Doña Lupe’s Kitchen

Sometimes I cheat.

I normally love making things from scratch. I enjoy the process tremendously and take pride in shopping for the freshest ingredients, doing things the traditional way, whipping egg whites by hand instead of using a mixer, etc., but sometimes I cheat.

Today is Christmas day and I needed milk, so I took a walk over to the local store that was open to get some. While there, I wandered to the produce aisle and was immersed in the rich fragrance of ripe pears. It was incredible. The whole store smelled of pears and when I turned a corner and saw the gorgeous red-gold color, I knew I had to bake something with them. I didn’t feel like rolling out dough, I’d already done that for the buñelos I made last night, but the pears were demanding that I bake something. So I cheated.

I filled a bag with pears, already calculating what I was going to make. A roasted pear tart with a cream cheese base. I slithered over to the dairy aisle and surreptitiously snuck a pre-made pastry into my basket, hoping no one I knew saw me. I picked up the cream cheese and made my get-away.

Sometimes I Cheat Roasted Red Pear & Cream Cheese Tart

Pastry dough (store bought, otherwise it won’t be a cheating tart)
About 10 Fresh Red Pears, sliced and cored, but leave the peel on
1 stick of butter
½ c. granulated cane sugar
¼ tsp. ground ginger for the pears
¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
1 package cream cheese softened

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Unfold the pastry dough and smooth out the lines. Lay it into a pastry dish or tart pan. Use pastry weights or beans to cover the bottom of the pan and bake for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees. You don’t want to cook the pastry entirely, just enough to get it semi-golden. Remove from the oven and let cool.

Slice and core the pears, leaving the peels on. Add them to a baking dish and sprinkle on the sugar and ginger evenly. Dot with the butter and put into the oven and roast them at 400 degrees till they are golden and caramelized, about 15 minutes. Let cool.

Add the softened cream cheese to a small bowl and mix in the ground nutmeg well.

Spread on the cooled pastry dough about ½ inch high.

Carefully arrange the roasted pears on top of the cream cheese, making sure to drain off any liquid. Reserve the liquid for later.

Place the tart back into a 350 degree oven for about another ten minutes, just till the crust is a deep golden brown and the cream cheese is bubbly.

Remove from the oven and let cool. Serve slightly warm with a drizzle of the roasted pear liquid. You can also take that liquid and make a simple syrup with using sugar and a pear liquor if you wish. Ice cream is good on this too, as is whipped cream.

I love this chile salsa for my soup. I think I know hundreds of variations of chile salsas and about so many different ways to prepare them. I’m not sure though, there are just so many that I know without thinking, till something comes up and I want a certain kind I remember or a taste I crave.

This salsa is smoky, sweet and has a slight kick. It gives depth and a beautiful color to the verdure, clean taste of the Caldo de Pollo and also makes a great salsa for chips.

Salsa de Chile California/Salsa made with dried California Chiles

7-10 dried Chile Californias
4 tomatoes
1 bunch of cilantro
5 cloves of garlic
1 onion, sliced into rings
chicken broth
salt to taste
olive oil

In a heavy frying pan, add olive oil about a cup and a half. I use extra virgin first cold press olive oil because the taste is so good and compliments the chilies well.

Heat the oil but don’t let it get so hot it smokes. Lay the chiles down in the pan and lquickly fry them. Don’t let them burn. You just want them to swell up and split their skins. They will get slightly blackened. Remove from the pan and put into a bowl, then cover it and let sit so the skins can steam off.

In the same oil you cooked the chiles in, add the thick rings of onion and the garlic. Keep the garlic to one side as it will cook very quickly and you don’t want it to burn. Gently brown the garlic on both sides then remove from the pan and set aside. Cook the onions till slightly caramelized, then remove from the pan.

Add the four tomatoes whole to the same pan and let cook till the skins split. Remove from the pan and cool. Peel.

Save the oil that remains. It will make a nice flavored chili oil that you can use for other things.

Peel the chiles and remove the stems, seeds and veins. I leave the seeds in one of the chili just to give it a slight kick. I save the seeds from one more chile and add that to the reserved chili oil with a little more olive oil.

This is a smooth salsa, so I use the blender. I add the chiles, onions, garlic, salt, cilantro and tomatoes all in one fell swoop. I add about a quarter cup of the chicken broth to the blender and hit the pulse button. If the salsa is too thick, add a little more broth to it. When it can all move through the blender with ease, stop pulsing and blend till it’s completely smooth.

Turn out into a bowl, add more salt if needed and garnish with cilantro.

Sopa de arroz/Mexican-style rice

2 c, long-grain rice
six tomatoes, chopped
½ onion, chopped
olive oil
chicken broth
Knorr Perejil, ¼ of a cube
2 tsbp. Knorr Pollo
salt, to taste
a small handful of cilantro

Coat the bottom of a heavy frying pan with olive oil and heat. Add chopped onions, then the rice. Brown rice and onions till the onions are caramelized, almost crispy and the rice is completely brown.

Add the chopped tomatoes and mix them in. Add salt (very little) to taste, the Knorr Pollo and the Knorr Perejil (you can do without these if you can’t find them). My grandmother also would add a few grains of comino (cumin) but I don’t care for it in my rice.

Slowly add the chicken broth to the frying pan. Stir. Keep adding the broth till it covers the rice barely. Add the handful of cilantro and cover. Lower the heat and let simmer, covered till the rice is fluffy and all the broth is absorbed (about 20 minutes).

It’s been cold here in Los Angeles the past couple of weeks. My grandchildren are coming over today and I want to make something warm and delicious for them to eat.

My grandmother always made caldos (soups) for us on cold or rainy days and it was always delicious, healthy and perfect for the weather. I always loved her soups, caldo de rez, caldo de pollo, pozole, menudo, sopa de tortilla, sopa de albondigas, etc. it was always good and made me feel warm, happy and safe.

I’ve made it a tradition to always make either caldo de rez (beef soup) or caldo de pollo on the first rainy day. It was something my children always looked forward to.

My grandchildren, Jasmine and Aiden’s favorite soup or caldo is caldo de pollo, they love my chicken soup and I love to make it for them. I like the idea of making them feel as safe, warm and protected as my grandmother made me feel.

Caldo Pollo/Mexican Style Chicken Soup

1 package of chicken thighs, washed, trimmed and patted dry (traditionally, they use a whole chicken cut into pieces, but I like the thighs)
2 bunches of fresh carrots, washed, peeled and cut into 1 ½ inch chunks
about 2 pounds of small red potatoes (you can use russet and slice into quarters – Jasmine likes the red ones)
half a stalk of celery, washed, trimmed and cut into 1 ½ inch chunks
2 ears of white corn on the cob, cleaned and sliced into chunks
5 Italian zucchini squash or Mexican squash, washed, cut into thin slices or 1 inch chunks
5-7 cloves of fresh garlic, peeled
1 cabbage, quartered
1 cup of chopped, fresh cilantro
5 leaves of fresh sage
salt to taste
water

Wash and trim the chicken, pat dry and place in a bowl or plate and set aside. Wash, trim and chop all your vegetables, setting the longer cooking ones in one bowl with the quick cooking veggies in another. The potatoes, carrots and corn go in one bowl, the zucchini and celery go into another. The quarters of cabbage are put to the side.

Quarter the onion and peel the garlic. Set aside.

Chop the cilantro and set aside.

Fill a stockpot with water about three inches from the top of the pot. Turn on the heat to high and bring the water to a boil.

Once the water is bubbling, lower the flame to a low simmering heat. Add the salt*, quartered onion, garlic, chopped cilantro and the sage leaves. The amount of garlic can vary with the type you use, or the size of the cloves. We like lots of garlic so we I use a lot.

Add the chicken pieces one by one, scooping out water with a ladle if it rises too high. You don’t want your soup boiling over. Simmer covered for about an hour and a half, till the chicken is falling off the bone.

Scoop out the garlic cloves and the sage. Skim off the fat. Scoop about 3 cups of the broth and set aside. You can always add more water if the soup doesn’t have enough. One of the things I do that my grandmother didn’t, is to remove the skins from the chicken pieces at this stage. I think it makes the soup taste better to leave it on during cooking, but once it’s cooked, I remove it.

Once the soup is cleared of garlic, sage leaves and the fat you can start adding the vegetables. Add the potatoes first, then the carrots, then the corn. Make sure your water line doesn’t go up to high. Cover and let simmer slowly for about 15 minutes.

Add in the celery and let simmer for another five minutes. Lastly, add the quarters of cabbage and the zucchini, turn of the stove and cover. Let the soup sit for about ten minutes, till the zucchini is cooked and the cabbage just wilted.

Serve over a bowl Mexican-stye rice with a dollop of the chile salsas of your choice and a squeeze of fresh lemon. We like it with steaming hot corn tortillas.

*I use fine crystal sea salt, about 2 tablespoons for this much soup. It can vary though, so start with a little and slowly adjust to taste.

Soraya, Rachel and Daisy make it look so easy!

Happy tamale-makers

Yet another tray full for the steamers

Caught slacking. Get to work girls!

The first few go into the pot

Assembly line action

Fill it up!

I thought I told them to get back to work…

Tamale making 101

These are done!

Steaming hot tamales!

I think he likes it.

oh yeah!

Congratulating themselves on arriving just as the tamales were done! We’ll put them to work on clean-up. Ssh.

Any party we throw has to have flowers, lots of them in every room. No tamalada would have been complete without them. My granddaughter Jasmine picked them all out at the Flower Market.

Okay, okay so Federico Garcia Lorca probably didn’t even know what the heck chile verde was but I love his poem Romance Sonambulo and love that line, “verde te quiero verde” so much that it just had to be part of my Chile Verde recipe. You come to Doña Lupe’s, you’re gonna get some poetry and literary references. It’s the price you pay if you want my recipes.

Chile Verde is great with pork, a perfect compliment so I added some of my chile verde to some of the shredded pork. The reason I made it though, was for my favorite tamal, the delicious, chile and cheese ones. For this recipe, I used very little chile and kept it very mild. I was going for flavor only and no heat. In the tamal, I use a strip of roasted pasilla chile, a slice of cheese (use queso fresco or Monterey jack) and a generous spoonful of my chile verde. My grandmother always put a tangy green Spanish olive in the center but I chose not to this time.

Ingredients

About 1 pound of tomatillo milperos (use regular tomatillos if you can’t find the smaller milperos)
1 head of garlic, peeled
1 bunch of cilantro, washed and trimmed
1 onion, quartered
1 roasted tomato, peeled and seeded
salt to taste
2 chile gueritos, roasted, seeded, de-veined and peeled
chicken broth or water – a bit at a time (about one cup total)

Roast the chiles and steam off their skins. Peel, seed and de-vein them. Add to a blender.

Remove the husks from the tomatillo milperos and wash them. Boil in a small saucepan till they’ve changed color and are soft. Scoop them out with a slotted spoon and add to the blender.

Add the garlic, onion, salt, cilantro, roasted tomato and a bit of the broth. Puree. If the blender gets stuck or the sauce is too thick, add more broth. The sauce should be tangy, slightly salty with the rich herbal flavor of cilantro.

You can cook the shredded pork in this chile sauce but I used it for the chile cheese tamales as seen in Tamalada Part 4.

Rajas de Chile Verde - Roasted Pasilla Chile Strips for Tamales

For chile and cheese tamales, I like to use fresh roasted pasilla chiles. I take several of the chiles and wash them, then place them onto a baking sheet and put them in the oven at 350 degrees for about a half hour. Then turn them over and roast for about another 15 minutes.

Once the chiles are done roasting, wrap them in a clean, slightly damp dishtowel and leave to steam off the skins. I generally leave them there till they cool off.

When the chiles are cool, slide the skin off, remove the stem, seeds and veins. Slice the chile into thin strips and set aside till you need them. That’s it! If you have left over strips from the tamales, save them to make rajas con crema y queso (recipe at a later date).

No tamalada is complete without big mounds of succulent shredded pork to fill tamales with. You can use it with either red sauce or green, it lends itself to both with perfect equanimity. It’s easy to make, although it does take some time. Any left overs (doubtful) can be used for sopes, tacos, pork sandwiches, tortas, etc.

For this tamalada I made so much pork that I filled a tamale steamer!

Ingredients

Pork Shoulder cut into chunks (I had the butcher cut mine into quarters, quantity depends on how much you want to make). For this tamalada, I made about 30 pounds, but for this recipe, let’s just say four pounds of meat and use that as the base – bone in is best and don’t have the butcher trim off the fat.
2 Onions, quartered
3 Bay leaves
1 head of garlic
salt to taste
water

Wash chunks of pork and place into a large stockpot. Add onion, garlic, bay leaves, salt and cover with cold water. Cook on medium heat till meat is tender and breaks apart with a fork. Let cool, then shred and put aside till needed. Reserve the broth for masa and chile sauce. You can also freeze what’s left of the broth and use it as a stock for soups.

That’s it! It usually takes about 2 ½ hours.

One of the key ingredients in tamale-making is a good red sauce for either pork or beef tamales. It takes a bit of work making it from scratch, but it’s well worth it. I’ve seen people just add a can (shudders) of Las Palmas Red Chile sauce and I guess that works. I mean it doesn’t taste horrible, but if you’re going to go through the all trouble and expense of making tamales you may as well do it right.

This red sauce is very versatile and perfect for pork tamales, beef ones and you can even use it for chicken or turkey tamales if you want (great way to use that left over Thanksgiving turkey). If you have any left over, it’s good to pour over the tamales. You can poach eggs in it (that recipe another time), you can pour it over burritos, you can use it as a base for a type of mole, you can make enchiladas mineras with it, you can turn up the heat with more chiles and use it as a salsa for chips, the list goes on and on.

Some people use ancho chiles, I use Chile California like my grandmother did. You can try either or a mixture of the two. I think the California is a little more subtle in taste, yet rich in depth. It imparts a beautiful brick red color that appeals to me and looks well on the cooked tamale (okay, so I get caught up in the aesthetics). The ancho is a little darker in color and sharper in flavor. You decide.

Ingredients

About 1 pound dried chile Californias (prepared as per instructions listed below)
1 head of garlic, peeled
3 bay leaves
2 onions, quartered and roasted
about ten Roma tomatoes, roasted and peeled
salt to taste
about 10 peppercorns
¼ c. ajonjolli (sesame seeds) toasted
1 whole nutmeg
½ c. pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
some of the broth you cooked the pork or beef in
1 tsp. of lard (it’s only once a year!) or, alternatively you could not skim the fat off the broth you cooked the pork or beef it
about 1 c. of the water you cooked the chiles in

Place the chiles in a large stockpot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to low and cover. Let simmer for about an hour, then remove from heat and let cool. Do not throw out the water.

Once the chiles are cool, take a sharp knife and slice right down the middle, exposing the seeds and veins. Remove all the seeds, the stem and the veins. Using the knife, scrape the chile pulp from the skins and put into a bowl. Set aside.

Roast tomatoes on either a comal or in the oven. If I’m doing a few, I use a comal. If I’m making a lot, it’s easier to do big batches in the oven. I simply place them onto a baking sheet and pop into a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes, then take out, turn them over and put them back in again for another half hour. You can do the onions the same way. I find it easier to roast the onions in the oven than on a comal.

Once the tomatoes and onions are roasted, let sit until cool, then peel the skins from the tomatoes. The skins should slide right off. Set aside.

Coat a heavy cast iron skillet with a bit of olive oil or lard and let the pan get hot. Turn down the heat to medium. Add the sesame seeds, bay leaves, whole nutmeg and pepitas. Watch out because the sesame seeds will pop. Fry till nicely browned and the bay leaves and nutmeg have released their fragrance. Remove from heat and let cool. Take out the nutmeg and throw it away.

In a heavy duty blender or food processor add the sesame seed mixture, the chile pulp, the tomatoes, salt, onions, peeled cloves of garlic, the chile water and a bit of the broth from the pork. Puree, adding more broth if necessary to make a thick, velvety sauce. Pour into a fine sieve and push through. I use a spatula to scraped back and forth, adding more and more broth little by little.

As you scrape back and forth, you’ll push all the liquid into a bowl and what’s left in the sieve will get thicker and thicker. When you have all you need, or it looks like it might get too watery toss out the pulp that’s left in the sieve and take the sauce you’ve made and pour it into the cast iron skillet you heated the sesame seeds in. Make sure there are no seeds in the skillet.Heat the sauce on low heat for about a half hour. The flavors will blend beautifully and the texture will get smoother and silkier.

Add the sauce to the shredded pork or other meat and heat. Reserve some of the sauce for pouring over the finished tamales.

Rachel will show you how to assemble a tamale.

She’s making cheese and green chile tamales.