Good morning!
I said to myself that I would not bother with politics on this blog, first because I don't know anything about it really, and second because it is a frustrating subject. But I must mention that I do read James Howard Kunstler's blog every Monday when he puts it out, and he is concerned about what's going on in Egypt. (Not to mention Yemen, etc.) His big point today: possible closure of the Suez Canal, whence all our oil passes on its way to the neighborhood gas pump.
"We lose ten percent of our oil and that's all she wrote around here," says he, and he is referring to our "kingdom of freeways" entire, not just the Saratoga, NY region.
I hope I am not breaking any laws by quoting that out of today's blog. Think about it, folks. We are living in a precarious state, that is for certain, when our whole American way of life depends so closely on the behavior in some countries far around the world.
And now, on a related topic, the Governor of California has sadly said that he is probably going to have to close the State Parks of California. Padlock the gates. I only hope they don't get sold off for resorts for the very wealthy. They could be; it happens, doesn't it? California is broke, and it is essential that great cuts are made in our expenditures....Well, I would rather that the mentally ill receive the care that they need, I guess. But guess what, their care will be cut too.
Yesterday at church, the Forum was about unexpected change in our lives. The I Ching would say, I told you so. We split into little groups, which I always hate, though the little groups are always so valuable that I am never sorry I was in on one. The changes we heard about were all just common life situations: separation, loneliness, sudden severe illness. All touching, all involving suffering humanity. There were five of us in our little group, and we went around the circle. Guess who didn't have to say anything, because time ran out? Right. Good.
I was zonked at church yesterday because we went out on Saturday night to a movie. I am not used to the night life any more. The movie we saw was The Way Back, which title reminds me, sadly, of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. This movie is a National Geographic Movie, they told us, but they did not have to tell us that. That's what it is. It's about some men who escape from a gulag in Siberia during WW II, and walk over Siberia, Manchuria, China, and India...along the way being joined by a very young woman who is also an escapee from the Soviets. I loved the scenery. I hated it at the beginning when the hero realizes he has been ratted out by his wife (as she was tortured), and I shut my eyes and ears and missed that part. I hated it when some of them had to die. I liked the Russian crook best of all, and also loved Ed Harris who has grown remarkably old in a short time. I did not like how healthy they all looked in the Gulag as they played cards at night. Not the way they would have been, with loose bloody teeth, sores, and shedding hair. On the trek, I liked the walking, as they did a lot of it and you had a good sense of how many actual steps men had to take before we had cars. (Back to Kunstler.) Would I recommend you go see it? Yes. Nothing to fear. YAZZYBEL
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
¡ Arroz !
Good morning...I am still writing about rice today because I realized yesterday after I posted that I had more to say. This time under the category of words.
That upside down exclamation point up there is made with Alt 173, in case you want to make one. It is essential in Spanish orthography.
"Arroz" is rice in Spanish, and it is a word connected with one of my earliest memories. In my memory, it is noon time, and I am alone with my baby sister in an upstairs room in a large house. Rare that we would ever be left alone for long enough for me to note it. I am standing in an airy shadowy room, and my baby sister is jumping up and down in her baby bed, crying out, "¡ Arroz, arroz!"
That wonderful Mexican rice smell I mentioned yesterday is coming up the stairs and filling the house. Someone comes and we are taken to lunch, I guess. I must have been two and a half years old in this memory, as my nameless sister was probably a year old. We all began to talk early in our family, and talk we did. I am grateful to my sister for this expression of anticipation, as it set this moment in my memory forever. We moved a lot as kids after this, and had more sisters, but at this time we lived in a large graceful house in Brownsville, Texas. My mother was pretty happy. She had two maids, and two maids are better than one, if thay can get along.
The maids were named Lila (pronounced in the Spanish pronunciation) and Ambrosia....what beautiful names for two short dumpy women. Lila was bright and peppery as to temperament as became an excellent cook. And Ambrosia was well named, a very sweet docile person who got along well with my mother and with Lila, a miracle in both cases. We loved Ambrosia and enjoyed Lila, who was not ever entrusted with our care...but we saw her around. I remember both these ladies very well, as they both came to work on and off later on in our childhoods when we were not so well off as to live in a large cool house nor have two maids..
Why maids, you ask? Everyone had one if they were anyone at all. In Brownsville I have even known maids who had maids, probably more of them than you'd think. Someone had to watch her kids while she was working. A well-run household needs a maid. In American culture, the wife is ideally the maid, which explains a lot of the unhappiness in our country. I was never a maid, and am not one to this day, which probably explains much of my precarious relationship with marriage.
When my father and mother married, he told her that she would always have a maid. The priorities in our household were these: 1) food and shelter, 2) a maid for my mother, 3) everything else. My parents stuck to this model all their married life except for some years in my early childhood when the Depression struck South Texas with its bitter force and my mother and somebody and I went to live with our American grandparents in San Benito, while my father lived and worked in Mexico.
So you can see that rice encompasses a lot more of life than just being a comestible. Who cooks it, how it's cooked and appreciated, just opens a window to a life you might never have known. When I decided yesterday to write this part of the rice story, I wondered for the first time, Say, how did rice come to Spain anyway? Of course, it came via North Africa and those resourceful Moors who so plague our imaginations today. But how did it get to North Africa? It has to grow in paddies, doesn't it? Actually, it does not have to grow underwater, though that was the culture developed for it in the East. The answer is, our ancestors were a lot more peripatetic than we realize. They went all over the place and they traded. They loved rice wherever it arrived. The Moors' word for it was al-ruzz.
Good word. I love it already. And the Spaniards took away the awkward "l-r" sound and elided it into arroz. Que viva el "¡Arroz, arroz, arroz!" YAZZYBEL
That upside down exclamation point up there is made with Alt 173, in case you want to make one. It is essential in Spanish orthography.
"Arroz" is rice in Spanish, and it is a word connected with one of my earliest memories. In my memory, it is noon time, and I am alone with my baby sister in an upstairs room in a large house. Rare that we would ever be left alone for long enough for me to note it. I am standing in an airy shadowy room, and my baby sister is jumping up and down in her baby bed, crying out, "¡ Arroz, arroz!"
That wonderful Mexican rice smell I mentioned yesterday is coming up the stairs and filling the house. Someone comes and we are taken to lunch, I guess. I must have been two and a half years old in this memory, as my nameless sister was probably a year old. We all began to talk early in our family, and talk we did. I am grateful to my sister for this expression of anticipation, as it set this moment in my memory forever. We moved a lot as kids after this, and had more sisters, but at this time we lived in a large graceful house in Brownsville, Texas. My mother was pretty happy. She had two maids, and two maids are better than one, if thay can get along.
The maids were named Lila (pronounced in the Spanish pronunciation) and Ambrosia....what beautiful names for two short dumpy women. Lila was bright and peppery as to temperament as became an excellent cook. And Ambrosia was well named, a very sweet docile person who got along well with my mother and with Lila, a miracle in both cases. We loved Ambrosia and enjoyed Lila, who was not ever entrusted with our care...but we saw her around. I remember both these ladies very well, as they both came to work on and off later on in our childhoods when we were not so well off as to live in a large cool house nor have two maids..
Why maids, you ask? Everyone had one if they were anyone at all. In Brownsville I have even known maids who had maids, probably more of them than you'd think. Someone had to watch her kids while she was working. A well-run household needs a maid. In American culture, the wife is ideally the maid, which explains a lot of the unhappiness in our country. I was never a maid, and am not one to this day, which probably explains much of my precarious relationship with marriage.
When my father and mother married, he told her that she would always have a maid. The priorities in our household were these: 1) food and shelter, 2) a maid for my mother, 3) everything else. My parents stuck to this model all their married life except for some years in my early childhood when the Depression struck South Texas with its bitter force and my mother and somebody and I went to live with our American grandparents in San Benito, while my father lived and worked in Mexico.
So you can see that rice encompasses a lot more of life than just being a comestible. Who cooks it, how it's cooked and appreciated, just opens a window to a life you might never have known. When I decided yesterday to write this part of the rice story, I wondered for the first time, Say, how did rice come to Spain anyway? Of course, it came via North Africa and those resourceful Moors who so plague our imaginations today. But how did it get to North Africa? It has to grow in paddies, doesn't it? Actually, it does not have to grow underwater, though that was the culture developed for it in the East. The answer is, our ancestors were a lot more peripatetic than we realize. They went all over the place and they traded. They loved rice wherever it arrived. The Moors' word for it was al-ruzz.
Good word. I love it already. And the Spaniards took away the awkward "l-r" sound and elided it into arroz. Que viva el "¡Arroz, arroz, arroz!" YAZZYBEL
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Mexican Rice
Good morning!
Here we are at last with Mexican Rice, another of the crowning glories of border cuisine.
My mother made wonderful Mexican Rice, even though my father wouldn't eat onions and she had to leave them out of everything. I don't recall her ever using canned broth in it either, though now I regard it as a good idea. When I grew up and asked her how she made it, she referred me to my father's sister, my aunt Maria Longoria, because "Maria makes perfect Mexican rice."
So I went to Maria's and asked for a demonstration, and that sweetest of ladies obliged. In her fusty and dark little kitchen, somewhat like most of the places where I have ever done my cooking, she showed me exactly how to make it.
Here's how to make it.
First, you put some fat in a pan, just a small amount. And put in, say, 1 1/2 cups rice, more or less. We always used long-grain Texas white rice. The fire must not be too hot, for the rice must not brown. You are going for uniformly white, tinged with gold. Take it off the fire.
Comino is important to Mexican rice. Cumin seeds. My mom would add a knife-tip of ground comino toward the last of her cooking years, but when I was young she used the seeds. Put the comino seeds in the skillet at this point, and continue to stir the rice over a low fire. DO NOT BURN THEM. They are toasted when that great smell begins to arise. At this point you add a small tomato which you have thoughtfully cubed ahead of time, ditto some small amount of onion and or garlic, or green pepper, as you like. Continue to stir and do not brown the rice. You are cooking the rich tomato-comino-onion-garlic scents into the rice. At this point, add boiling water and some salt and let the mixture boil up.
You may now cover the pan and leave the heat on low, or leave the lid off and let it boil down. No mystique here, either way will do. When it is about done, cover and let steam to its wonderful end. Some ladies have told me about lifting the lid to add three dashes of cold water at the end, and covering again. I haven't found that necessary. You will have a wonderful dish of rice. Remember, not too much tomato (my Aunt Maria emphasized that) and don't burn anything.
When I was in Paris I was in my room at lunchtime, and that wonderful aroma rose up from the buildings outside my room. Unmistakeable. I later realized that I was in the Algerian neighborhood, and of course! That delicious dish has been prepared every day, just that way, in North Africa and all around the Mediterranean and Spain---and to the New World. Thanks, my ancestors!!
The best part is that you should make too much, for it reheats wonderfully. My mother reheated it in an aluminum pie pan in the oven. The outside edges get a little charred and crispy and the whole thing is more delicious than ever.
You can also, the day you first make it, add chicken, shrimp or any meat to cook into it. Brown the chicken first. I would. More glorified, it's called Paella in
Spain. In Texas it was Arroz con--Pollo, Camaron, or whatever else you put into it. Lots of Mexican housewives add cubes of peas, carrots, or peas-and-carrots from a little can. Delicious.
My son Alexander, who is a good cook, received that recipe from me when he was a young man living in Seattle, and he made it my way for years. Later, however, he became corrupted by low class Mexican restaurants who ignored all those strictures above, and simply added a lot of tomato sauce and water to the seasonings (no comino either that I could taste) and boiled 'er down. At the last they topped it with a lot of cheese for they have discovered that Americans will eat anything. It tastes good, but it's not Mexican Rice.
If I were skinny and hungry, I'd use some cheese, assuming I needed the calories. I might also top frijoles with cheese. IF I needed food. I am against topping everything with cheese willy-nilly. And I really hate the American custom ot topping everything with melted cheese, especially meat--even hamburgers. I have seen plates of Mexican food served at restaurants that were invisible under a huge cloak of melted cheese. Awful. I think the food should be distinguishable from the garnish, don't you? YAZZYBEL
Here we are at last with Mexican Rice, another of the crowning glories of border cuisine.
My mother made wonderful Mexican Rice, even though my father wouldn't eat onions and she had to leave them out of everything. I don't recall her ever using canned broth in it either, though now I regard it as a good idea. When I grew up and asked her how she made it, she referred me to my father's sister, my aunt Maria Longoria, because "Maria makes perfect Mexican rice."
So I went to Maria's and asked for a demonstration, and that sweetest of ladies obliged. In her fusty and dark little kitchen, somewhat like most of the places where I have ever done my cooking, she showed me exactly how to make it.
Here's how to make it.
First, you put some fat in a pan, just a small amount. And put in, say, 1 1/2 cups rice, more or less. We always used long-grain Texas white rice. The fire must not be too hot, for the rice must not brown. You are going for uniformly white, tinged with gold. Take it off the fire.
Comino is important to Mexican rice. Cumin seeds. My mom would add a knife-tip of ground comino toward the last of her cooking years, but when I was young she used the seeds. Put the comino seeds in the skillet at this point, and continue to stir the rice over a low fire. DO NOT BURN THEM. They are toasted when that great smell begins to arise. At this point you add a small tomato which you have thoughtfully cubed ahead of time, ditto some small amount of onion and or garlic, or green pepper, as you like. Continue to stir and do not brown the rice. You are cooking the rich tomato-comino-onion-garlic scents into the rice. At this point, add boiling water and some salt and let the mixture boil up.
You may now cover the pan and leave the heat on low, or leave the lid off and let it boil down. No mystique here, either way will do. When it is about done, cover and let steam to its wonderful end. Some ladies have told me about lifting the lid to add three dashes of cold water at the end, and covering again. I haven't found that necessary. You will have a wonderful dish of rice. Remember, not too much tomato (my Aunt Maria emphasized that) and don't burn anything.
When I was in Paris I was in my room at lunchtime, and that wonderful aroma rose up from the buildings outside my room. Unmistakeable. I later realized that I was in the Algerian neighborhood, and of course! That delicious dish has been prepared every day, just that way, in North Africa and all around the Mediterranean and Spain---and to the New World. Thanks, my ancestors!!
The best part is that you should make too much, for it reheats wonderfully. My mother reheated it in an aluminum pie pan in the oven. The outside edges get a little charred and crispy and the whole thing is more delicious than ever.
You can also, the day you first make it, add chicken, shrimp or any meat to cook into it. Brown the chicken first. I would. More glorified, it's called Paella in
Spain. In Texas it was Arroz con--Pollo, Camaron, or whatever else you put into it. Lots of Mexican housewives add cubes of peas, carrots, or peas-and-carrots from a little can. Delicious.
My son Alexander, who is a good cook, received that recipe from me when he was a young man living in Seattle, and he made it my way for years. Later, however, he became corrupted by low class Mexican restaurants who ignored all those strictures above, and simply added a lot of tomato sauce and water to the seasonings (no comino either that I could taste) and boiled 'er down. At the last they topped it with a lot of cheese for they have discovered that Americans will eat anything. It tastes good, but it's not Mexican Rice.
If I were skinny and hungry, I'd use some cheese, assuming I needed the calories. I might also top frijoles with cheese. IF I needed food. I am against topping everything with cheese willy-nilly. And I really hate the American custom ot topping everything with melted cheese, especially meat--even hamburgers. I have seen plates of Mexican food served at restaurants that were invisible under a huge cloak of melted cheese. Awful. I think the food should be distinguishable from the garnish, don't you? YAZZYBEL
Friday, January 28, 2011
Cornbread
Good morning!
Yes, cornbread deserves a day all to itself. I will give you the best cornbread recipe I've found in the great wide world. I give it to you with qualifications, that is, my own amendments and cautions.
You really need an iron skillet to bake it in, but little corncob pans, muffin tins, and plain old Mirro baking pans will turn out a fine panful.
Here is the caution. I do not use yellow cornmeal, yet we must use it. ALL American yellow cornmeal is now genetically modified , I have been reading. NO American white cornmeal is now genetically modified. So it makes sense to me to use the white. European cornmeals, which are not made from genetically modified corn, are pretty available too if you look. I shall use white cornmeal in place of yellow now, mostly.
Recipe:
1 c. cornmeal
1/2 c. flour
1 t. salt
Put the above into mixing bowl, unmixed.
Then add 1 c. buttermilk, sour milk, sour cream...or as I often do: milk with 1 T. apple cider vinegar stirred into it.
1/2 c. milk or even water
1 egg
1 T. baking powder
1/2 t. soda
1/4 c. melted shortening, cooled down
Just add that in on top of the dry mixture.
PUT YOUR PAN, well greased, into the oven for a few minutes. Or, as I do, melt the butter or shortening in the iron skillet then pour out and cool before adding to the dry ingredients. Warm up your skillet, stir up all the above quickly and thoroughly, and pour into the pan. Put it into an oven that you have already heated to 450 degrees. That's hot. Cook it until it is done. It will be brown on the bottom and delicious all the way through.
My mother made great cornbread, but never gave me a recipe for it. She had just learned how to do it and did it. Her one stricture was, never never to put sugar into it. "The Yankees put sugar in their cornbread, but we never do." Yes, the Yankees still existed in our household in my childhood...Mainly the way not to do things. We always peeled tomatoes before serving them. The Yankees did not. And we never put sugar into whipped cream, and the Yankees did that too. In Texas you can still buy areosol real whipped cream that is not sweetened (though I can't ever find it in CA) so I know that those Yankees were not a figment of our imagination.
Before I blow this communique away altogether (as I did a couple of days ago and had to start from scratch)...I'll go to my very favorite cornbread. I asked my mother how to make it when I was young, and she said, "Put some white cornmeal into a mixing bowl, and add salt." How much? You should be able to figure it out. In the meanwhile you are boiling up a great deal of water. Mix the cornmeal and salt and pour on a lot of boiling water. Stir it up. Pour on more. Stir. Pour on more. It's astounding how much water a couple of cups of white cornmeal can absorb, gently cooking itself in the process. When it's just right, you take out a little of it and make a small oval patty. Repeat.
In the black iron skillet, she'd melted an inch or so of Crisco, which in those days was made of hydrogenated cottonseed oil. She would put those little patties into the oil and fry them, first on one side and then on the other. They were golden, crisp, and perfect for nibbling. I am trying to remember whether or not she dipped them into flour before putting them into the frying pan. Maybe she did. I have not tried to make them for years, of course, since fat has been discovered to be a devil in disguise. Thank goodness some of that opinion seems to be changing. But I'll not be making those wonderful little cornbreads any time soon, sadly. YAZZYBEL
Yes, cornbread deserves a day all to itself. I will give you the best cornbread recipe I've found in the great wide world. I give it to you with qualifications, that is, my own amendments and cautions.
You really need an iron skillet to bake it in, but little corncob pans, muffin tins, and plain old Mirro baking pans will turn out a fine panful.
Here is the caution. I do not use yellow cornmeal, yet we must use it. ALL American yellow cornmeal is now genetically modified , I have been reading. NO American white cornmeal is now genetically modified. So it makes sense to me to use the white. European cornmeals, which are not made from genetically modified corn, are pretty available too if you look. I shall use white cornmeal in place of yellow now, mostly.
Recipe:
1 c. cornmeal
1/2 c. flour
1 t. salt
Put the above into mixing bowl, unmixed.
Then add 1 c. buttermilk, sour milk, sour cream...or as I often do: milk with 1 T. apple cider vinegar stirred into it.
1/2 c. milk or even water
1 egg
1 T. baking powder
1/2 t. soda
1/4 c. melted shortening, cooled down
Just add that in on top of the dry mixture.
PUT YOUR PAN, well greased, into the oven for a few minutes. Or, as I do, melt the butter or shortening in the iron skillet then pour out and cool before adding to the dry ingredients. Warm up your skillet, stir up all the above quickly and thoroughly, and pour into the pan. Put it into an oven that you have already heated to 450 degrees. That's hot. Cook it until it is done. It will be brown on the bottom and delicious all the way through.
My mother made great cornbread, but never gave me a recipe for it. She had just learned how to do it and did it. Her one stricture was, never never to put sugar into it. "The Yankees put sugar in their cornbread, but we never do." Yes, the Yankees still existed in our household in my childhood...Mainly the way not to do things. We always peeled tomatoes before serving them. The Yankees did not. And we never put sugar into whipped cream, and the Yankees did that too. In Texas you can still buy areosol real whipped cream that is not sweetened (though I can't ever find it in CA) so I know that those Yankees were not a figment of our imagination.
Before I blow this communique away altogether (as I did a couple of days ago and had to start from scratch)...I'll go to my very favorite cornbread. I asked my mother how to make it when I was young, and she said, "Put some white cornmeal into a mixing bowl, and add salt." How much? You should be able to figure it out. In the meanwhile you are boiling up a great deal of water. Mix the cornmeal and salt and pour on a lot of boiling water. Stir it up. Pour on more. Stir. Pour on more. It's astounding how much water a couple of cups of white cornmeal can absorb, gently cooking itself in the process. When it's just right, you take out a little of it and make a small oval patty. Repeat.
In the black iron skillet, she'd melted an inch or so of Crisco, which in those days was made of hydrogenated cottonseed oil. She would put those little patties into the oil and fry them, first on one side and then on the other. They were golden, crisp, and perfect for nibbling. I am trying to remember whether or not she dipped them into flour before putting them into the frying pan. Maybe she did. I have not tried to make them for years, of course, since fat has been discovered to be a devil in disguise. Thank goodness some of that opinion seems to be changing. But I'll not be making those wonderful little cornbreads any time soon, sadly. YAZZYBEL
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wonderful Pinto Bean
Today I write in praise of the pinto bean. Every kid in South Texas, whether they had a Mexican heritage or not, grew up eating this delicious bean every day. My sisters and I decided long ago that if we had to choose a very limited diet, we'd choose to have this for every dinner of our life:
Beans, rice, corn tortillas. Now I 'd have to add, "salsa.".
The pinto is a bean of wonderful silken texture and delicious flavor. If you look on the web, you can see that there are "May" beans, and "June" beans, and who knows how many others.
The important thing is that you buy your beans from a bin, where your grocer has put a large order of beans that he bought from a grower. Beans in plastic packages can be old. Five year old frijoles can be cooked, but let's not if we don't have to. Beans, being a natural crop, tend to be harvested over the summer, so the sooner after June that you get them, the fresher and newer they are.
I have a small family now (Taterton and me) so I would not cook more than three cups of dried pinto beans at a time. Take your two or three cups of beans and carefully wash them under the tap. My mother used to do hers in a colander and I quite remember the specific musical rattle as the beans were washed before she went to bed. In those days, frijoles were often very dusty and had lots of foreign objects among them, like rocks. Clink, clink, she would pick out a little stone and throw it away. Wash, wash, and then they were poured into a cooking vessel, covered with water, to soak overnight. She often had eight or more people to feed, so she cooked quite a few at a time.
On the next morning, she'd turn up a gentle flame on the stove and the beans would cook. Contrary to modern prescriptions, she did not throw out the soaking water and start with fresh. Makes sense to me; vitamins went into that soaking water. She thought it made the beans more flavorful. We were not allowed to have gas, so that issue was not a consideration.
Mother did not add anything to the beans until they were quite soft, perfectly cooked, with their jackets intact. They were pale pinkish-brown, and even unsalted they were good. She added salt when she was through boiling them, and sometimes she added some of the bacon grease that always resided in a container near the stove. I have often added a small piece of butter at the last, la creme de la creme of beans. I also take a "masher" from the kitchen drawer and mash a few of the beans to thicken the water. With a nice hot piece of buttered cornbread that is all they need.
When you make "frijoles al pastor," shepherd-style, you add chopped cilantro, epazote if you have it, salt, pepper, chiles, onion and tomato at the last of the simmering to get a rich, delicious bean soup. I usually wait for the next day, heat-up day, to add those elements, as I love the flavor of the plain beans. Those beans are good with tortillas, or, again, the cornbread. I store my beans in a glass container in the refrigerator, as soon as they are cool enough.
A friend of mine told about growing up on his grandparents' ranch in Mexico, where every morning his grandmother went out to a cooking fire, to a vast iron cauldron filled with beans and water, and boiled them up. Everyone who came by partook of those beans: family, workers, guests, sojourners. Last thing she did every night was to scrub out the empty pot and prepare for the same thing next day...wonderful riches. Largesse.
I now use an electric pot, an old Sunbeam fryer, with perfect heat control after seventy years, to cook my beans. I put in the soaked beans and water, and set the control to "300." When they begin to boil, I put them to the R of "Simmer." Sometimes a little lower, like the E. They simmer away for some time. It takes less time to cook beans now, as I think they are not old dried beans, but new dried beans that we're getting. THIS IS IMPORTANT: a maid taught me a great tip. Turn the lid of the cooking vessel upside down on the pot and fill it with water..The water will evaporate out of the lid first; you can see it and keep it filled up. Your beans will never burn, unless you are really unobservant and let the water boil away out of the lid. Then they will burn. You might as well tip them out, they won't be worth eating then.
Refried beans, to be really good, have to literally be fried in a large skillet with some bacon grease or other real fat, and mashed and stirred until they thicken up and have a very rich taste. They used to be served as a dessert in Mexico when I was a kid. The pallid mock-ups you get out of a can now are kind of sad by comparison.
Don't get me started on black beans. I do not like them. I heard such raves about then when I was a young cook. We'd never eaten them at home, so I was moving into unknown territory. I was excited at making something exotic and delicious. Bah. Black beans have no flavor of their own that I can detect. They have deceived the American people by pretending that their gorgeous black beauty is a substitute for taste. Black beans, yellow corn, and red peppers are a feast for the eye. Sometimes I think that if I have another offering of them, I 'll run screaming from the table. Anazasi beans are another such. I was excited about eating those too; an offering from the native Americans in our history. Nope. Give me the humble pinto every time. Tomorrow: Cornbread. YAZZYBEL
Beans, rice, corn tortillas. Now I 'd have to add, "salsa.".
The pinto is a bean of wonderful silken texture and delicious flavor. If you look on the web, you can see that there are "May" beans, and "June" beans, and who knows how many others.
The important thing is that you buy your beans from a bin, where your grocer has put a large order of beans that he bought from a grower. Beans in plastic packages can be old. Five year old frijoles can be cooked, but let's not if we don't have to. Beans, being a natural crop, tend to be harvested over the summer, so the sooner after June that you get them, the fresher and newer they are.
I have a small family now (Taterton and me) so I would not cook more than three cups of dried pinto beans at a time. Take your two or three cups of beans and carefully wash them under the tap. My mother used to do hers in a colander and I quite remember the specific musical rattle as the beans were washed before she went to bed. In those days, frijoles were often very dusty and had lots of foreign objects among them, like rocks. Clink, clink, she would pick out a little stone and throw it away. Wash, wash, and then they were poured into a cooking vessel, covered with water, to soak overnight. She often had eight or more people to feed, so she cooked quite a few at a time.
On the next morning, she'd turn up a gentle flame on the stove and the beans would cook. Contrary to modern prescriptions, she did not throw out the soaking water and start with fresh. Makes sense to me; vitamins went into that soaking water. She thought it made the beans more flavorful. We were not allowed to have gas, so that issue was not a consideration.
Mother did not add anything to the beans until they were quite soft, perfectly cooked, with their jackets intact. They were pale pinkish-brown, and even unsalted they were good. She added salt when she was through boiling them, and sometimes she added some of the bacon grease that always resided in a container near the stove. I have often added a small piece of butter at the last, la creme de la creme of beans. I also take a "masher" from the kitchen drawer and mash a few of the beans to thicken the water. With a nice hot piece of buttered cornbread that is all they need.
When you make "frijoles al pastor," shepherd-style, you add chopped cilantro, epazote if you have it, salt, pepper, chiles, onion and tomato at the last of the simmering to get a rich, delicious bean soup. I usually wait for the next day, heat-up day, to add those elements, as I love the flavor of the plain beans. Those beans are good with tortillas, or, again, the cornbread. I store my beans in a glass container in the refrigerator, as soon as they are cool enough.
A friend of mine told about growing up on his grandparents' ranch in Mexico, where every morning his grandmother went out to a cooking fire, to a vast iron cauldron filled with beans and water, and boiled them up. Everyone who came by partook of those beans: family, workers, guests, sojourners. Last thing she did every night was to scrub out the empty pot and prepare for the same thing next day...wonderful riches. Largesse.
I now use an electric pot, an old Sunbeam fryer, with perfect heat control after seventy years, to cook my beans. I put in the soaked beans and water, and set the control to "300." When they begin to boil, I put them to the R of "Simmer." Sometimes a little lower, like the E. They simmer away for some time. It takes less time to cook beans now, as I think they are not old dried beans, but new dried beans that we're getting. THIS IS IMPORTANT: a maid taught me a great tip. Turn the lid of the cooking vessel upside down on the pot and fill it with water..The water will evaporate out of the lid first; you can see it and keep it filled up. Your beans will never burn, unless you are really unobservant and let the water boil away out of the lid. Then they will burn. You might as well tip them out, they won't be worth eating then.
Refried beans, to be really good, have to literally be fried in a large skillet with some bacon grease or other real fat, and mashed and stirred until they thicken up and have a very rich taste. They used to be served as a dessert in Mexico when I was a kid. The pallid mock-ups you get out of a can now are kind of sad by comparison.
Don't get me started on black beans. I do not like them. I heard such raves about then when I was a young cook. We'd never eaten them at home, so I was moving into unknown territory. I was excited at making something exotic and delicious. Bah. Black beans have no flavor of their own that I can detect. They have deceived the American people by pretending that their gorgeous black beauty is a substitute for taste. Black beans, yellow corn, and red peppers are a feast for the eye. Sometimes I think that if I have another offering of them, I 'll run screaming from the table. Anazasi beans are another such. I was excited about eating those too; an offering from the native Americans in our history. Nope. Give me the humble pinto every time. Tomorrow: Cornbread. YAZZYBEL
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Music on Wednesday
On Wednesday mornings, Patricia comes to my house and we play the piano. We began playing forty two years ago, and it's a wonder that we are not better at it. But we are what we are, and we like it. After a world of interruptions while our lives went on here and there, we have continued our playing together and have expanded our repertoire as we've gone along.
Right now we are playing Ma Mere l'Oye by Debussy, Jeux d'enfants by Georges Bizet, a diabolically clever composer (only the few of those that I can play) , Valses Nobles et Sentimentales by Ravel, The Dolly Suite by Gabriel Faure, Reflets d'Allemagne by Florian Schmitt, The Petite Suite by Debussy, and others too numerous to mention. No, that is really about all--with tryouts once in a while with other things that we don't really keep working on. We used to do the Mozart duets long ago, and the Schumann one about views of the East--that is lovely. Perhaps we'll take them up again.
It's hard to find good duets. Good new ones. There's lots of music transcribed or written for two pianos. I am thankful to one of my nameless sisters, a really gifted pianist, for the names of some of those compositions above. She used to do two piano work until her partner passed away, and has lots of music for duet and two pianos. But she lives in Brownsville, TX, far far away from me.
After we play for a few hours, I usually make a lunch for Patricia. My menu rarely varies much from the homely stuff I'd make for a family lunch. I am fond of the French art of making soup out of leftovers. Any scrap of zucchini with its cooking water, string beans, tomato, onion, go into a jar in the refrigerator and they are all cooked up for a really good soup whenever I need one. Does anyone know about the minestra? Skillet, olive oil, chopped onion, garlic, tomato, simmered...that is where the word minestrone came from. That is what you add to the soup to really whomp up the flavor. Chicken broth in cans is a good thing. I used to make my own stock. It is lots better; it has backbone and flavor and can literally stand up on its own.
To go with the soup, there's often a salad. I like green salads that have lots of things in them, including rings of raw onion. And slices of hard boiled egg are not amiss. Start there, with a good olive oil (meaning to me, a fresh one) and your choice of vinegars, and you have a winner on your hands.
If a salad isn't enough, there is always the wonderful quesadilla. You spray a skillet with grapeseed oil or safflower oil, lay on a corn tortilla, add some cheese and whatever else you want, top with another tortilla, spray it, flip, and grill until the cheese is melted. Cut it into triangles with your pizza cutter or sharp knife and serve. Yummo!
I was going to write about frijoles today but did not want to encourage any untoward humor amongst you rowdies out there, so tomorrow will be frijole day, and Friday, cornbread. That's a promise....YAZZYBEL
Right now we are playing Ma Mere l'Oye by Debussy, Jeux d'enfants by Georges Bizet, a diabolically clever composer (only the few of those that I can play) , Valses Nobles et Sentimentales by Ravel, The Dolly Suite by Gabriel Faure, Reflets d'Allemagne by Florian Schmitt, The Petite Suite by Debussy, and others too numerous to mention. No, that is really about all--with tryouts once in a while with other things that we don't really keep working on. We used to do the Mozart duets long ago, and the Schumann one about views of the East--that is lovely. Perhaps we'll take them up again.
It's hard to find good duets. Good new ones. There's lots of music transcribed or written for two pianos. I am thankful to one of my nameless sisters, a really gifted pianist, for the names of some of those compositions above. She used to do two piano work until her partner passed away, and has lots of music for duet and two pianos. But she lives in Brownsville, TX, far far away from me.
After we play for a few hours, I usually make a lunch for Patricia. My menu rarely varies much from the homely stuff I'd make for a family lunch. I am fond of the French art of making soup out of leftovers. Any scrap of zucchini with its cooking water, string beans, tomato, onion, go into a jar in the refrigerator and they are all cooked up for a really good soup whenever I need one. Does anyone know about the minestra? Skillet, olive oil, chopped onion, garlic, tomato, simmered...that is where the word minestrone came from. That is what you add to the soup to really whomp up the flavor. Chicken broth in cans is a good thing. I used to make my own stock. It is lots better; it has backbone and flavor and can literally stand up on its own.
To go with the soup, there's often a salad. I like green salads that have lots of things in them, including rings of raw onion. And slices of hard boiled egg are not amiss. Start there, with a good olive oil (meaning to me, a fresh one) and your choice of vinegars, and you have a winner on your hands.
If a salad isn't enough, there is always the wonderful quesadilla. You spray a skillet with grapeseed oil or safflower oil, lay on a corn tortilla, add some cheese and whatever else you want, top with another tortilla, spray it, flip, and grill until the cheese is melted. Cut it into triangles with your pizza cutter or sharp knife and serve. Yummo!
I was going to write about frijoles today but did not want to encourage any untoward humor amongst you rowdies out there, so tomorrow will be frijole day, and Friday, cornbread. That's a promise....YAZZYBEL
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The Theme is "Change"
A number of years ago, quite a number of years as I add them up, my church was the center of a large study of the ideas of CJ Jung. The times were right for it. I will never forget the first full presentation that I heard, a lecture called, "The Death of Metaphysics," by the Rev. John Sanford, who was our priest at that time.
It struck me as deeply right, as if someone finally had some answers for the workings of my chaotic soul.
Not to dwell untimely on that part of it, I'd like to mention a series of lectures I was fortunate enough to attend during the several years of these studies. Father Sanford got Dr. EE Anderson to come to give us a series of four lectures on the I Ching.
Dr Anderson was an Anglican priest who was a Professor of Religion at San Diego State College. He was an expert in studies of Eastern Religions. He was quiet, expressive, astute. All of us who attended the four lectures received an education that I can only describe as unique.
The I Ching is a Chinese (or Indian) book of divination. That does not sound quite right in these more rigid times, so let us say a book for meditation. Its main message is: Change. Everything is changing all the time. Change is the one unchanging thing in our universe. Dr Anderson taught us how to throw the yarrow sticks or the coins in order to form hexagrams. The I Ching book has the keys to the results of these lines. Proper study and daily use of these hexagrams can do a great deal to ward off anxiety, I found, and to stabilize a fractious nature such as mine. I will not go into detail as to the procedures and use of the book, because that info is available all over the web now.
I would use it daily and copy down in a notebook the results of each day's perusal. I soon learned to stop trying to understand it. I just took it literally. If it said it was going to rain, I expected rain. In a time of tumult in our marriage when my husband would be absent for months or finally years at a time, I 'd consult it daily. I got to the point finally where I felt that I didnt need it any more and a wise friend told me that that's the point of it. You are supposed to use it until you don't need it any more. How wise of the Chinese to think of that all those years ago. But its principles do not change. All is change.
This blog is going to change. Slowly and little by little I am going to lighten it up, put on more pictures, see what I can do with it (translation: what it can do with me) to make it better. We shall see. There will be change. YAZZYBEL
It struck me as deeply right, as if someone finally had some answers for the workings of my chaotic soul.
Not to dwell untimely on that part of it, I'd like to mention a series of lectures I was fortunate enough to attend during the several years of these studies. Father Sanford got Dr. EE Anderson to come to give us a series of four lectures on the I Ching.
Dr Anderson was an Anglican priest who was a Professor of Religion at San Diego State College. He was an expert in studies of Eastern Religions. He was quiet, expressive, astute. All of us who attended the four lectures received an education that I can only describe as unique.
The I Ching is a Chinese (or Indian) book of divination. That does not sound quite right in these more rigid times, so let us say a book for meditation. Its main message is: Change. Everything is changing all the time. Change is the one unchanging thing in our universe. Dr Anderson taught us how to throw the yarrow sticks or the coins in order to form hexagrams. The I Ching book has the keys to the results of these lines. Proper study and daily use of these hexagrams can do a great deal to ward off anxiety, I found, and to stabilize a fractious nature such as mine. I will not go into detail as to the procedures and use of the book, because that info is available all over the web now.
I would use it daily and copy down in a notebook the results of each day's perusal. I soon learned to stop trying to understand it. I just took it literally. If it said it was going to rain, I expected rain. In a time of tumult in our marriage when my husband would be absent for months or finally years at a time, I 'd consult it daily. I got to the point finally where I felt that I didnt need it any more and a wise friend told me that that's the point of it. You are supposed to use it until you don't need it any more. How wise of the Chinese to think of that all those years ago. But its principles do not change. All is change.
This blog is going to change. Slowly and little by little I am going to lighten it up, put on more pictures, see what I can do with it (translation: what it can do with me) to make it better. We shall see. There will be change. YAZZYBEL
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