The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Recipes

Roasted cabbage salad with garlic-chipotle vinaigrette

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I didn’t realize it until this week, but when you buy one head of cabbage, you’re gonna be eating cabbage for awhile.

One head of purple cabbage gave me and Crayton four days worth of meals. We had cabbage curry on Sunday night, whereupon I put a wee bit too much chili powder, causing Crayton to cough and sputter, “I can’t breathe.” (He was fine in the end.)

The cabbage continued into the next day, with leftovers for lunch and roasted cabbage salad with asparagus for dinner. Then came more leftovers for lunch the next day. And roasted cabbage salad with carrots for dinner that night.

I finished the final leftovers yesterday and was kind of surprised my skin hadn’t turned purple.

So yes: roasted cabbage. It’s so good you actually can eat it several days in a row, without feeling bored or wishing that the infernal cabbage would just disappear.

Although I came up with the roasting idea myself (thought process = roasted veggies with raw cabbage… roasted veggies with roasted cabbage, whoa), other Internet food bloggers love roasted cabbage, too. “Gets rid of cabbage funk,” says The Kitchn, in its drool-worthy recipe for roasted cabbage with bacon. “If you like cabbage at all, I’m guessing you’ll love it,” wrote Kalyn of Kaylyn’s Kitchen. There’s really no excuse not to roast cabbage. Especially when you’ve got so darn much of it.

Because roasting any veg brings out its naturally sweet notes, I decided to pair this salad with a spicy dressing. Had a lot of garlic sitting around, so garlic and chipotle seemed like a natural choice. I turned to Rick Bayless’ Mexican Everyday to make sure I had my salad dressing proportions right.

The result — crunchy, toasty cabbage drizzled with a sweet, garlicky, spicy vinaigrette — was pretty darn fantastic. In fact, I might even say that the dressing made the whole dish. Crayton specifically mentioned how good it was. Guess he’d forgotten about the chili-powder incident.

Recipe is below, in case you ever find yourself with a gigantic head of cabbage and no where to turn.
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Homemade veggie enchiladas with quintoniles, corn, rajas and onion

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Just so you know what caliber of dish we’re dealing with here, I served these to Alice as leftovers last week. She took a few bites and said: “Lesley. I think this is the best thing you’ve ever made in Mexico.”

I’m sure it was the quintoniles. And the homemade tomato-based enchilada sauce.

I didn’t explain this very well in the other post, but quintoniles really like a lighter version of spinach. You don’t get any of the bitterness. None of the squeaky texture across your teeth. Just mild, mellow flavor. They’re like the Dazed and Confused green, just wanting everyone to relax and enjoy themselves.

This veggie combination came about somewhat randomly. Somehow, all the stars aligned and everything I hoped to happen, did: The enchiladas were hearty and light at the same time; sweet and salty; toothsome from the corn, and lightly fried tortillas.

Not to get all weird-bohemian-girl on you, but I felt a sense of time passing as I ate them. Like, suddenly it became very clear that the pre- and post-Mexico me had morphed into two different people.

This is because I have a little bit of a history with enchiladas. In my 20s, when I lived in Texas, enchiladas were one of my “go-to” dishes. I’d dip the tortillas in canned sauce, blanket them with cheese and bake them. Sometimes I’d wear an embroidered Mexican blouse as I cooked, just to let people know, you know, that I was Mexican-American.

People would ooh and ahh when the dish came out of the oven. I’d think: I am so proud of myself for serving real Mexican food from scratch.

And here I am today. The two things I’d always wanted — to live in Mexico, and speak Spanish — have happened. I know more about Mexican food than I ever thought I would, and most of what I truly enjoy is nothing like the cheese concoction I used to make. (My favorite Mexican dishes don’t have any cheese at all.)

I still wear my Mexican blouse, but just because I like how it looks, not because I want to express any overt cultural connection.

Really, I’m just more confident in myself. And my cooking.

Funny how one bite of food can stir up all that, no?

Here’s the recipe.
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How to make homemade enchilada sauce in three easy steps

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Whenever I ate enchiladas growing up — which means whenever my mom decided to make them, around once a year — we used canned sauce.

It was completely fine. I had no problems.

When it finally occurred to me as an adult that one could make homemade sauce (and that it would perhaps be better to make one’s own sauce if you were living in Mexico), I had no desire to. That would take like two days of roasting and grinding and stewing, right?

Wrong.

I had an epiphany a few days ago that changed my whole enchilada outlook: it’s possible to make a really good sauce — eons above of the canned stuff — in about 30 minutes.

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How to make chiles rellenos, Mexican-grandmother style

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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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Millet risotto with leeks, chilacayote and melted gruyere

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When we moved a few weekends ago, I found a bag of millet that I’d forgotten about, wedged into a corner of my three-drawer pantry-on-wheels.

Millet is a nutty, whole-grain that’s produced mainly in Asia. I bought some last year at the Korean grocery store, not knowing exactly what I’d do with it. Fast forward 10 months later (cannot believe my Korean grocery store trip was already almost a year ago), and I’d done exactly nothing with it. Except stumble upon it and toss it into a moving box.

At our new apartment, living amid all the cardboard and dust was making me crave something homemade and comforting. A risotto. Mind you, I’ve never made risotto before. But how hard could it be? (Heh heh.) I consulted the Internet, and it confirmed — there were several recipes for millet risotto out there. Although the American blogosphere millet looked different than mine. Theirs was yellow; mine was white with brown speckles. (Perhaps mine was one of the “minor millets” mentioned in this Wikipedia article.)

Years ago, I made big pot of buttery polenta with leeks, and it was so fantastic that I knew I had to have leeks in my millet risotto. Found a leek at my local mercado, and also decided to throw in a few veggies that were ripening in the fridge: chilacayote and a serrano pepper. Chilacayote is a round, mildly sweet squash that’s native to Latin America. They look kind of like mini watermelons, with a thin skin instead of a rind.

I didn’t have any Parmesan (the go-to cheese topper for a risotto), but I did have gruyere. And although I didn’t have white wine, I did have Chinese cooking wine.

Exhilirated and flying by the seat of my pants, I whipped up my risotto over the course of an hour. It turned out great: nutty and full of texture (just slightly harder than your usual rice), with this intoxicating, light boozy smell, and of course, covered in cheese. I sat and watched our newly installed cable and was perfectly happy with life, even if my life at the moment happened to be cardboard-filled and dust-covered.

Recipe below.
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Tostilocos: The Mexico street food nacho, Frito-pie hybrid

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A few days ago, my friend Jesica told me about a video she’d seen on YouTube. A Mexican guy had filmed a short segment on Tostilocos, a street food in which a bag of nacho-flavored Tostitos are cut open along the vertical and then topped with the following: cucumber, pickled pork skin (known as cueritos), lime juice, Valentina hot sauce, chamoy, tajín chile powder, salt and Japanese peanuts. Japanese peanuts are a popular Mexican bar snack — they’re regular peanuts covered in a brown, crunchy shell.

“Es una bomba de sodio!” Jesica exclaimed, a little gleefully. Translation: It’s a sodium bomb!

We are both advocates of eating healthy. But, you know, this whole idea of taking a bag of chips and topping them with various condiments fascinated me. This dish recalled Frito Pie — the Texan specialty in which chili and cheese are poured over an open bag of Fritos — but it was so much crazier, all the salty condiments so insanely Mexican. I wondered if I could recreate this magic dish at home, maybe using bacon instead of cueritos. It’s not that I didn’t want to use cueritos — I personally enjoy their rubbery texture — but I wasn’t exactly sure where to find them at my local supermarket.

Before I get to the recipe part of this post, you really must watch the Tostilocos video. My favorite part is the end, when the host chews thoughtfully and says, in a manner that recalls an Iron Chef judge, “Wow. This is a completely new taste. The mix is — just spectacular. You can become addicted to this.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU4N-METflY&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

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Deliciously smutty huitlacoche quesadillas

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While in Xochimilco a few weekends ago, I picked up some fresh huitlacoche from a stand outside the market. Huitlacoche means “corn smut” in English (ha!), and it’s a fungus that grows on corn in blue-black, mushroomy clumps. People like to call huitlacoche “the Mexican truffle,” but I’m not entirely sure how true that is, given that corn smut is pretty cheap and eaten by the mouthful, while truffles are insanely expensive and shaved onto fancy pasta dishes. Anyway.

I’ve had huitlacoche quesadillas at markets in Mexico City, and to be completely honest, I haven’t always liked them. Sometimes they have an intensely earthy taste, like mushrooms on steroids. And they can be very slimy. The good news is that huitlacoche is actually packed with vitamins, according to a recent Associated Press report. It has the same types of soluble fibers as oatmeal, the same ones that have been found to lower cholesterol.

I had never bought fresh huitlacoche, because I wasn’t totally in love with the taste. But they looked so pretty sitting on the Xochimilco tabletop. They had this kind of iridescent bluish color, and they were these round, spongey tufts. I just wanted to touch them. Ruth, ever my culinary door-opener, told me huitlacoche was easy to cook — just mix it with some onion, corn kernels and chicken stock, and simmer for about 20 minutes.

So that’s exactly what I did.

And Ruth was right — it was easy.

By the way, there are lots of debates going on right now about whether “fast and easy” is the death knell of American culinary culture. I tend to believe that fast and easy shouldn’t be the top priority in the kitchen; the most important rule is to cook with fresh ingredients. So yes, this dish was fast, but my first rule was met: I had fresh huitlacoche and fresh corn.

I heated some oil in a skillet, and then added the onion, smut, corn kernels and stock. Simmered everything for about 30 minutes, until the plump bits of huitlacoche had deflated a bit and turned black and slimy. Added more stock whenever the mixture looked too dry.

It looked like of like a pile of shredded, motor-oil soaked rags when it was done. (Oily rags dotted with yellow corn.) But the taste was unlike any other huitlacoche I’ve tried. It was only delicately earthy, not knock-you-over-the-head earthy. Moreover, combined with the cheese, it was almost decadent — a soft, cheesy pile of vegetables, whispering of mushrooms and corn. Gave some to Crayton for lunch two days in a row — a rarity for me, because I like to mix it up — and he loved it.

Huitlacoche is apparently very abundant in Mexico’s rainy season; for more recipe ideas, check out the wonderful Karen Hursh Graber at MexConnect. My simple little recipe is below. This is great as a light dinner, or as an appetizer.
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Mexican “sopa” with spinach and panela cheese

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“Sopa” technically means soup in Spanish, but in Mexico there are two types: sopa seca, which often refers to dry rice or noodles, and sopa aguada, which has a traditional, soupy base.

My mom made the noodle sopa a lot when I was a kid. She’d fried conch shell noodles and onion until they were a deep golden-brown, and then steam the crispy mixture in a mix of tomato puree and water. I always loved the moment when the water hit the hot pan. The pan would hiss loudly — sssssssss! — and I’d stare at the stove, wondering what had caused the dish to become so angry.

When made right, the noodles end up plump and al dente, with bits of tomato sauce clinging to their insides. I love this dish topped with sauteed spinach and crumbles of Mexican panela cheese.

Ingredients

1 200g package of dry conch shells (about 1 1/2 cups)
4 slices of onion
1 210g box tomato sauce, known in Mexico as tomato puree (about 1 cup)
3 cups water
6 to 8 cups spinach leaves
A hunk of panela cheese, or any other mild white cheese, crumbled
Salt

Directions

In a heavy-bottomed sauce pan, heat a few glugs of canola oil over medium-high heat, until shimmering. Add onion and noodles and cook, stirring almost constantly for 1 to 3 minutes so they don’t burn. Cook the onion-noodle mixture for about five minutes, or until the edges start to turn a deep golden brown. (It’s okay if the onion burns a little, my mom says.)

Working quickly, add your tomato sauce and water to the pan, and salt to taste. Stir to combine. Cover and lower the heat; simmer for about 15 minutes, or until noodles have soaked up all of their sauce. Feel free to take the lid off and peek on it once in awhile, if you’re unsure; it won’t hurt the dish.

When the pasta is done, rinse and spin dry the spinach leaves, and heat a small amount of olive oil in a skillet. When the oil is hot, add your leaves and sauté until they’re wilted but still a deep green color. Scrape the hot sautéed spinach into separate bowls, top with few scoops of sopa and the crumbled panela cheese. Serve warm.