Cake & Coffee

I wandered the wide aisles of Smart & Final searching for inspiration on what to bake to go with the fabulous Ambiance coffee I’d chosen. I really love a good French roast and so I’d picked the biggest can of French Roast available on their shelves. I love a strong, dark brew that gets me going in the morning, but I’m also all about flavor and some strong or dark coffees can be bitter. The taste of Ambiance French Roast though is not bitter at all, it’s rich and velvety, almost nutty; smooth on your palate and has that rich zing that we strong coffee lovers crave. So what would compliment it best?

I’d thought to go traditional and make a coffee cake, but when I got to the market, I was overwhelmed by my choices. I bought a ton of stuff for possible recipes and headed home to ponder. Once home, I brewed a pot of the coffee I’d just bought and sat down to sip and think.

Pound cake goes perfectly with coffee

I finally decided on a rich, buttery pound cake. My grandmother Lupe used to make an incredible lemon pound that she served to me slathered in butter and raspberry jam and thinking about it made my mouth water. No one in the family remembered which recipe she used though so I searched the internet. A pound cake is basically this: a pound of eggs, a pound of butter (seriously); a pound of sugar and a pound of flour. It’s not for the faint-hearted or weight watchers. Eventually, I chose to adapt a Martha Stewart classic pound cake.

Start with some really great butter and eggs

Lots of butter

The thing to remember with pound cake recipes is that because you have a LOT of butter in it, you need to make absolutely sure that you cream the butter and sugar properly. If not, you end up with a greasy mess. Take the extra few minutes and really get that butter light and fluffy. Make sure you don’t take shortcuts and just dump it all in. It really does make a difference when you incorporate everything in small bits.

Butter & sugar

No where near whipped enough

I hand-whipped some heavy whipping cream, slowly added a bit of brown sugar (tablespoon) and a teaspoon of Amaretto liquor to top the slices with. Served with the dark French roast coffee, it was perfect. I’d thought about making a fancy coffee drink, but in the end I had it just as I do every morning: simple, strong with a hint of cream. It was perfect.

You need a lot of eggs

Seriously, a lot of eggs

Lightly beaten

There is nothing like the smell of a buttery pound cake

Classic Pound Cake (adapted from Martha Stewart)

• 1 pound (3 1/4 cups) all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 4 sticks softened unsalted butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 9 large, room-temperature eggs

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter two 5-by-9-inch loaf pans.

Combine flour and salt in a bowl.

Cream butter and sugar with a mixer on high speed until pale and fluffy, for 8 minutes.

Lightly beat eggs and add to butter/sugar mixture in four increments, making sure each addition is well mixed before adding the next.

Once the eggs are fully incorporated into the mixture, add your flour and salt mixture in 1/2 cup increments, ensuring that it is all mixed in well before adding more flour.

Pour half the batter into another bowl and in one, add 1 tsp. Fresh lemon juice and the rind of that lemon. In the other, mix in three tablespoons sifted cocoa powder and a tablespoon of cinnamon. You can add more cocoa powder if you like. I wanted mine to be light.

Pour into greased loaf pans and bake at 325 degrees for about an hour or until a knife inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Let cool.

Serve plain, with fresh fruit or as I did with whipped cream and make sure to have it with a lovely cup of strong coffee.

Ambiance French roast coffee with a hint of cream & pound cake

For the cream:

1 cup of heavy whipping cream
1 tsp. Amaretto
1 tsp. brown sugar (I like just a hint of sugar)

Whip the cream until it forms stiff peaks. Sprinkle in the brown sugar and whip it until blended. Slowly pour in the amaretto while whipping. Serve over cake and sprinkle it with a little cinnamon or cocoa powder.

Stiff peaks

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Disclosure: This project has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for #collectivebias #CBias. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Antojida.

I love that word. An antojo is a craving.  Being antojida means you are seriously jonesing for something yummy.  Today, for no apparent reason I got one of those completely random antojos for some chicken flautas with guacamole, sour cream, Spanish rice, and some salsa.  I was working on something, so I kept pushing off the images floating in my head till finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.  I put down the laptop, put on my shoes, put up my hair, grabbed my handbag and ran out the door.  Grocery list?  Pfft.  I knew exactly what I wanted.

• Chicken
• Tortillas
• Chipotles en escabeche
• chiles gueritos
• tomatoes
• avocados
• fresh thyme
• sour cream

I ran into the market (I do everything fast) and grabbed one of those little hand baskets.  I was in and out of the market in ten minutes and home in another five.  I did notice it was a gorgeous day in Southern California, but I didn’t linger to enjoy it.  I was on a flauta mission.  I couldn’t make up my mind which salsa I wanted more, so I made them both.

For the flautas:

Boil the chicken with sprigs of fresh thyme, two cloves of garlic, a quarter of an onion and some sea salt to taste.  Today, I used breast filets rather than a whole chicken because I was in a hurry.

Once the chicken is cooked, pull out the pieces and let cool.  Once cool, shred into strips.  Reserve the cooking liquid/broth.

Heat corn tortillas right over the flame or on a comal (griddle).  They won’t roll if they are cold.

Fill a heavy skillet half way with cooking oil and heat on medium.

Add some of the shredded chicken.  Not too much or your flautas will be unwieldy and too thick.  Think flute-like and elegant.  That’s what flauta means – flute.  Roll the tortilla up tight.  You can use toothpicks to hold them together.  I don’t. I use tongs and put them directly into the hot oil, one at a time.

Let the flautas brown completely on both sides until the tortilla is golden brown and crip.

Drain on a plate with paper towels to absorb the oil.

Serve with salsa, guacamole, sour cream and rice.

They look mild, but they are HOT!

For the salsa de chile guerito:

4 chile gueritos (yellow chiles)

2 cloves of garlic

4 Roma tomatoes

1/4 of an onion

salt to taste

cilantro

Boil the chiles, onion, garlic and tomatoes in a heavy sauce pan until very soft.  Keep in mind that yellow chiles are HOT.  They look mild, but don’t let that pale yellow color fool you.  If you don’t like heat, dial it back and use two chiles instead of the four I use.

Strain and cool, reserving the water.

Peel the tomatoes and chiles.

In a molcajete (blenders make it foamy and the texture is all wrong so if you don’t have a molcajete, try a potato ricer), crush the chiles, onions, tomatoes, and garlic until you have a smooth yet rather chunky mixtures.  Add in some of the water that the chiles cooked in until you get the consistency you want.

Add salt to taste (alternatively use Knorr Pollo) and cilantro leaves.

Salsa de chile guerito

For the salsa de chipotle con lima (Chipotle salsa with lime):

1 can of chipotles in escabeche

cilantro

chicken broth

salt to taste

two cooked chile gueritos

two cooked Roma tomatoes

2 cloves of garlic, minced

juice of fresh limes (about 1/8 cup)

Peel the cooked tomatoes and chiles and crush in a molcajete or using a potato ricer.  Pour into a bowl, adding the minced garlic.  In the molcajete, crush the canned chipotles until you have a thick paste.  Add that into the bowl with the tomatoes and chiles, using some chicken broth to thin it out a little.  Add salt to taste and some fresh cilantro (about a handful). Add the lime juice and stir to mix well.

Hot, smoky, tangy and oh so yum!

For the guacamole:

This is super simple guacamole.  The purist kind.  All you do is mash avocados and put them into a bowl.  You don’t want any other flavorings, not even salt.  The salsas you serve and the chicken itself will provide lots of flavor so leave the avocado pure.  That’s it!

Time to dig in!

]]> http://donalupeskitchen.com/2011/12/chicken-flautas-with-two-kinds-of-salsa/feed/ 0 http://donalupeskitchen.com/2011/11/pancake-cookies/ http://donalupeskitchen.com/2011/11/pancake-cookies/#comments Wed, 30 Nov 2011 01:33:56 +0000 Gina Ruiz http://donalupeskitchen.com/?p=1264

Did you ever have a serious yearning for cookies and need to make them NOW?

That was me today around four o’clock.

I wanted cookies and nothing else would do.  I was sure I had the ingredients for a basic sugar cookie dough so I got started.  I found some nuts and chopped them up finely; dug butter out from behind all the Thanksgiving leftovers and also chopped some maraschino cherries (no idea why, it just seemed like a good idea).  I opened the freezer and saw the blueberries I’d bought on sale and froze so I grabbed a few of those as well.

I creamed together butter and sugar; added the eggs and vanilla and went to get the flour.  There was NO FLOUR!

This never happens.  I ALWAYS have flour.  So I freaked out a little and started hunting.  Nope, no flour.  This was seriously a kitchen disaster.  I couldn’t run out to the store because I just paid some bills and had no money left.  Not even for flour.  And, I had those eggs and butter mixed up already in a bowl on the counter.  *Note to self: Next time make sure you have ALL the ingredients!

I should know better.  I’ve preached mis en place to my kids and grandkids for years.  I was never going to live this one down.  Frantically, I gave the kitchen one more pass through.  I found not flour, but Maseca.  Um, could I make cookies out of corn flour?  My tastebuds rebelled.  I found pancake mix.  Hmmmmm.

There’s flour in pancake mix.  That’s it.  I used pancake mix substituting the two and a half cups of flour for two cups of pancake mix.  I hesitated for a moment wondering if I should omit the baking powder, then at the last minute added it.  It looked like cookie dough.  It tasted like cookie dough, so feeling brave; I added the chopped nuts and cherries.

I didn’t chill it.  I figured rolling out sugar cookies with this batch could go badly.  So I made them drop cookies and carefully dropped them into the pan, topping each in the center with a blueberry.  I popped them into the oven and crossed my fingers.

Soon, the kitchen smelled heavenly and like cookies but I still had my doubts.  Taste would tell.  The cookies stuck a little to the pan and folded over almost like a tuille cookie.  Hmm.  I picked up one of the broken pieces and popped it into my mouth.  YUM!  The cookie tasted like a combination of a Mexican wedding cookie and shortbread.  I adore both so these cookies were absolutely delicious.  I shaped one quickly while it was still warm and sure enough, it cooled in the shape.  They’d work as tuilles.  Cool!  The cherries and blueberries as an accent gave them a light, fruity pop.

All that is left of my experiment is crumbs.  I will be making these again WITH the pancake mix and trying them out as tuilles.

Sometimes, a kitchen disaster can turn into something absolutely delish.

Basic Sugar Cookie Dough

Habichuelas from our farm in the Dominican Republic < cafealtagracia.com>
Photographs courtesy of Julia Alvarez and Bill Eichner

In How Tía Lola Learned to Teach, one of Tía Lola’s favorite sayings is “En todas partes cuecen habas“: Everywhere people cook beans. In other words, despite superficial differences, people are the same the whole world over.

But why beans? Miguel and Juanita would much rather Tía Lola make up a new saying like, “Everywhere people like ice cream,” or, “Everywhere people like to go to Disney World.” But actually beans have been around long before ice cream or Disney World. Not everyone in the world can afford to visit theme parks or purchase treats, but almost every culture has some variety of beans that form the staple of the diet. It might be lentils in India, or green peas in theEnglish-speaking Caribbean islands, or chick peas in the Middle East, or baked beans in the USA, but Tía Lola is right: beans are everywhere. It’s an important protein source, especially for people too poor to afford meat.

In the Spanish-speaking Americas, beans are very popular. In Mexico and Central America, they are called frijoles. But in the Dominican Republic, where Tía Lola is from, they are known as habichuelas, and they are often served over rice. That combination, rice and beans, is a complete protein, a good thing, as this duo is the staple of the poor man’s diet. But don’t get me wrong. This is no impoverished dish. If you cook beans Tía Lola’s way, you will have a rich, savory treat you can ladle over rice or serve as a side dish.

Before we get started on the beans, I have to explain what a sofrito is. It’s what you use to season the beans, and in fact, a sofrito is the seasoning base for many Dominican dishes. Stir-fry garlic and onions with tomatoes (or tomato paste), bell peppers (the garlic, onions, bell peppers, and tomatoes should be cut into small pieces), along with wine vinegar, oregano, cumin, coriander, red-pepper flakes, pepper and salt, and whatever else you’d like to add or omit. You are making your very own savory base, so you can be creative. Every cook has her own sofrito. Often, as Tía Lola can tell you, a good cook is known for her buen sazón, good seasoning. It’s like having a good bone structure if you want to be a model.

Tía Lola’s recipe comes to me via my husband Bill, who managed somehow to get the recipe from my tías. Bill, as you might guess, is the cook in the family. I actually wanted to learn to cook when I was growing up. But back then, in the Dominican Republic, there were so many tías in the kitchen, getting in each other’s way, offering their different opinions on what flavor was missing in a certain dish. (I told you every good cook has her very own sofrito.) The last thing Mami needed was a young girl, getting underfoot, asking questions. “Not now,” Mami would say, shooing me out of the kitchen. “Why don’t you go do something useful? Why don’t you go read a book?”

As a result I grew to adulthood without really knowing how to make my own sofrito or how to cook a flan or tostones or mangú con cebollitas. When Bill and I married, we continued visiting la familia in the Dominican Republic. Bill loved my tías cooking, which totally endeared him to them. Soon enough, he was being invited into their kitchens. Every trip, Bill would come back to Vermont with a new recipe and the ingredients in his suitcase. So, it was really Bill who taught me to make habichuelas the way my tías taught him how to make them.

Meanwhile, I seemed to have followed my mother’s orders after all. I not only read books, I also now write them. And Bill does most of the cooking in our household. Actually, Bill did write a book himself, a cookbook, based on all the recipes he learned from his mom growing up in Nebraska; from his travels in Latin America, India, the Middle East; and from my aunts in the Dominican Republic. The book is called The New Family Cookbook by Bill Eichner, published by Chelsea Green Publishing Company (sadly out of print***). The recipe for habichuelas below is taken from that book, and it is the one Bill learned from my aunts.

Serves: 9 to 12 (depending on whether this is used as a main dish or a side dish)
2 pounds dried pinto or Colorado beans
1 cup dried kidney beans
Bill recommends a mix of pinto or Colorado beans and kidney beans, because the habichuelas we buy in the Dominican Republic don’t really correspond to the kidney beans sold here.
1 cup cilantro or cilantrico, chopped
Cilantro is coriander, and cilantrico is the Dominican name for the fine fern-like growth of a cilantro plant just before it blossoms.

For your sofrito:
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil or canola oil
1 teaspoon crushed cumin seeds
1 teaspoon crushed coriander seeds
8 to 10 Roma tomatoes, chopped
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons vinegar
1 or 2 red bell peppers, chopped
black pepper, to taste

Wash the beans and soak them overnight in enough water to cover. Next morning, discard the soak water, and refill to cover by at least 1 inch. Bring the beans to a boil, and remove any scum that comes to the top. Add sofrito (you already know how to make this, see above) and simmer until the beans are almost tender, about 40 minutes (depending on the freshness of the beans).

Near the end of the cooking period, add salt and chopped cilantro or cilantrico.

Of course, habichuelas are served with rice. Tune in to the next entry to learn how Tía Lola makes rice the Dominican way.

Meanwhile, enjoy these habichuelas, and as you do, just think: around the world people are also cooking and eating beans.

© 2010 by Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez’ new book How Tía Lola Learned to Teach is available for purchase at Powells Books andI found several copies of her husband Bill’s out of print book at Abebooks.

Ms. Alvarez’ blog tour continues and her schedule is as follows:

10/20 http://randomactsofreading.wordpress.com/

10/21 http://teenreads.com

10/22 http://www.spanglishbaby.com

October brings many things and is also a month of memory for me.  My grandmother Lupe for whom this blog is in honor of was born in October so this month always makes me think of her.  It is also the time in Los Angeles, when pumpkins make their way into the markets for Halloween.  More and more I see the heirloom ones, all knobby and in a beautiful array of colors popping up everywhere.  I love the Cinderella pumpkins for all their squished beauty and wish I had had one as a child to dream about turning it into a magic coach to take me to the ball.  The one’s I gravitate most to in the stores though are the big regular Halloween pumpkins.

When I go to the market with the grandkids, they see jack-o-lanterns and I see pies, pasta, ravioli filling, grilled pumpkin in salads, soups, empanadas, muffins, and more.  The season is brutally short though.  I can never find a single pumpkin past Halloween and I wonder where they go.  Solution:  buy them all at once!

As money allows, I tend to buy up as many big pumpkins as I can and fill the freezer.  There are a TON of recipes on the internet for things to do with pumpkin and it just makes sense to me to put up a little money upfront and a lot of work in order to have pumpkin in my pantry and freezer all year round.  Why buy canned when you can preserve your own?  It’s economical and it makes sense, especially if you love to cook.

My favorite thing to do with pumpkin is make empanadas.  The filling is simple and delicious.  I’m sure there are many different ways to do it, but this is mine.

Cinnamon-Steamed Pumpkin for Empanadas

1 large pumpkin
Water
2 cinnamon sticks

In a large stock pot with a steamer basket, add just enough water to come below the steamer basket.  Add the cinnamon sticks and turn on the heat to low.  Add chunks of un-peeled pumpkin to the steamer basket and cover.

Depending on how big your chunks are (I tend to cut the pumpkin into quarters because it’s easier) the steaming can take anywhere from 20 minutes if you have small bits to a few hours with the big pieces.

Keep adding water as it evaporates – that’s important.  You want to keep the cinnamon steam going.

Steam until the pumpkin flesh is translucent and soft.

Once it cools you can just scoop along the rind with a spoon and get all the pulp into a large mixing bowl.

Pumpkin Empanada filling

Not measured, everything is to taste for me with this.

Pumpkin pulp
Sugar – to taste
Cinnamon – to taste
Dash Ginger
Dash Mace

Mash the pumpkin pulp until is is smooth.  Add sugar, powdered cinnamon, ginger and mace to taste.

That’s it!  Simple, delicious and it fills the empanadas nicely.  You want to be sure to strain it though and not get the residual juice into your empanadas or they will be soggy.  I use the juice for liquados or put it into cakes, etc.  It freezes nicely too.

My oldest son Albert is a fiend for my fried chicken.  He’s probably gonna scream and holler on the phone at me, but I call him Nano.  I never call him Albert even though he’s trained the rest of the family to do so.  He was a tiny preemie baby, nothing like the huge beast he is now and we called him Nanito, the nickname his father’s family dubbed him with the day he was born because he was so tiny.  The name stuck, he’s been Nano or Nanito ever since and he HATES it.  I can’t help it though, he’s still my baby boy that I’d do just about anything for.

Growing up, he was always asking me for fried chicken, coleslaw and mashed potatoes or my hamburgers.  When he moved to San Diego where he was stationed in the Navy, he’d occasionally show up with a pack of big Navy guys all ravenously hungry, hand me some money and ask me to make my fried chicken for his friends.  I never said no.  When he married, he asked me to teach his new wife how to make it and that didn’t go over so well, so he just had me make piles of it and he and his brother ate it all in one day.

Nano is a big old beast now - I'm sure it's partly because of the chicken

With all the health problems I’ve had over the past year and a half, I’m not eating much in the way of fried foods.  I’d mostly given it up before getting ill, but a serious illness then a gall bladder removal really have me vigilant about what I eat and how I prepare it.  Fried chicken hasn’t been on my menu in a couple of years.

I had planned on doing a chicken salad today with the fresh chicken my roommate David brought home but he asked if I wouldn’t mind changing the menu to fried chicken.  I considered and figured I might as well do him a favor and make it.  Once in a great while is okay, right?  Yeah I talked myself into it and he totally twisted my arm.  I’m laughing at myself as I write this.

I don’t know how other people make fried chicken.  The only kind I had when I was growing up was Kentucky Fried or the Mexican Pollo Frito en Salsa de Cacahuate that I make on occasion.  It wasn’t until I married that I attempted it.  The recipes I tried, I didn’t really like so I fiddled with stuff and came up with my own way.  It’s simple, tasty and the batter is light and crunchy.  Best of all, my boy loves it.  It was a hit tonight too.

Nano’s Fried Chicken

1 large chicken, cut into pieces, trimmed, washed and patted dry
Olive oil
2 cups of flour, plus 1 cup
1 tbsp paprika
2 tbsp Knorr Suissa
Salt and pepper to taste
Dash allspice
3 eggs
2 tbsp buttermilk

In a medium sized bowl, mix together two cups of sifted flour with the paprika, Knorr Suissa, allspice salt and pepper, making sure its well blended.  In another bowl beat the eggs with the buttermilk and in the third bowl add the plain flour.

In a large cast iron skillet add enough olive oil to fry the chicken in.  I typically fill the pan halfway.  Heat on medium flame.

Salt the chicken lightly and then dredge first in the plain flour, next the egg mixture coating the chicken completely and finally the seasoned flour.

Carefully add in the chicken one piece at a time into the hot oil.  Fry for about 15 minutes on each side till golden brown on medium, then lower the flame and let the chicken cook another 10-15 minutes to ensure it’s cooked through.

Remove the chicken and drain on paper towels or brown paper.

That’s it!  Simple but it takes a little care, watch to make sure the chicken isn’t getting too dark, don’t keep turning it or your crust will fall off and make sure it’s cooked through.

Buen provecho!

Oatmeal in a Latino home is nothing like oatmeal in other places.  The microwave stuff is just ickygoop nonsense and it just plain grosses me out.  The plain oatmeal I’ve had at restaurants I will never have again because, well it’s just plain boring.  It sits in the bowl all sad kinda looking at you saying, “but I’m healthy.”  Yes it’s healthy and filled with cholesterol reducing fiber.  It’s great for your heart but it’s NOT my grandma’s oatmeal.

That wonderful little house on Goodwin Avenue in Los Angeles was always filled with good smells and flavors.  The flowers, trees and herbs scented the air and the frogs singing in the evenings was magical.  Mornings there were spent under piles of blankets in my Auntie Jessie’s bedroom with the antique oval framed picture of St. Teresa of Avila looking down upon me with sad eyes.  Eventually, the scent of my grandma Lupe cooking would drift in and capture me.  One of the aromas that always got me smiling was the cinnamony goodness of avena or oatmeal.

The oatmeal I grew up with was rich, decadent and almost like a pudding.  My grandmother would pull out her hammered pot with the worn wooden handle, add water and cinnamon (canela) sticks to it and a handful or two of plump, juicy raisins.  The water would boil till it was a deep, dark red and the house was absolutely redolent of cinnamon.  The raisins would plump up huge as they drank in the cinnamon water and start to float up.

When that happened, my grandmother would add in the oats.  She used old-fashioned rolled oats, or a mixture of grains and oats still with lots of fiber that my uncle would bring her from this grain place.  No quicky five minute oats for her.  No, she used the kind that takes at least 20 minutes.  She’d lower the flame on her oatmeal pot and stir in those yummy oats slowly.  They’d simmer away for 20 minutes absorbing all that cinnamon and raisin liquor.  Then came the decadent part.

Grandma Lupe would take a can of evaporated milk and pour that into her simmering pot of avena.  That thick, creamy, almost yellow milk would imbue the oatmeal with an intensely milky flavor and make the texture velvety.  Slowly the oats would bubble, with my grandma stirring carefully so it wouldn’t stick.  She’d had sugar bit by bit until her practiced eyes would tell it it was just right.  She’d then let it simmer, stirring all the while for another five minutes just to make sure that sugar was well blended and not grainy.

There was nothing better than that avena. She’d serve me in a little bowl with fresh milk poured over it and a pat of butter on top.  The first spoonful was super rich, super creamy and all kinds of delicious.  The raisins would burst in my mouth tasting unbelievably, insanely delicious.  I never forgot those mornings, made her avena for my kids almost every day and now, on a lazy Saturday morning am making it for my grandchildren whom I hope will have the same memories of a kitchen filled with love and cinnamony avena simmering in a pot.

Some things are just meant to be simple, delicious and evocative.  My earliest memories of food and cooking always have the gorgeous aroma of beans simmering on my grandmother’s stove.  She made a fresh pot almost every day and the smell is woven into all my memories of her, the house with the creaky wooden floors and the smells of her flowers.

Every time I make a pot, it is like she is right back front and center, larger than life with her gentle little hands, showing me how to pat a tortilla, measure something out for baking, how to chop finely, how to pinch up the sides of a sope and a million other life lessons.  I miss her as keenly over 20 years since she’s been gone from this world as the day I lost her, but the scent of beans cooking in the pot always makes me feel her presence and it comforts me.
Beans seem like simple fare, maybe even bothersome or peasant food to some but to me they are necessary.  They go with just about any meal, are loaded with nutrients, are economical, versatile and filling and I couldn’t imagine life without them.  My favorite though is just out of the pot topped with chopped onion, tomato and cilantro.  It’s like a soup, absolutely delicious and with a freshly made tortilla dipped in, pure ecstasy.

To my mind, nothing is better than that first bowl of beans fresh out of a clay pot before they get re-fried or used for other things like tostadas, burritos, etc.  I still love them however they are cooked, but that first bowl of soupy pinto beans with the bright Mexican flag colors is just special.

I often get asked, “how do your beans come out so good?” or “what did you do to make them so good?” and it always surprises me, because to me beans are beans and no work at all.  I do remember my mother couldn’t make a pot to save her life.  We’d come home from school to the smell of burnt beans permeating the house and think, “Jeez, mom forgot to put water in the beans again.”  That never happened at Grandma’s house.  When I go over the steps in my head to my Grandma Lupe’s perfect pot of beans, its almost zen-like to me.  Maybe other Mexican cooks have different ways of preparing them but I only know hers and they’re always, always perfect so I thought I’d share the steps.

My grandmother never used just pinto beans.  She had this beautiful, big acrylic container my Uncle Adam had made for her that was filled with a mixture of large white beans, kidney beans, pintos, small lima beans, navy beans and pink beans.  The varying colors and sizes were beautiful and to me as a child, like little gems in a treasure box.  I loved sticking my hands into that clear container and picking up handfuls and letting them stream back in.

First step to a pot of good beans is cleaning them.  This is where the zen comes in.  My grandmother would pile in front of me little hills of beans and my job was to carefully inspect each one.  Broken ones, little dirt rocks and ones with the skins peeling were swiftly scooted off into a discard pile.  Good ones went into the keep pile.  I always found it very soothing to sort the beans and still do.

Once you’re done sorting the beans, put the good ones into a colander and wash them throughoughly in warm water then set aside.

In a large pot* fill just about an inch below the rim with cool water and bring to a boil.

Once you have the water at a rolling boil, add salt (no measurements here – depends on taste and how much you are making), two cloves of garlic and one golden onion, peeled and quartered.

Next add the beans and lower the flame/heat to very low.  Cover with a tight fitting lid and let simmer (no peeking) for three hours.  You do need to keep adding boiling water every so often to keep the water level an inch from the rim.  Don’t forget to put water in the beans!!  My grandma always kept a small pot simmering on the back burner so she could add in water and keep the temp the same.

One thing I notice is if you want nice, pink beans you limit the lid lifting.  One of my friends is a compulsive lid-lifter and her beans, while they are delicious come out very dark.  Some weird chemical reaction (oxidation?) happens when you lift the lid.  I’ve also found that people who soak their beans before cooking them also get the dark thing going on.  I am not a fan of soaking them.  Why bother when you can put a pot on in the morning and have delicious beans in the afternoon?

Ok – so everyone is gonna ask but, but, but Gina you didn’t give us measurements and we don’t know how many beans to put in so I’ll attempt to gauge the amount I put in this morning. I’m using a large soup pot (stainless steel because my olla broke and I have to go back to Mexico and buy another one because I’m so not buying an olla from here but you can that’s just me) and it holds 18 cups of water just an inch below the rim, to those 18 cups I put in about 4 cups of beans.  Salt is to taste so no measurement there.  I start with about hmm three tablespoons and go from there.

So that’s it my grandmother’s secret for a perfect pot of beans.  Love, care and some patience.

*When I was growing up, beans were cooked in a clay olla or pot.  Nowadays, there is a concern with the lead content in Mexican ollas so I won’t tell you to use one even though I do.  I love the flavor my olla imparts to the beans.  If you want to use a traditional clay olla, please find one that is lead-free.

I am longing for sunshine and springtime which has got me thinking about verdolagas.  Verdolagas (purslane, pigweed, hogweed) are to me all about spring.  They grow wild on roadsides, all through Griffith Park and used to be, near the road where they put the Metro in Highland Park.  i know the hills in Lincoln Heights used to get covered with them in the Spring but I’m not sure now.  I’ve not been out looking for wild greens in a while.  In L.A. they are now more easily found in the markets like Superior that cater to a Mexican/Latino clientele.

When I was a kid, verdolagas grew rampant right on the grass at my grandparents house and in cracks on the sidewalk.  My job was to yank them up, but we didn’t throw away our weeds.  No que no, I brought them in in a little basket to my grandmother who carefully cleaned them and cooked them in a variety of ways.  I loved to much on the cleaned raw greens for the tangy flavor.

Chanfles has a pictorial on how to clean and cook verdolagas here, but the way Grandma Lupe used them in food was different.  There are tons of recipes for verdolagas and everyone has their favorite.  My personal favorite was verdolagas con carne de puerco y chile.
The pork is cubed, fried till it’s crispy then cooked in a sauce made of cooked verdolagas, caramelized tomatoes and onions, chopped serrano chiles and cilantro.  Served with rice, beans and tortillas its an amazing start to Spring.

Verdolagas con carne de puerco y chile

1 bunch of well cleaned verdolagas, ends trimmed then chopped into about 1-inch sections
1 pound boneless pork chops, cubed (get pork with the fat NOT trimmed off)
1 small onion, sliced into rings
1 clover of garlic, minced
2 large tomatoes, diced
3-4 fresh serrano chiles, seeded, de-veined and sliced into thin strips
salt and pepper to taste
chopped cilantro, about 1/4 cup

Boil the verdolagas for about ten minutes.  Drain and set aside.

Fry the pork until very crispy and browned.  Scoop out and set aside.

In the frying pan, you fried the pork in add the onion and fry until caramelized.  Add the tomatoes, chiles and garlic and cook down until you have a soupy sauce.  Add salt and pepper to taste and chopped cilantro, then add the pork.

Simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve with rice, beans and warm tortillas.

My daughter-in-law Mireya is from the state of Puebla in Mexico.  Sitting in her very modern kitchen 2200 odd miles from where I was born and raised, brings back memories of another time, another kitchen.  In that kitchen with it’s creaky old floors, the Los Angeles sunlight that streamed through the small window along with the smell of herbs and flowers, and most of all the love of my grandparents; I learned to love cooking.

This kitchen is cold to my L.A. body used to sunlight and drought.  It’s very modern and sleek with its black granite counters and stainless steel appliances and the glaring white of the snow outside, but its an incredibly warm kitchen in the ways that count.  There is love here in abundance, there is a keeping of tradition, a love of culture and family and the tastes and smells of it bring me home, keep my grandmother’s memory alive and bond me with this wonderful woman my son married.

Today she is making posole, but not the posole I am used to.  She is making what is known to be the traditional posole which is what we call posole blanco or white posole.  It is different from the one I make (Posole Tapatio) which is red and flavored with epazote.  Her recipe is exciting for me, a new one to learn and it belongs here in the archives of my family.

Last week we had green posole made with chicken, hominy and yerba santa.  It was delicious and completely different from what I am used to.

I watch my daughter-in-law work in brisk, quick steps.  She is deft in the kitchen, reminds me of the purposeful, quick moves of my grandmother and great aunts in their kitchens.  In some ways, she reminds me of my dear friend Elodia who moves with the same purpose and body language.  Mireya is nothing like Elodia though.  Lochi’s as I call her is tall, light skinned and thin where Mireya is very petite, dark-skinned and curvy.  They move the same though and as I watch my daughter-in-law, I am transported back to the kitchen of my friend near the hills of Griffith  Park where I grew up and can almost hear the years of laughter and good talks had at her kitchen table.

I read somewhere that Posole is an ancient recipe from Aztec/Mexica times which I well believe, given mole is from the same pre-Hispanic origin.  The word pozole in Nahuatl means espuma or foam and it gets its name from the foam that arises when the dried corn or cacahuazintle is boiled.  There are Conquest documents that talk about the pozole of Mocetuzuma having body parts in it but I highly doubt the veracity of any Conquest document.  To them, the Mexica people were the very devil, so I take most of what they said with a grain or two of salt.

Mireya’s Posole Blanco

1 pound of dried corn or cacahuazintle, prepared Nixtamal or  2 15-oz cans of hominy if you prefer it
2 pounds pork shoulder, cubed
oregano
salt to taste
chile pequin powder
shredded lettuce
diced white onion
lemons

If you’re using the maiz (nixtamal corn)they sell bagged in the store for posole, there’s no need to use the lye to soften it.  Just open the bag and let it soak overnight in water.  Clean off all the floating bits and strain it out.  If you want to try dried corn, you’re gonna have to use lye and that’s another post in the making.   Mireya uses canned hominy because that’s what my grandson Luis likes.  Kids tend to prefer canned hominy over the more gritty maiz or nixtamal.

Fill a stockpot half way with water, add the pork and hominy, salt to taste and a pinch oregano and cover.  Should boil on low flame 2-3 hours till the pork is so tender it falls apart at the touch of a fork.

If you are using the nixtamal, the maiz should boil first with salt to taste and a clove or two of garlic if you want, until it blossoms into what looks like little flowers and gives off the characteristic foam that gives the stew its name.  When the maiz blossoms, its time to add the pork and continue cooking.

Pour the stew into bowls and top with chopped onion, pinch of the powdered chile pequin for color and flavor, oregano, shredded lettuce and squeeze a lemon over it.

Serve with corn tortillas.