Cooking With A Mexican Accent

BY VIVIEN B. KEATLEY DRAWINGS BY TED DE GRAZIA To shrug aside Mexican food with “I don’t like hot ta-males” is about like turning up your nose at American food because you can’t abide hominy grits and sow belly. It’s judging a national diet by its lowest common denominator. Typical Mexican food is neither crude nor hot. It’s pre-pared with painstaking care, richly seasoned, cooked very slowly.

For example, once you’ve tried Mexican hot chocolate that takes at least an hour to prepare, you can go right back to cocoa and sugar stirred up in scalded milk if you want to. But at least you’ll have known chocolate in a first edition.

Fine old Mexican recipes date back to the days when heavily laden tables were set with fine damask and solid silver plates and goblets from Mexico’s prodigious silver mines. Before the days of refrigeration-and supermarkets-widely separated haciendas were self-sufficient except for imported spices. Food supplies were chiefly fresh meat and dried food-beans, corn, rice, onions, herbs, flour, meal, coffee, chocolate. Butter was rarely used, and isn’t popular in Mexico even today. The national preference isn’t for white loaf bread, but for tortillas and a delicious, slightly sweet roll, a little reminiscent of a French breakfast roll. Water in the old days was used for bathing and irrigation purposes. Civilized people drank wine or beer with their meals. Beer is an excellent accompaniment for rich Mexican food; some of the fine cervezas from south of the Border would make Milwaukee turn green with envy.

Upon awakening in a Mexican household one is served rolls and chocolate. To reproduce as nearly as possible the delicate flavor of Mexican chocolate, not ordinarily available in the U. S., grate two squares of unsweetened chocolate into half a cup of boiling water, and boil for five minutes in the top of a double boiler. Add two cups of milk, one cup of cream, three tablespoons of sugar, a few grains of salt, a pinch of nutmeg and allspice, and teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Beat a whole egg thoroughly, add to the hot mix-ture, and cook for as close to an hour as your patience holds out. Beat the mixture with a rotary beater every five minutes or so during cooking, and again before serving, when you add one teaspoon of vanilla extract. Mexican chocolate is always served frothy-and nobody adds anything. To do so is to disparage the cook’s skill with her seasonings.

For a pleasant accompaniment, try sopaipillas, or fried puffs. Sift together three-fourths teaspoon of salt, one ofbaking powder, and four cups of wheat flour. Beat two eggs thoroughly, add one cup milk. Stir as much of the flour mixture into your liquid as can be absorbed. Roll as thin as you can possibly get the dough, cut into small squares, and fry in deep fat until the puffs turn a delicate golden brown.

After arising, a regular breakfast of eggs, rolls, and cafe con leche is served. For the latter, two small pots are filled with coffee and scalded hot milk, respectively, and almost equal portions are poured into the cup simultaneously.

Around eleven, a cup of clear soup similar to consomme is frequently served, and the main meal comes well after noon. There's always a heavy soup, several meats, sometimes vegetables or salad, and dessert. Beans and rice substitute for our potatoes-at-every-meal doctrine, and Mexican cooks can play more variations upon "frijoles" than Americans can on potatoes. In later afternoon, Mexicans serve hot chocolate or cafe con leche with sweet cakes. They're not tea-drinkers. The evening meal is relatively simple; its main course is often chicken or fish instead of meat.

If you want to try your hand at cooking with a Mexican accent, you'll find the main trick is in seasonings you don't ordinarily use, although they're all on your grocer's shelves. In addition to ordinary salt and black pepper, you'll need oregano (wild marjoram); coriander, sesame, celery, and comino seed; anise; yerba buena (mint); sage (preferably black; and saffron. Bay leaves, called laurel, are also used, as are garlic and onions-the "social mixers" of all good cooks, since they bring out the best in all foods.

Aromatic chili (also spelled chile), a long thin pepper pod, is basic in Mexican cooking, but the amateur needs to remember that it's used with subtlety and discretion. When you "add some chili powder" to an ordinary meat loaf, don't kid yourself that you've produced a Mexican dish. Mexican cookery is based upon a careful blending of spices and herbs and very slow cooking, often over a low charcoal fire. The result is a subtle flavor, requiring a clever cook to identify the seasonings.

Most of us would be chili addicts if we accepted an oldtime claim for this contribution to the world's family of spices: "Chili protects against colds and malaria, it aids digestion, it clarifies the blood, it develops robustness and resistance to the elements; it even acts as a stimulant to the romantically inclined."

Whether it does any or all of these, the flavor of chili more than justifies standing room in your kitchen.

Unfortunately, not every section of the U. S. provides fresh green chilis, or the colorful ripe red ones that you see drying against the 'dobe haciendas throughout the Southwest. Wet chilis are now on the market in cans, both green and red; they approximate the real thing, but are less flavor-some. The generally available substitute is evaporated chili, or processed chili powder (and of course the best is produced right in Arizona's own Elfrida, the "chili pepper capitol of the world"). Six tablespoons chili powder, 2 tablespoons flour, mixed with enough water to make a thick gravy, can be substituted for a cup of chili pulp or paste, which is the basic chili ingredient in Mexican cooking. You can get a chili burn from dried ripe chilis, so remember to handle with care. About a dozen are required for a cup of chili paste, always made fresh since it molds quickly. While it's red and somewhat resembles tomato paste, there's nothing similar except the color and consistency. Tomatoes are not used in red chili pulp.

Seeds and stems account for most of the "heat" in a chili pepper, so let your conscience be your guide. Old hands never remove the seeds, because they like their food hot. A simple way to prepare chili paste is to wash the pods, break off the stems, remove the seeds if you feel you must, and boil in salted water about an hour. Lift the wet chilis with a tong and put through a meat grinder, catching all the juice. The result is a thick chili gravy. To make the chili sauce which is meant in Mexican recipes, (the commercially available product has nothing in common with it), cook a cup of chili paste for twenty minutes in two tablespoons of olive oil in which you've already fried a chopped onion and a clove of minced garlic. Add half a teaspoon of salt, a pinch of oregano, and enough water to keep a gravy consistency. This is the sauce served over many Mexican dishes. If it isn't hot enough to suit you, crumble a few chili tepines in it and reach for the ice water.

Fresh green chili is a different matter. It is used to make Salsa de Chili Verde (green chili sauce), and also forms the basis of many excellent main dishes, such as chili relleno, or huevos rancheros. To make green chili sauce, some add green tomatoes and some don't. A good recipe calls for four large green tomatoes, four green chilis, a tablespoon of minced onion, some minced parsley, and salt and pepper, boiled together until quite soft. Pass through a sieve or meat grinder, and cook for fifteen minutes in half a cup of olive oil. But before you ever cook a green chili, you must skin it.

This is accomplished easily in several ways, one of the simplest being to broil it over an open flame for a few seconds, until the skin blisters. Wrap in a damp cloth to steam about 10 minutes, and then the skin will slip right off. For chili relleno (stuffed green chili) remember to leave the stem on; it's your "handle."

The three basic ingredients of good Mexican food are chilis, beans, and corn meal for tortillas and tamales - a special kind made from Nixmatal, a quick-lime treated corn, made into masa which is a soft damp dough.

"The only way to be sure of making tortillas correctly," Erna Fergusson comments in her book "Mexican Cookbook," "is to have a line of Indian ancestry running back about 500 years." Your best bet for tortillas is to buy them already prepared and cooked; if they're too dry and crisp, you can soften them by putting in the oven for just a few seconds. But if you insist on making them, you can approximate a tortilla with corn meal. Mix 2 cups of corn meal and a little flour (to make the dough easier to handle) with one teaspoon salt. Add enough water to make a stiff dough. Set it aside for twenty minutes. Wet your hands in water, and mold dough into egg-size balls. Pat each ball into a very, very, thin cake, and bake on a lightly greased griddle, turning frequently until it's done-a light tan. For flat enchiladas served pan-cake style, make a thicker cake. Tortillas are the basis of enchiladas and tacos and, cut into quarters and French fried, drained, and salted, they become tostados-a wonderful accompaniment for beans-or cocktails.

"Frijoles" prepared by a good Mexican cook can make Boston baked beans sit up and apologize. A simple recipe is this one. Soak a pint of Mexican beans (pink or pinto) overnight. Drain, cover with fresh water. Add a clove of minced garlic, salt and pepper to taste, and boil over a low fire until done. A good trick is to add a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon to the beans while cooking.

A Mexican bean is done when you can mash it between two fingers.

For "Frijoles Refritos" (fried beans), when the beans are done, remove most of the water but keep in handy in case you need to add it to your mashed beans. Now start mash-ing, as for potatoes, adding a little olive oil and grated cheese (a good cream longhorn is better than Mexican goat cheese for flavor) as you mash. Fry the mashed beans in a little hot fat until they begin to pull away from your heavy skillet. Garnish with grated cheese, and serve with tostados.

For plain beans, start out the same way, but a couple of hours before they're done, fry together in bacon fat two chopped onions, three chopped green chilis, and three or four bay leaves. Add to the beans, continue cooking until done. This is also the stage at which you convert beans into chili con carne con frijoles, or chili with beef and beans. The chile con carne, of course, can be served plain, but if you add it to beans, do so a couple of hours before the beans are done. Dice two pounds of lean beef and a half pound of beef suet into small cubes, and brown in olive oil. Add one cup minced onion, two minced cloves of garlic, two teaspoons oregano, one teaspoon salt, and half a cup to a cup chili paste (or three to six tablespoons chili powder). Simmer until the meat is well done, adding water as needed, for plain chili con carne. Add to a pot of half-done beans for chili con carne con frijoles.

The following are recipes and remember there are dozens of variations upon each-for some of the most popular "fiesta" foods.

Beef Enchiladas

You'll need 2 skillets, both heavy iron. Mix together 2 lbs. ground beef, 2 c. ground or finely diced onions, a clove of minced garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, brown in oil or bacon fat. This is your "filling," and you can use it for tacos, too.

In the other skillet, melt ½ lb. diced cheese in 2 c. of chili sauces made from red chili pulp.

Dip a tortilla in the sauce, fill with the cooked meat, and roll like a jelly roll, holding in place with toothpicks. Arrange on a ovenproof platter, sprinkle with cheese, pour over the remaining chili sauce, and bake 15 minutes or more in a hot oven.

For flat enchiladas, you need a thick tortilla, cooked the same. Arrange like a stock of wheat cakes, and top with a fried egg.

Tacos

Tacos are Mexican sandwiches, covered with shredded salad greens-lettuce, carrots, radishes, etc. Fill with beef mixture for enchiladas, (which are also wonderful made with cheese fillings), or with chicken, cheese, etc.

To prepare the "sandwich," you must fry a "bent tortilla" which isn't as difficult as sounds. Have a skillet half-full of hot grease, and place several tortillas in it. As they begin to blister, gently fold so the blisters are on the inside; you do this by holding one side of the tortilla with kitchen tongs, and gently folding the other side over with a spatula. As they "harden" into shape, they can be tucked inside each other to continue cooking, so you can prepare several at a time. Turn