Doña Lupe’s Kitchen

Fiestas Patrias is a big deal for me.  I usually go all out and have a big party, invite tons of people, make mountains of red, white and green food, have papel picado and paper flowers decorating the house, my Aztec dancer group dances, the big Mexican flag is out, there’s music (sometimes mariachis) and we all go out the door at midnight and scream at the top of our lungs, “Viva Mexico!  Viva Zapata! Viva la Patria!”

Yeah, we’re those crazy, noisy, party-loving Mexicans down on your block.

Last year, I didn’t host the party.  I was ill and battling something for months that made me incredibly tired, a slacker blogger and have serious lack of stamina to stand in a kitchen for hours cooking.  This year, I had thought I could do it.  I’m feeling great actually so I was geared up to throw a huge one and make up for  last year.  Then I got the call from my daughter telling me she was HIV+.  I suppose this has no place on a cooking blog, but it’s my blog and my life so there you go.  Welcome to my world.  She’s my only daughter.  I’ve three sons and one daughter.  After finding out, I went to bed for a little over a month and barely left it.  Not like me at all.  I’m usually the optimist and the “let’s fix it” person.  Not this time.  This knocked me down hard and it took a long time getting back up.  I’m up.  I’m fighting because that’s me.  I’m learning all I can and I’m being strong for my girl.

As far as Fiestas Patrias goes, I decided not to do it at all.  Not in a party mood, although I did go to Olvera Street for a little while to get my fill of it on Sunday afternoon.  Check out my photos of the event there, si quieren.  Continue Reading »

Jasmine really loved the chocolate glaze.

The Challenge: Chocolate Eclairs from Pierre Hermé’s book, Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé.

The Hosts: Tony Tahan and Meetak

Many, many thanks to our wonderful hosts this month. What a wonderful recipe they chose and how supportive and marvelous they were. (Insert applause here).

Hurry up Autumn, I’m getting a little tired of baking in a 100 degree kitchen and worrying I’m going to drip sweat into dough or something. This month’s challenge was Pierre Hermé’s (swoons cuz he’s my loverman and I worship the pastry laden, rose petal Isapahan ground he walks on) luscious chocolate éclairs.

Did I stay true to my idol’s recipe? Um well I changed one little thing. The cream filling was not chocolate but something summery and lighter. Lavender-orange pastry cream. The rest was true to Mr. Hermé’s recipes (is it not wonderful that he is not only a pastry God but has the same last name as that vintage buttery leather 72k handbag on ebay)? I’m just saying. Pastry, Birken…ecstasy, heaven. Okay, okay get on with the recipe. No one cares about my obsession with Hermé, both the bags and the chef. And yes, I know the bag is Hermes but its close enough for me.

Marissa dropped the kids off early and we washed up and got ready to bake. The first thing we started with was the pastry cream. It turned out perfectly, smooth, thick and lucious until i put it into its ice water bath. I turned to grab ingredients for the chocolate sauce and Aiden took the opportunity to add about a quarter cup of ice water INTO THE CREAM! Yeah, so. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. He’s three, he thought he was creating something wondrous and being helpful. I wanted to fix it, but I couldn’t. It was his little creation. So we had runny cream filling, so what?

Continue Reading »

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.

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).