Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border
I’ve got a guest post up today — a recipe for Stuffed Nopales with Black Beans and Cheese — over at Aida Mollenkamp’s blog. She’s a Food Network Chef and the former food editor of Chow, and she’s also a friend and all-around good person. Please check it out if those cheesy nopales look in any way appetizing to you.
Amid all the recent talk of beans, guess what I found yesterday? An entire page devoted to Mexican bean varietals, on the June page of my 2010 Mexican gastronomy calendar. (Yes, I’m a food nerd.) I had the calendar turned to March for some reason, so I’d been staring at a dozen varieties of ollas. When I finally updated it — boom. Beans. There they were.
The page was too big to scan the descriptions, so here’s the key, starting from the upper left corner and moving from left to right. Now maybe you’ll realize why I’ve been so confused about their names. There are so many bean varieties here, it’s hard to keep up.
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My friend Lizzie lives with a real Mexican grandmother. Her name is Juanita and she just turned 90 years old. I’m not sure what her secret is, but she’s very active — she cooks big meals every day at lunch, and she shops at the tianguis, where she knows all the vendors. Plus she still does her hair every day, wrapping it in various braids and twists that are bobby-pinned to her head.
I’ve been hearing about Juanita and her cooking for a few months. (And envying Lizzie from afar for her housing arrangement.) Finally, it worked out yesterday that I could come over for lunch. Juanita would make chiles rellenos and white rice, and I could take pictures and notes. I was super excited. How fun was this going to be?
I arrived around 11:30 a.m., right when the trash man was stationed outside Juanita’s yellow apartment building, ringing his bell. (This is the universal sign meaning, “Neighbors, come outside and bring your trash, because the trash people are here.”) I walked through a small atrium and up a set of Art Deco-looking steps.
Juanita’s apartment was comprised of several small, cheery rooms. In the kitchen, a half-wall separated the area into two spaces: one held the fridge and a small, three-seater table; the other hosted the sink, stove and a few cabinets.
It wasn’t a cocina integral, and there was exactly one counter to chop things, if you didn’t count the kitchen table. But it worked. Juanita zipped around in her white nursing-style shoes, opening drawers, washing dishes, digging through the fridge to make space for a container of arroz con leche. Everything had its place.
We started on the chiles right away. First step: toasting the chiles on the comal.
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My local grocery store doesn’t sell frozen veggie burgers. So if I want one, I have to make them from scratch. (Insert groan here.)
Really, I hadn’t craved them until recently. Who wants a veggie burger when you can have a warm carnitas taco? But then my pants starting getting a wee bit too tight. And I thought, well, maybe it’d be nice to have some more veggies in my life. (This from the girl who used to eat salads every day in the U.S., and whip up a frozen veggie burger at least twice a week. Sometimes I don’t know who I am anymore.)
I’d made homemade veggie burgers once before when I lived in Dallas, and I remember it being an intensive process, and one I didn’t necessarily want to repeat again. Then, a few months ago, I was flipping through a copy of Cooking Light that my mom had sent me in the mail, and I saw a recipe for a quick black bean burger. It called for mixing beans with onions, spices, some egg and breadcrumbs. Sounded easy enough.
A few days ago, I whipped some up for dinner, adding my own Mexican-ish tweaks — bolillo roll for the breadcrumbs, a serrano pepper for spiciness, and a good slather of cilantro-chipotle mayo on top. (Cilantro-chipotle mayo tastes good on just about anything.) Paired the burgers with a gujarati grated-carrot salad, a warm, gingery, toasty side dish that comes together in a snap.
Found the carrot recipe in a charming cookbook called Cooking Com Bigode, which my friend Jesica gave me a while back. The book, whose name is Brazilian Portuguese for “Cooking With Moustache,” doesn’t so much offer specific measurements as loose instructions designed to empower the home cook. It was written by Jesica’s bohemian friend Ankur, an Indian guy who camped out in Brazil for awhile.
If you don’t have carrots, you can pair the burgers with any other salad you want. I think something mild might be best, as to not overpower the gooeyness of the cilantro/chipotle mayo and spicy black beans. Maybe tomatoes with queso fresco and black pepper. Or even jicama with a spot of lime juice.
A quick note: These burgers don’t have a typical “burger” consistency. They’re soft and kind of creamy, but crunchy on the outside from a nice sizzle in the frying pan. Ergo, I wouldn’t pair them with a traditional bun. I didn’t use any bread at all and didn’t miss it (I was too busy wow-ing over the mayo), but if you’re dying for bread, I would try a thinly sliced, toasted white or wheat bread.
Crayton, who loves a good carnitas taco, really liked these. Although he was a little alarmed by the mound of carrot salad I put on his plate. He said, “That’s too much,” and so I took some off. (I thought: How can one have too much carrots? They’re carrots!)
I know he’s very excited for all the other vegetarian recipes I have planned in the future.
Recipe below.
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Remember the bean pot I bought last week? Here it is.
My mom wanted me to make sure and tell you that it’s lead-free. Too much lead in one’s system can lead to neurological problems.
So. I used it on Saturday for the first time. Well, actually, on Friday, per the seller’s instructions, I filled it with water and simmered it on a low flame for four hours, to prep the pot for cooking. (I think this removes a layer of grit on the surface.)
On Saturday, Lola came over to help me get ready for the tamalada. We finished a few fillings, and she prepared the beans while I was at the gym. Into the pot the beans went, with a handful of epazote, onion and a little bit of canola oil.
About three hours later, we fished some out of the pot with a wooden spoon. The bean caldo had turned a rich, hot-cocoa brown color, with a sheen of greenish-brown on the surface. I was worried about the green color at first, but Lola reminded me that it was from the epazote.
I couldn’t get over how good they smelled. Of course I’d been around pots of beans cooking before, but they were never as fragrant as this. These were earthy and sweet, and clean. The bean starch, when you rubbed it between your fingers, felt creamy and soft. And the caldo — oh god, the caldo. It had this thickness to it, this heft, as if we had added flour or something. I wanted to bottle it, and save it, and slurp just a teensy bit every day for the rest of my life.
I’d bought these beans and the bean pot, by the way, through Xoxoc, a small family-owned business based in Hidalgo state.
“Mmmmmmmm,” I said loudly, after dipping my nose in the pot and inhaling deeply.
“Está enamorada de frijoles,” Lola announced. She’s in love with beans.
More correctly: I’m in love with fresh beans, my new clay pot, and the mixture of the two together.
All my cazuela needs now is a name. Any ideas?
