Soup Lab

Building soup from the bones of a previous meal is a little like working in Dr. Frankenstein's lab. You build from parts you have lying around and hope for the best. It can become a tragedy with a moral about flying too close to the sun or a screwball comedy with belly laughs depending one how things go.

I started a few days ago with two smoked pork chop bones and a little water. The chops had been too salty for our taste, so I didn't finish mine and wasn't overly concerned about adding a lot of diluting water.

After simmering the bones and leftover meat for a few hours, the water tasted hammy but no longer salty. I eighty-sixed the bones and started building from there. It has been cold here, and gray, so soup from the South sounded just right - Mexico, here we come.

First, I softened half a chopped onion and a big pressed garlic clove in a little butter. Sprinkled about a teaspoon each of cumin and chili powder into the pan and cooked until they were fragrant. Then added a can of black beans, about a cup of frozen corn kernels, the shredded meat from the chops, the chop broth and a couple of cups of chicken broth.

When that had simmered together, I tasted the soup and found that it was spicy and tasty but needed salt and something else. The something was about a tablespoon of tomato paste and another of Sartain's Menu Sauce to give it a tad more heat, smoke and body. Next, two small chopped ripe tomatoes from far, far away. And, finally, a handful of corn chips to add crunch to the slurp.

Warm, hearty and sustaining, layer by layer, it brought the warmth of sunshine and light to our winter-chilled souls. OMG, it's alive! It's ali-i-i-i-ive!

Trying Tamales

Funny that after all these years of living in California and loving Mexican food as I do, I had never tried tamales. My friend the Mad Meat Genius decided I needed to remedy that so he brought me six lovely tamales made by a wonderful Mexican lady he knows.

We met at Catahoula for a cup of coffee and the tamale exchange even though he had been sick for a week and was still feeling pretty shaky. He is a good man.

He said that all I needed to do was to heat them briefly in the microwave and serve them with a little hot sauce. He even provided the hot sauce, about which I will write tomorrow.

Then, he learned that I had never had homemade frijoles refritos (refried beans) and the look on his face was one of classic disbelief. Never?? So, he gave me a quick rundown of his recipe, pointed me toward a tiny Salvadorean market up the street where I could purchase the traditional pinto beans, made me promise faithfully to try them, and retired to his bed to rest up for his next Meat Adventure.

I snagged the last package of pintos from the little market and took my loot home. The beans need to soak for several hours so I covered them with water and went off to do other things, returning in the late afternoon to drain, then simmer them for an hour or so, until they were very soft. I also decided to make some Mexican rice to accompany the rest, which turned out to be a stellar idea. I had no recipe for the rice, so I winged it, just trying to duplicate the flavors I find when we eat at my favorite Mexican restaurant. I wasn't totally successful at copying but the rice I made was - dare I say? - even better.

The tamales were pure Mexican cielo - tender pork with green chilies, wrapped with corn masa and steamed inside the corn husks. We unwrapped the husks to find the masa imprinted with the texture of the wrapping, gently lifted out the tamales and dove in. No wonder Chilebrown wanted me to try these! Fantástico! We are deeply, deeply in his debt.

Mexican Rice

1 cup brown rice
1 Tbs butter
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 large onion, chopped
3 Tbs. chopped tomatoes, plus juice from the can (about 3 Tbs? of juice)
2 small minced sweet peppers, about 1/2 cup
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp chili powder

Melt the butter in a medium sized pot and sauté the onions in it for a few minutes. Add rice and toss in the oniony butter until coated and cook until the grains turn opaque, stirring frequently to avoid burning. Add the chicken stock and the rest of the ingredients, stirring to mix thoroughly, cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to simmer and keep covered. Brown rice takes a little longer to cook - about an hour.

Homemade Frijoles from Chilebrown's Directions

1/2 lb pinto beans
2 Tbs bacon fat
4 cups water
garlic salt to taste
about 1 cup water in which beans were cooked

Soak the beans for several hours, or overnight (Chilebrown doesn't soak his beans). Drain and place in a pot with water to cover by about an inch. Bring to a boil, then cover and lower heat to a simmer for about an hour, or until the beans are very soft and ready to be mashed. Drain the beans, reserving the cooking water.

Melt bacon fat in a wide frying pan (cast iron works well). Toss the drained beans in the bacon fat until well coated. With a potato masher, mash the beans, adding enough cooking liquid to achieve the desired consistency and continuing to mash and add liquid - the beans will absorb a surprising amount of the liquid. Sprinkle with garlic salt (Chilebrown just mentioned salt, but I got a nifty new garlic salt grinder for Christmas so I strayed into unknown territory here) to taste and mix it in. My refritos had more texture than I'm used to seeing in Mexican restaurants, more "rustic," but we actually liked that better. Serve hot. If had thought to include some sprigs of cilantro, this would have been a prettier picture.

Yankee Tostada

Okay, I'll admit it - I'm desperate for content. Having written 510 blog posts, I'm all out of ideas and I don't feel much like cooking, much less innovating, so I'm in big trouble. I found it interesting to learn that my capacity for food blogging topped out at 510, but I'm really not ready to stop, just stumped for a topic that seems interesting.

Luckily, I have this one more ace in the hole, the tostada appetizer I enjoyed at the River Tavern in Chester, CT and forgot to tell you about. It was delicious, but taking you back three weeks to CT seems a bit like cheating.

In the past when visiting the East, I never, ever ordered Mexican food because it was always atrocious. It seemed as though Easterners just didn't "get" Mexican food. In Rochester, NY where I lived for 20+ years, we always waited with bated breath for our trips to California to visit my first husband's parents, sometimes seemingly as much for the good Mexican and Chinese food as for contact with the parental units.

Now, however, the Mexican vibe has hit Connecticut. This corn tortilla was layered with roast pulled pork and all the traditional toppings of chopped onion, tomato, avocado and crisp lettuce, spiced up with fresh cilantro, hot sauce and a big squirt of lime juice. Maybe it wasn't exactly adventurous eating but it was excellent and a welcome change from New England fare.

The Rest of the Roast

Right after we roasted our standing rib of pig, the Bay area experienced a heat wave, so the idea of stir-frying the rest of the pork and serving it over hot rice just seemed like too much hell.

Luckily, my friend Annie had the solution. Annie and I have been friends since we were 13 and the internet has brought us closer even though she lives in very southern Arizona where this kind of heat is pretty common. I knew she'd have an idea for using up the pork that didn't include heating up the kitchen.

She suggested a Southwest-themed salad and her recipe sounded great, to wit:

1 can black beans, drained
diced onion, diced Anaheim chili
diced jalapeno (can omit if you don't like heat)
can of corn
some garlic
chopped, fresh cilantro
quartered cherry tomatoes (they aren't on the "killer" list)
one cooked chicken breast.

The dressing is lime juice and a little oil, salt and pepper. Shred the chicken breast and stir into the mix. Serve on chopped romaine lettuce.

I made only four small changes to this recipe. Grilled two ears of corn that I had on hand, rather than using canned corn, and cut it off the cob. Added cubed avocado because, to me, it's just not Southwest food if avocado is not involved. Used canned chilis because my little market didn't have fresh ones that day. And, substituted the left over pork roast for the chicken.

It was too hot for tossing the salad so I just offered it in bowls from which we heaped our plates according to our preferences. Served under the shade on the deck to catch the breeze off the water, it made a spectacular hot-day dinner and a fitting end for the rest of the roast.

Carnitas Heaven

Our three-pound pork shoulder roast was delicious but My Beloved and I are only two; when we cook a big hunk of pig like that, we get at least two and sometimes three or even four meals from it. This time, I decided to try making burritos as, now that I'm retired, I was missing the wonderful burritos I used to enjoy near my workplace.

I cubed and heated some of the pork, cooked Mexican rice from a recipe my friend Annie sent me from Arizona, and made salsa from Roma tomatoes, onion and a can of green chilies that was lurking in the pantry. Opened a can of black beans, sliced an avocado and some lettuce. Although my local supermarket had flour tortillas, which they call "wraps," I couldn't find real crema so I substituted creme fraiche (tells you something about my supermarket, doesn't it?) and it was quite good. Pile all that into the warmed tortilla sprinkled with a little shredded mild cheese and you have a honest-to-goodness feast! It wasn't as good as Castellito B makes but My Beloved had just returned from an overnight sales trip to Fresno and declared himself to be one lucky guy.