One of my complaints about sharing my gringo recipes with the cooks is the way that things turn out, often they bear NO resemblance to how they are when I make them, and NOT in a good way. I have some wonderful sweet bread recipes which we used for a brunch here. Cook-with-an-Attitude followed my recipes and I thought they were horrid. The following weekend I made the same bread and it was exactly as I remembered. I don’t know where she went wrong, but I have decided that the first time they try my recipes I need to supervise. It has been a surprise to me in doing so how often I have averted tragedy caused by our mutual language barriers.

This morning after I had a little talk with the devil on my shoulder about losing weight and eating cookies, we started to bake Christmas cookies. I was going to start with biscochitos, a traditional Christmas cookie from New Mexico that uses anise and cinnamon. Since you need cookie cutters which we didn’t have, we put those off to make until tomorrow so we can go buy cookie cutters today. In the meantime I decided we would make Mexican wedding cookies—Esperando's very favorite cookie in the world. The muchachas had never heard of them before, which all goes to show that they must be a mainland thing and not an all of Mexico thing.

New Cook lived for a while in the U.S. and so can read English a little bit. I didn’t translate the recipe but kind of walked her through it. She pointed out that the T for tablespoon could be confusing to Spanish speakers who would think it was a T for taza (cup), and then we almost had a disaster when she wanted to do exactly that—put in a cup instead of a tablespoon of vanilla!

It took a while to get the cookies mixed properly as we had continuing issues with the measures, she would not fill the measuring cups up to the proper mark, undermeasuring a lot of the ingredients (maybe this is how we started to go wrong on other recipes). But finally everything was ready and I left her to roll the cookies into little balls, round I said. She came to show me round, but her round was flat besides. Ah no I said, round like this and demonstrated a little ball. Oh she said—pelotitas (little balls), then she corrected herself—albondigas (meatballs)! She stuck them in the oven and I left—in 15 minutes they called me back—the cookies had melted into one giant flat cookie. Oh no, I said, what went wrong? Since I had copied the recipe off the internet some time ago I didn’t have the source anymore, but figured I would just looked up Mexican wedding cookies and any recipe would reveal where mine was off. Señora, señora—called from the kitchen by New Cook—I know what is wrong, I forgot to put in the flour. We had been so busy getting sugar and vanilla measures mixed up and laughing, me supervising to make sure nothing went wrong, that we both overlooked the flour! These cookies do not brown except on the bottom, so the cook was sure they were underdone when they ready.

The Best Ever Mexican Wedding Cookies
Yields about 3 dozen

2 c flour
2 sticks cold butter, cut into pieces
¼ c powdered sugar
1 T vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
½ c almonds
½ c pecans
1 1/2 c powdered sugar, sifted (to roll baked cookies in)
1 tsp anise seeds (optional)

Preheat oven to 325F. Grind almonds and pecans in food processor, then add butter and continue to grind until smooth. Add 1/4 cup powdered sugar and vanilla, then mix again. Add flour and anise seeds (if using) and grind mixture until blended. After flouring hands, roll the dough into small balls. Place about an inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 15-20 minutes, or until brown on the bottom. Cool for 15 minutes, then roll the still warm cookies in the remaining powdered sugar. Let cool again, then roll again in powdered sugar.

Life's a Beach

Inn at Loreto Bay

Good news in the offing for fans of the Inn at Loreto Bay and golf course—the hotel re-opened a few days ago under the management of Fonatur. Esperando and I are looking forward to spending a little time there this weekend to relax on the beach. It can be breezy there, but I am more concerned today about rain. Hopefully the weather will cooperate, it is overcast and Invest 91, a loosely organized storm mass drifting off the coast of Cabo is said to have a 30 to 50 percent chance of developing into a tropical storm in the next 48 hours. Esperando called from Loreto this morning where it was raining, thundering and lightening to ask me to look up the weather on the computer. I suppose a little rain might wash away some of the lingering dirt on the streets from our mudbath with Jimena, but I am happy without any rain for now.

Since we have some big investors spending the night tonight we are planning a nice barbecue for entertainment this evening. Even the dog has even been bathed in honor of the occasion. The evening will start with margaritas and hors d'œuvres of shrimp, guacamole, taquizos (part of a corn tortilla wrapped around a piece of hot dog, and the whole fried with a dip of hot sauce—actually quite tasty) and barbecued sausage followed by steaks, charro beans, a savory squash pudding, and my special coleslaw recipe of cabbage and halved grapes with oil and vinegar dressing. Dessert will be a carrot cake and Don Julio tequila reposado. We are also preparing a strata today for breakfast tomorrow morning that will need to sit all night in the refrigerator and that will be served with a fruit salad; Treasure Cake (a secret cinnamon cake recipe of my mother’s friend); a banana cake from the Union Street Inn B&B in San Francisco; and toasted bilotes (French bread) from the Panaderia Frances downtown. Hopefully no one will go away hungry.

Green Chile and Chorizo Strata

The following modified recipe (to use local ingredients) found on http://www.epicurious.com/ from Bon Appetit will be served for breakfast. Makes 6 servings

14 to 16 ounces chorizo sausage, casing removed
1 1/2 cups sour cream

2 c lowfat milk
5 large eggs
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
3 c sourdough bread, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 3/4 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese, about 7 ounces
2 4-ounce cans chopped mild green chilies
1 diced Jalapeno chile, seeds removed
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Butter 8-cup soufflé or baking dish. Sauté chorizo in heavy large skillet over medium-low heat until cooked through, about 15 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer chorizo to plate lined with paper towels; drain well. Whisk next 5 ingredients in large bowl to blend. Place 2 bread slices in bottom of prepared dish. Sprinkle with 3/4 cup cheese and half each of chilies, cilantro and chorizo. Pour 1/3 of egg mixture over. Repeat layering with 2 bread slices, 3/4 cup cheese and remaining chilies, cilantro and chorizo. Pour half of remaining egg mixture over. Top with 2 bread slices. Pour remaining egg mixture over and sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup cheese. Cover; chill overnight. Cook at 350F for one hour.

Soup of the evening, beautiful soup

One of my passions is cooking. I don’t get much of a chance to in Santa Rosalia since the guesthouse employs a cook. So today I am going to experiment with making Red Pepper and Orange Soup for lunch. The recipe comes from the Reader’s Digest Spanish language cookbook Cocina Fantástica which our cook borrowed from her friend to show me, and I was able to purchase on http://www.exlibris.com/ as it is out of print. This is such a great cookbook, full of delicious and unusual recipes that after I had sampled some of them, I bought a copy for myself as well. Theoretically the recipes can be prepared in 30 minutes.

Among my most favorite vegetables are red bell peppers. We don’t have access to them but once in a blue moon in Santa Rosalia. Last time I saw them I bought most of what they had even though they were slightly wilty and had Esperando roast them on the grill. Then I peeled them, put them in a jar, and covered them with olive oil and we ate them up over the course of the week. Now that I am in Denver for awhile this is an opportunity to see if I like this different sounding soup recipe.

Red Pepper and Orange Soup
Serves 4

2 T olive oil
2 lbs red peppers
2 cloves minced garlic
Salt
3 Seville or blood oranges
1 T orange flower water (available at health food, gourmet grocer or large liquor store)

In a large casserole, heat the oil over a medium fire. Devein the red peppers and cut into quarters lengthwise, then slice into large pieces. Sauté the pepper and garlic; add salt to taste. Cover the casserole and heat to high until vapor begins to escape from under the lid. Reduce flame to very low or they will burn, and cook for 25 minutes or until peppers are really soft, turning them from time to time so that they cook in their own juices. (Here in Denver we are at a high altitude so I had to cook them for 40 minutes.) Meanwhile in a mixing bowl, juice the oranges until you have ¾ of a cup of juice. (I cheated and purchased fresh squeezed orange juice from the grocery store, but I think blood oranges would be really good.) Add the orange flower water to the orange juice. When the peppers are well cooked, puree them in a blender or food processor. Add the orange juice mixture to the blender and liquefy again. Adjust seasonings, I added salt enough to balance out the sweetness of the oranges. Heat the soup again and serve with a little chopped parsley. What's not to like?

"How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?"

The above quote by Julia Child makes me wonder if she would have approved of automatic breadmakers. Did I tell you I decided to experiment with our bread machine this past weekend? I brought a Panasonic SD-YD250 to Santa Rosalia. I perceived eventually, or even sooner, we might get tired of eating the commercially baked Mexican version of Wonder Bread, known as Bimbo Bread. Their trademark hamburger buns complete with sesame seeds on the top go by the name Bimbollo, and the hot dog buns are called Media Noche (middle of the night—what gives?) They also make a wheat loaf and an oatmeal loaf. All are basic dry uninspired bread forms, but one sees their bread trucks even in the remotest smallest of towns in Baja delivering bread. The other bread available locally is the “French baguette” from Panaderia Boleo baked here every morning. They are a break from Bimbo, but a bit doughy and heavy. They are available at the bakery downtown which is housed in a cute French-style building with a lot of curb appeal. Unfortunately the staff, young women with an attitude, act as if they are doing you big a favor to even speak to you. The only time I bought stuff there it was actually moldy and that coupled with the snotty attitude sort of killed my interest in returning again.

But I digress—back to the breadmaking. When we first got ready to use the breadmaker after we arrived, I couldn’t find the directions anywhere. This wasn’t so strange because my unsupervised unpackers were ripping apart cardboard boxes of kitchen appliances, glassware, etc., which they would pitch onto a growing mountain of debris outside to be hauled off to the garbage dump. The bread machine instructions apparently fell victim to this annihilation, but I was able to resurrect them online or we would have been screwed. For the 100 millionth time, thank God for the internet!

The first bread we tried was a basic white French bread loaf, which everyone really liked. The trouble is we didn’t have a bread knife and the loaves were large and soft so they didn’t cut very evenly and wouldn’t fit into the toaster. We made quite a few of these over time, then we tried making the egg bread which was also good, but more work. While I was in the U.S. three months ago I bought a bread knife to make slicing easier. When I returned with the knife, the cook’s breadmaking zeal had expired, and I could see it was much easier when you are serving 7 or 8 people for breakfast just to buy Bimbo bread, white and whole wheat, and toast those nice, even slices up for breakfast (forget the bonus of the freezer space you are saving by not trying to store the baked bread as well).

However I kept wishing I could have a nice multigrain bread when the staff was gone on weekends. Somehow every time Sunday would come and when I would assemble the ingredients something was always missing. Initially it was molasses (which the Storyteller had to bring from Canada), then dried powdered milk, then the multigrain cereal I had purchased which was eaten before I could reorganize the breadmaking session. Finally this last weekend with malice aforethought, I garnered all the ingredients including flaxseed (which I brought back from Vancouver); and wheat germ found here in the grocery store (amazing!); and then when I went to trot out my cereal it was again missing. Arrgggh! In desperation I grabbed the box of Kellogg’s All Bran Original. I was following some recipe I found on the internet which looked really peculiar, but I thought what the hay, this is only an experiment. Just go for it! After 5 hours of baking when I removed the loaf from the pan it was kind of weird looking having risen sporatically and unevenly, and was almost too crusty. But it was heavenly to eat! It sliced easily and I froze the slices which I am hoarding for weekends. We have a 4-day vacation ahead. I can barely wait to get my hands on the breadmaker again. I made some adjustments to my original recipe which I think may improve the appearance of the loaf, there’s nothing wrong with the texture or flavor. Esperando even compared it favorably with my sister-in-law Suzy Gourmet’s cracked wheat bread.

Whole Grain Bread Machine Recipe

½ c Kelloggs All Bran Original or other 7-grain cereal, crushed
½ c rolled oats
½ c flax seeds
½ c wheat germ
¼ c brown sugar
2 tsp yeast
1 ½ c water
2 T olive oil
2 ½ c bread flour
1 tsp salt

Put oats in a mixing bowl; pour 1 cup boiling water over the oats. When oats have cooled but are still a bit warm, add remaining ingredients according to bread machine manufacturer's manual. Combine all ingredients in bread machine and cook as you would a whole grain loaf.

Before Christmas, Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving approaches on Thursday. Yesterday I made a pot of Rich Turkey Broth (substituting chicken drumsticks) and tore up a bunch of our Panaderia El Boleo French bakery bread into cubes to dry out for making the stuffing. I am thinking this time I will add sausage and pistachios to the stuffing. I have found an interesting Argentine style sausage that worked well the other day in my lasagna.

My thankful meal will come when Esperando gets back home from La Paz. Now that the Aero Mexico flight to and from Mexico City to Loreto has been cancelled, he has a 6-hour drive ahead of him. Fortunately a driver will bring him home. The Storyteller, I hope, is looking forward to some Yankee food —he gets two Thanksgivings this year as he celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving in October when he was home on leave. I got curious about all of that and went and did a little research on Thanksgiving. It appears the U.S. colonists celebrated Thanksgiving fairly frequently and independently throughout the colonies, and when the Revolution broke out and the Royalists moved up to Canada they took that thanksgiving tradition with them, hence both Americans and Canadians celebrate the same holiday, but not in the same month.

Turns out we can have a fairly traditional Thanksgiving here in all ways but the turkey, so I will substitute chicken instead. I believe I could have ordered a turkey from a market in Mulege, an hour away. I didn’t know how to do that this time so I just went with the chicken. Our menu will be shrimp cocktail (Mexican style, made by the cook), the aforementioned bread stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, orange glazed yams, broccoli, cranberry sauce (I prefer fresh cranberries, but that I could even FIND canned berries down here is a miracle), and pumpkin pie for dessert. We will have to break out one of our hoarded bottles of California zinfandel to accompany all this.

Rich Turkey Stock

2 lbs turkey parts, neck, drumsticks, wings, bones
2 – 3 T olive oil
½ to 1 ½ c raw chopped carrots and onions
1 small chopped parsnip
1 to 2 stocks tender celery with leaves, chopped
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 walnut size piece chopped ginger
Handful of chopped parsley
1 bay leaf
1-2 c dry white wine

Chop turkey into pieces (i.e. bones, wings, drumsticks) of reasonable size and in a large frying pan brown them in oil, adding vegetables halfway through. Transfer to a heavy saucepan, leaving fat behind. Pour out fat and deglaze pan with wine. Pour wine into pot and add 11 cups of water. Bring to boil and simmer for two hours. Strain solid ingredients out. Degrease broth.

Marmalade Blues

We ran out of orange marmalade yesterday and the Storyteller was broken hearted. You can’t buy it here, but we have Seville oranges coming out of our ears. (Did I mention the fresh squeezed orange juice we have to choke down every morning?) So I decided to make a batch of marmalade after searching out different recipes on internet. After all, my father used to make marmalade every couple of days to feed his insatiable jelly habit, so surely I had to have some of those jelly making genes coursing through my blood.

It rather astounds me how many recipes are out there, quite different from one another. Some want you to juice the fruit, scoop out the pulp and seeds, then liquefy the whole in a blender adding shaved peels of orange rind slices to the pot when the sugar goes in—others want you boil the fruit whole for several hours then slice it in very thin slices, reserve the seeds to boil for another 10 minutes, strain them out, then add the sugar. I went for the latter recipe (less work) and ended up with two and a half pint Mason jars of chunky marmalade, not too much jelly more fruit. Next time I think I would cut the oranges up smaller, it is on the bitter side which I prefer however I think the shaved peel version would not be so bitter. I boiled it to the point they suggested on the candy thermometer, but I think I might not boil it quite so high next time as the jelly part is a bit more dense than I would like.

We don’t get grapefruit here or I might have been tempted to try my father’s version which he came by from my grandmother. I think this one from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook is similar:

Page's Favorite Marmalade

1 grapefruit
2 oranges
2 lemons
Sugar
Salt

Scrub fruit, slice very thin, saving the juice. Discard the seeds and the grapefruit core. Measure the fruit and juice. Put the fruit and juice in a large pot and add three times as much water. Simmer, covered for 2 hours, then let stand overnight. Measure the fruit and liquid, then add an equal amount of sugar and a sprinkle of salt. Cook rapidly, in two or three batches, until the jelly point is reached, stirring frequently. Pour into hot sterilized jars and seal.