Arroz Rojo

Here in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, the mountain air is clean and light and our appetites are happy. Lourdes, our miracle-working housekeeper and cook, offers to teach us to cook her way and of course I say “si, señora, por favor!” after having devoured her amazing Huevos Rancheros in the mornings and her pear strudel for dessert. I ask her to make rice and she replies “blanco o rojo?” and I opt for red, since for me that resonates with the rice dish that has been made in Lousiana and Texas for centuries and was always called “Red Rice” there, too. I watch and take notes and try to stay out of the way, and Lourdes

Lupe and Lil, our San Miguel parakeets

puts a fresh white onion, two ripe romas, and a clove of purple garlic into the blender and purees it to a liquid. She fries the rice in vegetable oil (manteca? I ask and she points to my stomach, which has been iffy, and smiles, “no, Senor José”), adds the puree, cooks it down rapidly until it is fragrant, then adds chicken broth and some cooked fresh English peas. She adds salt, covers, and cooks this slowly until done, no set time. When it is fluffy, separate, and a perfect texture, not mushy, she corrects the salt and will not allow me to add pepper and it is done. It is delicious, and by making the puree she avoids the problem that I have sometimes encountered when I make the onion pieces too large and I crunch down on one, which I really dislike in rice, and there are no pesky tomato skins or chunks of tomato disturbing the texture of the dish. All in all, it is a rather marvelous way to cook rice, and the color is great with the bright green peas making it a complete protein.

Heavy-bottomed saucepan with tight-fitting lid
2 T vegetable oil, olive oil, or manteca (lard)
1 c. Texmati or Basmati long-grain rice
1 3/4 c. good chicken broth
1 clove purple garlic, peeled
2 ripe roma tomatoes
1 white onion, peeled, chopped, root end removed

Sauté the onion gently until softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Puree the vegetables. Gently sauté the rice in the oil in a saucepan, stirring, and when it becomes milky-white, about five minutes, add the puree. Sauté until the liquid is evaporated then add the broth, cover tightly, and turn the heat down to the lowest setting, or a low simmer. Simmer for 15 minutes and remove from heat, leaving covered, for five more minutes. Uncover, fluff with a fork (never use a spoon to fluff rice, it mashes the grains), and serve at once, or later at room temperature. In fact, rice fanatics in Spain, where this dish originated as paella, insist that room temperature is best of all for serving rice. This is the perfect accompaniment to Texas Enchiladas, tacos, fajitas, or wrapped up in a tortilla with some pinto beans and sprinkling of good cheese. Serves 4 to 6

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Texas Enchiladas

Joe's enchiladas

Enchiladas are the King of the tortilla dish family. They are a part of all Mexican regional cooking, but each area’s enchiladas are different, with different peppers, sauces, and fillings determined by local custom, climate, and produce. The Texas enchilada (in spite of Diana Kennedy's ill-considered opinion that Tex-Mex is terrible and somehow faux, Texas does have its own unique, valid form of "Mexican" food, for historical reasons obvious to anybody who can read, or think, or taste. Don't get me wrong- I admire her books and have read everything, but on this one she made a very sad mistake) is a corn tortilla wrapped around a cheese or meat filling and heated in a red chili sauce. Unfortunately over the years it has tended to devolve into what I call the "truck stop enchilada", which usually means corn tortillas stuffed with ground beef and covered in canned beef chili and tons of yellow cheddar cheese from Wisconsin. I love Wisconsin cheddar and I also make my own fabulous Texas Chili Con Carne, which I will give you someday, but to put them into an enchilada dish is to misuse both with unfortunate results, both culinarily and digestively. I remember when in my DJ days in the early 70's Ry Cooder came to Austin to do a concert on the UT campus and I took him out to eat Tex-Mex at one of the 50's style joints in town. He got one of those big ol' giant platefuls of Truck Stop Enchiladas with rice and refried beans and it was all he could do to go onstage that night for the massive stone lump in his stomach.

Truck stop enchilada

A good, "real" Texas Enchilada uses a light flavored, decent white Mexican cheese or a Monterrey Jack, and not a whole lot of it, and a red pepper chili sauce with no meat in it. Filling, yes, but also digestible.

It is time-consuming, multi-step, special occasion cooking, but one of its advantages is that it is an excellent way to use leftovers in a new and appealing incarnation. Plan on about two hours from start to finish once you have mastered all of the steps below.

The first step in making enchiladas is to create the sauce. Along the Texas border the pepper of choice for a chili dish has always been the ancho, which is the dried red poblano. This recipe makes 12 enchiladas.

1.5 c. broth or water
3 large dried chili anchos or 3 T. red chili powder (6 if you like it very hot)
1 yellow onion-chopped & sauteéd in 1 T. oil until soft & translucent. (save a raw handfull for the topping)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T. cumin powder
1 tsp. dried Mexican oregano
Freshly ground pepper & sea salt
2 T unbleached white flour
Corn oil or lard

Filling: 3/4 pound of grated white cheese (Monterrey Jack, Cheddar, or Queso Blanco), 3 cups shredded chicken meat, shredded pork, scrambled eggs, etc.

For the topping:
1/4 pound grated white cheese
Handfull of raw, finely-chopped white onion

Simmer broth or water in a saucepan. Tear the tops of the chilis off and take out as many of the seeds as possible. Rinse the dust off the chilis and add to the simmering liquid. After 10 minutes, the peppers should be rehydrated and soft. With a slotted spoon, remove the peppers to a blender and add only enough of the pepper liquid to cover them. Add the sauteéd onions and the garlic. Blend to a pureé. (Start on “low” speed or you’ll spew boiling hot pepper napalm all over the kitchen.) In a 12” skillet, sauteé 2 T. of flour in 2 T. of oil until the flour is just cooked. Pour the pepper pureé into the skillet. Use the rest of the liquid to rinse out the blender, put this liquid into the skillet, and add the rest of the ingredients. Simmer for at least 1/2 hour or more, until the flavors marry. Keep the sauce warm. If it gets too thick, add more broth or water. (At this point, if I am making chicken or meat enchiladas, I like to add the shredded or chopped meat to the sauce, to be heated and covered by it. I think it makes a better, less dry filling, especially with white chicken meat.)

Heat 1/4 inch of oil in an iron skillet until almost smoking. With tongs, dip a tortilla into the hot oil for 5 seconds, turn it over for 5 more, lift it and let the oil drip back into the pan. Dip the tortilla into the warm sauce until covered, then remove to a greased baking dish. Put two tablespoons of filling on the tortilla, roll it up, and place it seam side down in the dish. Repeat this sequence 11 more times. Now pour the remaining sauce over the enchiladas, top with grated cheese and finely chopped raw onion, and heat in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes or until the top is melted and the dish is bubbling. Don’t leave it in too long or the enchiladas will turn to mush or dry out. Serve immediately, two per plate (or three, but they are filling), with pinto beans, whole or refried, and a tomato-flavored "red" rice. Serves 4 to 6.

not an enchilada, not nohow, not no way...

he is what he ate

Coupon Culture

I like to take a reading on the Sunday newspaper coupons a couple of times a year because they are a handy guide to the current state of American Culture. Sort of like divining bird’s entrails, or digging through Dylan’s trash. Today’s reading tells me:

1)Americans still wistfully believe that you can lose weight by drinking canned substances rather than exercising. These canned substances consist mainly of water, sugar, milk, vitamins, and something to make you speed, like caffeine or a pseudoephedrine. This is of course nonsense, as no human being in the history of earth has ever lost weight this way and stayed at that artificially lowered weight for more than half an hour, but it apparently makes people feel that they are doing something about their weight problem and it is much easier than thinking. If one were to think about the problem, it would be obvious that a person could use portion control and exercise to lose weight, thus at least being able to eat small amounts of real food. However, a further examination of the coupon glossies reveals this:

2)Americans have ceased to eat real food, thus cans of flavored sugared milk with vitamins aren’t so awful as they might seem. We now eat things like “Croissant Pockets” filled with pizza (?), “Crescent Dogs” (refrigerated dough that tastes like newspaper wrapped around your imitation “frankfurter” of choice), artificial butter-flavored popcorn (God only knows what that is), frozen one-dish meals with the meat and gravy and everything included so you pry it out into a pan and “cook” it yourself in twenty minutes (the exact amount of time it would take to make scratch rice, brocolli, and sauteed chicken breast with a sauce), coffee in styrofoam cups that tastes just like the cup it comes in, orange-flavored sugar water that “tastes just like orange juice” (so why not just drink orange juice?), pretzels (which are supposed to be slimming, but covered in fudge and chocolate, so you can pretend to be not getting fatter as you gorge), and frozen hamburgers (this is interesting- never in the history of the universe has there been anything easier or faster to make than a real hamburger). All of these items presumably can be nuked of course. And should be.

Erstwhile President Gerald R. Ford attempts to eat a tamale, shuck and all, to the horror of the natives at the World's Fair, San Antonio. He was not subsequently elected (either) as he was not considered bright enough to be President after this. It is unknown if he swallowed the shuck as he was wrestled to the ground by mystified Texans and shielded from the Press, the lying dogs.

3)Tex-Mex items have entered mainstream culture with a vengeance. We have Denny’s advertising flour tortilla breakfast tacos, coupons for Pace salsa and Mission flour tortillas with recipes for ground beef tacos, and a coupon for canned corn with another recipe for “Cheesy Corn Quesadillas” with salsa and hot peppers. This is somehow endearing, but it probably doesn’t taste much like Tex-Mex, more pretends to be than is. It’s kind of a shame to see a great cuisine be all screwed up by marketers again, and again, and again…

tortilla soup (real Tex-Mex)

weird frozen mystery ingredient enchichangadita thingies (not real Tex-Mex)

4) Americans are also eating a variety of foods that was unthinkable in the 50’s of my childhood. Mango and Guava juices, yogurt, bagels, croissants, Nutella (hazelnut and chocolate spread seen only in Europe before yesterday), balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, and sun-dried tomatoes in our bottled salad dressing, frozen fish with “garlic & herb” coatings, “natural” whole grain breads (what the hell does “natural” mean, anyway? I would say exactly nothing), organic cereals, and of course pizza. Ethnic foods have permeated the old boundaries; New Yorkers are making quesadillas and Texans are eating bagels. Words like “organic” and “natural” are showing up in mass marketing now, surely at least a good sign.

what passed for food in 1955- most Americans ate the plastic, too

5)Modern babies have a lot better selection of diapers than I did. They can choose from swim pants (instead of the horror of a water-soaked, drag-ass cloth one), diapers with built-in “rash guard”, diapers that are like little pants they can pull off and run around naked afterwards. My diapers were big, heavy, cloth things that were decidedly inelegant. This is one area (so to speak) where life has definitely improved. Remember the diaper bucket in the bathroom?

6) PT Barnum lives. Apparently there are people out there who will buy literally anything they lay eyes on. Ridiculous hocum “magic” rings, little “Biker” and “Eskimo” dolls, absurd psuedo-Indian pocketknives, copper things (some imbedded with magic crystals) that will cure anything that ails you, cheap looking Christmas and Easter knick-knackery, diet pills that “melt away fat without exercise”, horrible side-of-the-road plates comemorating dubious events or concepts or Country Western stars, funky girdles and clothes in shocking pastels. If you can think it up, somebody out there is waiting to buy it in three easy installments.

Magic healing crystal shaman Dr. Larry C. Moe at work

Is this a great country or what?