In the kitchen – Page 50 – Experiments in my New World Kitchen and Garden

Quick Summer Dinner

It’s hot. I’m tired and cranky. I want to eat.
The solution is to tastefully arrange some leftover beans, leftover poblano chile strips and some canned sardines on a plate. Smother in fresh cracked pepper. Accompany with good bread that’s been given a quick brush of olive oil and then popped in the toaster oven for a few minutes.

If the beans and chiles are coming straight from the refrigerator, zap them in the microwave for 30 seconds or so to bring them to room temperature.

Add some cool wine or a beer. Everything is going to be OK!

Molletes a la Rancho Gordo

It’s easy enough to make a breakfast of molletes north of the border. The heart and soul of the dish is the refried beans. I like to sauté red onion slices in bacon drippings until they’re almost disolved. I then add whole beans and some of their pot liquor, and some water if they seem a little dry. Using my bean masher, I slide along the bottom of the skillet so that the onions incorporate into the beans. I repeat the process until the mass is a glorious mess of refried beans. Be sure and leave some texture for interest.

For the molletes, I toasted a slice of Acme Bread’s Pain au levain and topped it with a spoonful of the refried beans, a spoonful of fresh salsa and then topped the whole thing off with some grated Manchego cheese. The Mexicans make a fair Manchego but I prefer the Spanish. If the cheese and salsa are at room temperature, there’s no need to broil. It’s lovely as it is.

Molletes for Breakfast

I’m not crazy for sweet breakfasts in general and in Mexico, I have to admit, I don’t care much for their pastries. I don’t despise them, but knowing there’s something else savory available, I tend to go for that.

While my traveling companions are enjoying perfectly nice pancakes or sweet breads, I like to go for the molletes. These are generally white rolls with some of the filling scooped out to make way for a slather of refried beans. They’re then topped with cheese and broiled until the cheese is bubbling. Of course, like most good things in New Spain, they’re served with a searing salsa guaranteed to wake you up. You are now prepared for the day.

Next: Molletes a la Rancho Gordo

The Big Sell Out: Garbanzos at Rancho Gordo

Our focus is New World Foods and heirloom varieties, so I have to admit I feel like a bit of a sell out offering chick peas. But they’re one of my favorites. One of my growers grew them this summer and I have a limited supply. The first time I made them, it took four hours in the slow cooker, unsoaked! When I’ve made commercial garbanzos, it’s taken a full 12 hours at times.

A classic Mexican soup using garbanzo beans is Caldo Tlalpeño. There are several versions but the best are basically a chicken soup, seasoned with chipotle chiles and packed with garbanzos and garnished with cool avocado. This seems to be a typical recipe.

Rio Fuego Bloody Maria

Erik Ellestad is one of the Bright Young Kids preparing and creating modern cocktails. I’m pretty much “old school”, as in gin martinis and Manhattans, but anytime a Rancho Gordo product can be incorporated into a classic, I’m all for it. Especially since I think the bean martini is a few years away.

from Erik:

1 Dash Celery Salt
1 Dash Lemon Juice
1 Dash Worcestershire Sauce
2 oz home made tomato juice
3 oz clam juice
1 1/2 oz Rain Vodka
1/2 teaspoon prepared horseradish
1 dash Rancho Gordo Rio Fuego Very Hot Sauce

Roll ingredients in ice
between cocktail shakers. Strain into ice filled glass and give it a
good grind of black pepper.

Note: This recipe is adapted from the “New and Additional Cocktails” section of the second edition of the Savoy Cocktail Book.

In any case, I often find Bloody Mary’s a bit thick. Using the clam juice
thins out the tomato juice. It’s not too clammy or anything, more of a
hint of the sea. Nice, really. The Rancho Gordo Very Hot Sauce and
horseradish give it a little bit of a kick.

You visit Erik’s blog for more inspiration. He also is the booze host at eGullet.

Beef Tacos in Jalisco

This last spring, I was visiting my friends Maria and Isidro at their home in Jalisco, Mexico. They were great hosts and it was really different than visits to their home here in Napa.

Maria loves to cook and talk about food. Everyday, the tortilla man came by with a package of fresh tortillas and she laughed at how fast they seemed to go with me visiting. Isidro likes to forage and trade fruit, cactus paddles and citrus and Maria incorporates them into the meals. They tended to eat a lot of vegetables, chicken and some beef but no pork. On the table at every meal was her salsa made from de Arbol chiles and it was memorably hot.

I talk a lot about tacos and on some level, think almost anything fits on a warm tortilla, but the traditional dishes are there for a reason and Maria likes to make these beef tacos. It was casual but hardly haphazard.

Each tortilla had a scoop of ground beef, some coleslaw, a few beans and salsa. The slaw was the perfect counterpoint to the hot salsa and the beans and beef gave the tacos body. Cold beers were always nearby for obvious reasons.

More on Sangrita

My neighbor at the Ferry Plaza farmers market is Happy Girl Kitchens.
Todd and his wife Jordan have lots of really unusual and delicious items but I was blown away by his spicy tomato juice. It turns out he makes it by straining his fresh salsa. Now that tomatoes are in full swing and so juicy, your fresh salsa can be sitting in a pool of tomato juice. This makes an excellent sangrita at drink time. I made the above from some glorious tomatoes from Eatwell Farm and cucumbers from from my neighbors at Catalan Farms and even drained, you could still taste the cucumbers. I added a spash of Rio Fuego Very Hot Sauce for good measure. Gosh, but I love summer!

Jamaica Agua Fresca

If all the talk about how bad soda is for you is getting you down, you could switch to an easy-to-make alternative that tastes exotic and is loaded with vitamin C.

Dried hibiscus flowers taste weird and good. You might remember a version from your old hippie days called Red Zinger (yes, I was there, too.) In Egypt, I had it as “Karkade ” only it was sweeter and denser than the Mexican version.

Take about a cup of dried hibiscus flowers and place them in a small stock pot. Add about a cup of sugar (or a cone of piloncillo), fill with water and bring to a boil. Allow it to steep and then strain it. Add some lime juice and more sugar or water if needed. Cool and serve. I like to add some canela/cinnamon as well but I’m a very daring sort of person. You could also top it off with a little fizzy water but let’s end our creativity right there.

Giant White Lima Beans

People often are offering me their beans to sell as a Rancho Gordo product. It’s almost always a mistake but I did get a hold of a small quantity of these huge Limas, from Peru, home of the orginal Lima bean. I was dubious at first but I made them for friends and we all went a little giddy over them. Despite being Limas, they’re creamy and rich and when cooked with just olive oil, onion and garlic, they’re almost buttery. Did I mention how huge they are?

The beans on the right are the raw beans and the left shows how large they get when cooked.

We’re selling these only online as they’re not a locally grown product and it’s inappropriate to sell them at the farmers market.

Making Masa from Scratch

More and more, tortillerias here in the states and in Mexico are switching from fresh masa, made from nixtamalized corn, to instant masa harina, which is made by just adding water. While the masa harina is fine and preferable to most store-bought tortillas, as with most things, doing it the old fashioned way tastes better. But as I discovered, it’s no easy feat.

The first step is to boil dry, starchy corn and add CaL, or the mineral lime, to the water. It turns the corn a beautiful, lurid yellow. I boiled for an hour and then let it sit overnight.

The next morning I rubbed the corn vigorously as I strained it and most of the slimy skin came off. So far so good and so easy. But how to grind it into that lovely dough we call masa?

I started out with the meat grinder attachment to my Kitchen Aid mixer. This made little corn sausages, not masa. Then I was told that you could do it in the bowl of a food processor. I was doubtful, even when I heard this came from TV’s Alton Brown. It doesn’t work. But it made a nice mash for me to feed the chickens.

The next step was to use a metate, as millions of Mexicans have done for centuries. How hard could it be? Well, step one is finding one in the United States. Molcajetes are easy enough to find on eBay but metates are rare. But I did finally find one in Texas.

I’d watched a lot of Mexican women use these and I really thought I’d get the hang of it pretty quickly. Friends, life is full of jokes and the thought that I could master a metate on a lazy Sunday morning is one of them. Other than being dog-tired, my real concern was not letting my sweat drip into the masa! Finally, after what seemed like hours, I had a sad little lump of masa, not fit to show off. The metate is a thing of beauty and I think it will sit nicely in my garden as an objet d’art. If you are as stubborn as I am and are going to continue searching for one, be aware that American Indians refer to their mortar and pestles as metate and mano, much like the Mexicans use for molcajete and mano. An Indian metate is what a Mexican would call a molcajete.

I had one last trick up my sleeve. I had a plate grinder I’d bought years ago hiding in my pantry. With the nixtamalized corn I had left, I put it through the grinder to see what would happen. Guess what? It worked. It took two passes and it was a lot of work but it made fine masa. But it was hell to clean it up and in the end, instant masa harina isn’t looking too bad to me.

It’s not likely I’ll do this again soon but it was a great learning experience and I have a deeper appreciation for what indigenous women have done for years to keep their families fed.