La Kitchen Chicana

Los Falcones - My First Digital Story

2010-09-12T21:32:00.001-05:00

Well, I know that I have been really absent from my blog lately but it's for a good reason! I've finished my dissertation and have started a new collaborative diablog on feminist pedagogy with my good friend SLP called "It's Diablogical! A Collaborative Diablog on Feminist Pedagogy." Check it out! It's a great new project I've been a part of!

Also, I am defending my dissertation tomorrow. I am a little scared but I'm sure it will go fine. I'm posting my digital story that I will share in the open part of my defense. Please check it out around 9:30am and you can pretend that you're there with me.

I promise to be back on food blogging sooner than later. A and I are officially making the move to Fargo! So, I'll be in a new kitchen but will have some innovative ways to talk about the food as I play around with using final cut to edit some pictures and/or video together for my food blog posts!

Happy Fourth of JULY!

2010-07-03T23:10:00.000-05:00

Yes, that's totally how my mama says it, total emphasis on the JULY as opposed to the usual emphasis being on the fourth. I spoke with my mama today to get her recipe (which she aptly titled Grandma's famous baked beans - you can surmise which grandma that comes from) for my fourth of JULY festivities tomorrow. It's not the holiday that holds importance per say, but it's more like the fun times and special place in my heart I have for the fourth of JULY because of my mom's love of it. Every year when I was younger, my mama would pop about four rounds of popcorn, salt it and put into a brown paper bag that she would staple up for the trip to Kirtland Air Force Base. As we traveled in our red Ford Aerostar van, we would go through security to find our patch of grass, lay our blanket and watch the fireworks, eagerly snapping the staples off that brown paper bag and digging into to the best popcorn that only my mama can make.

Fast-forward to my older years, joined by my two younger sisters by this point, the C-Family Fourth of JULY extravaganza became a family tradition. Let's be real, I love my country, but not blindly - it's the love of a place that has the potential to be so great, but has been proven over and over not to quite live up to its potential ya know? Anyways, when I was older we would often host our own firework shows in the comfort of our own home, either with sparklers on the back patio, or the full blown rate your favorite firework program orchestrated by my dad. So, all this is to say that I love the fourth of JULY because of my mama and the warm feelings I get inside when I celebrate it in my own way every year. Last year, I had an awesome 4th with A's mom and step-dad in the lovely Moorhead. Perhaps next year we'll be there over the holiday, but as for now, A and I are celebrating in the comfort of our Minneapolis home. Trying to sooth Sandie who gets so jumpy with those firecracker noises. I'll be making turkey burgers, corn on the cob, and the aforementioned baked beans tomorrow for dinner along with some delicious summer cakes.

As I've already posted the turkey burger recipe on here, I've decided to post the meal I made this evening instead. It's a variation on a recipe in my Maryana Vollstedt's "Easy Suppers" cookbook and I am a huge fan of a single pot meal. I prepped my veggies ahead of time and it was super quick to throw together. The worst part was waiting for it to bake in the oven for 50 minutes, so I gave A a pickle as an appetizer and she was able to hold out. This meal got a 5 (A's rating scale - meaning I received top marks) and I suspect that this will be a recurring meal for us as it was so easy and very filling yet nutritious.

So - without further ado - my own take on my Mexican-Inspired Chicken and Arroz (as adapted from "Mexican Chicken" recipe in "The Big Book of Easy Suppers.") Click for recipe print out.

I started by browning some chicken breasts in my Staub dutch oven about five minutes on each side until they were browned, in about a tablespoon of olive oil. This was already my first deviation from the recipe's suggestion, it called for 6 boned and skinned chicken thighs, which may have been more economical, but A doesn't really love the dark meat as much as I do, plus, we all know that the white meat is better for you yada yada yada. I removed the chicken after browning to a plate and in my same pot began sautéing my vegetables.

At this point, I had already deviated again from the recipe, I guess I'm a troublemaker like that, but I was not about to add an entire can of tomatoes and then salsa to the recipe because the entire thing would taste like a giant tomato and since I don't really have any salsa I love (besides my own - but clearly I do not have time to be whipping that up at this exact moment) I used one large jalapeño instead and sauteed it with the other veggies - that being one small yellow onion, and half a green bell pepper, along with three cloves of minced garlic. As I mentioned before, during my awfully productive day today I chopped these veggies already after whipping up some jalapeño, cheese cornbread to go along with my main dish here (see final picture) which made making the dish really quick and easy.

After the veggies were softened and cooked for about five minutes I added in 3/4 cup of long grain white rice to the mix. It was about this time that the animals came to investigate and A started saying "I'm hungry!" Which resulted in the pickle appetizers.

Exhibit A

And, Exhibit B

Or maybe that's Thing 1 and Thing 2 - I digress. Quickly after adding the rice, I added one can of diced tomatoes, 1 and 1/4 cup of chicken broth (a 1/4 cup more than recommended since I didn't have the moisture of the salsa I put some more in and also kept the remaining half of my can to moisten my rice and chicken 3/4 of the way through cooking it). I also added 1/4 teaspoon of cumin and salt (each) and allowed the flavors to marinate and cook for 2 minutes.

After combining all the ingredients I put my chicken back in and tried to bury it under the rice and veggies to allow it to retain as much of the liquid around it as possible.

So, I threw it in the oven at 350 degrees for right around 50 minutes. When it was at the 40 minute mark I opened it up and flipped my chickens as well as added about 1/4 cup more of chicken broth to avoid scorching the rice and then allowed it to finish up in the oven. When I took it out it looked like this! How yummy, the smells were divine, but it retained so much heat it was hard for us to dig into!

I totally chuckled when I pulled this out of the oven and the main three colors I saw were red, white, and green, not to be confused with this nation's flag colors, but the flag of la raza. I found this to be a perfectly fitting day-before-the-fourth-of-July meal.

Well, at least I put it in a blue bowl right? Now, off to clean that kitchen and get it ready for all of tomorrow's festivities. Our friend N is coming over for dinner and fun, so it will be a busy day of cleaning and cooking. But it will be worth it, as many of you know, familia is something that is really important to me, and so even though I'm not with my mama, my dad and my siblings, or even A's mom and step dad, to be with my little family of A and Sandie and JoJo and N brings a smile to my heart. Happy Fourth of JULY everyone, now go light something on fire.

Writing a dissertation is hard OR Why I really appreciate my crock pot

2010-03-03T21:32:00.000-06:00

So, if I have any readers left after a month long retreat from my blog I want to assure you, of two things: one, I am actually still eating and/or trying to feed A, Sandie and JoJo and two, I've missed my blog terribly. Part of the reason I created this blog was to try to provide some stress relief for myself not to mention, as a distraction from the sheer panic that writing a dissertation can do to a person. Cooking and eating have truly become a refuge from the overwhelming stress - and this blog has been instrumental in helping me when the other writing becomes too much to handle. There are few things in my life up to this point that I can honestly say have been truly difficult, and writing a dissertation is currently topping the list. If it's not the solitude and the doubts that what you are creating is any good, the panic of looming deadlines and a total lack of funding and job security for next year will get you. And so, as my lighthouse in the storm I go to one of my go-to meals in our home, pulled pork barbeque sandwiches. The beauty of this is that you can get it ready in the morning and after a entire eight hours of writing a complete organizational nightmare of a chapter you can rest your weary eyes and refuel with a meal that can be left in the crockpot and doesn't need your attention for the rest of the day. I also enjoy the beauty of the pulled pork because you can use a variety of ingredients and still achieve a deliciously tender meaty meal that also serves as leftovers for your next day of dissertation writing.

The cast of characters includes a crock pot (although to be honest sometimes I am too lazy to go down to the basement to retrieve it and if I am going to be home I also cook my meat on a low temp in the oven in my Staub), and some seasonings to adorn your meat. Some people like to sear the meat to lock in the flavor and really create a crispy crust on the outside. I have found if you're going to pour barbeque sauce over it you don't really need this step. If you're going to be fancy and just let the seasonings guide your way then sear each side of your pork shoulder before putting it in the crock pot to simmer.

I always start with rinsing my meat and patting it dry. I put it on a cooking sheet to keep it contained. Also because I do a bit of a dry rub on it this helps keep the spices from flying all over the place.

I first applied a layer of olive oil and then generously salted the pork. Then you can use whichever spices you wish to flavor it. I used cayenne pepper, and garlic powder along with black pepper. Rub it on all sides, this is oddly therapeutic and also gets me in the zone for writing. At this point I like to say a little thank you to the animal that gave its life so that we could have nourishment. When you're rubbing a pork shoulder or any other large piece of meat I find it's pretty difficult to detach yourself from the fact that an animal was killed so that you can eat. Deep but true.

After applying your oil and spice rub place it into your crockpot. This is my favorite part, add a beverage to ensure that your pork stays moist throughout the eight hour cooking time. This time I used a miniature can of Coke but I also sometimes add about half a bottle of beer. I use whatever I have on hand, I've also been known to use a root beer if I have it in my fridge. Generally the flavor of the liquid is not really imparted into the meat, it really just acts as an agent to keep the meat moist over the long cooking period. Rest assured (besides the generous amount of barbeque sauce that I added at the end) the meat did not taste sweet despite the addition of a sugary sweet Coke. This picture is making me want a Coke in a real bad way though!

At this point you can also be creative with what you have in your kitchen to throw into the crock pot. I have placed onions and garlic cloves floating in the liquid to add a depth of flavor to my meat, I have also been known to add in a chopped jalapeño or two as well. Be creative and see what can happen with the flavor, the beauty of the crockpot is that the flavors will slowly infuse into the meat much like a marinade but they don't tend to be overwhelming. I am not sure the science behind this but I promise you can throw a few different things in here to experiment with as you make this.

So, after six to eight hours or until your pork reaches the appropriate temperature measured by your meat thermometer it will probably look something like this. Don't be alarmed, this is normal, and slightly unattractive. Although, it's a lot tastier than it looks I promise!

Potatoes are also a great go to item if you're busy writing for the day. I've found these little starchy gems to be good for writing in between their start and finish time. Mashed potatoes need to be boiled (and for some reason it takes forever for water to boil on my stove) baked potatoes take about an hour in the oven to cook, so potatoes provide plenty of opportunities for writing in the cooking process. These are the types of foods that I have really been reaching out for lately. Such as, bread, you can be amazed how motivated you can be to write in between the time you put your loaf in the oven to bake and when that timer buzzes. It's a great game to play with yourself to see if you can make it further than the night before!

For this meal I thought I could use some left over yukon gold potatoes I had laying around. At some point I really want to do a blog post on potatoes, when I was growing up I only knew of one kind of potato, Russet - that was it! I know this is specific marker of class that I am really excited to explore at some point, but today I made yellow golds because now that I'm an "enlightened" grad student I know about the diversity of potatoes ha! Anyways, I decided to make the Pioneer Woman's crash hots because they are really delicious and because you pretty much can't mess them up and because they go great with barbeque. It's like having your own little self contained (much healthier for you) potato salad to accompany your sandwich! But, you need to use small potatoes (reds, new, multi or yukon gold) for this. I halved them and boiled them for a few minutes to soften them up. They go into the oven and cook a while so you don't want to boil them until they start mushing in your pot.

Meanwhile, make sure you take your meat out and let it start to cool for at least twenty to thirty minutes. Believe me, you do not want to pull hot pork, it burns!

After boiling your potatoes for about ten to fifteen minutes (until just tender) lay them out on a baking sheet and drizzle olive oil over them and salt and pepper them.

Then, taking a fork or a potato masher gently press down on your potato half until is smashes but trying to keep it's skin attached to its insides enough. This is turning out to be a very graphic description of the food today, sorry about that! But you want to kind of keep it so you can just scoop them off of the pan after you bake them in the oven. I think I baked these on 450 degrees for about 20-25 minutes while my pork was cooling. You want to bake them until their tops are crispy and golden brown.

Meanwhile it's time to start pulling that pork. Some people use forks, I just use my clean brown hands. A deserves the photo credit for these next shots. She was in charge of documenting these steps because when you're pulling pork with your hands it's a pretty messy endeavor, obvi.

About this time the animals will start to flock to you. Sandie's little ears perk up as soon as the first pull of the pork happens and she comes running.

This is what your pulled pork will begin to look like as you continue shredding it. It should be easy to do and oddly satisfying.

And then your demon cat JoJo will come around the corner and want some meat too!

Toast your buns in some butter. I put A in charge of this part which is why there is a little puddle of butter accumulating in the corner of my lodge pan.

Toss your pulled pork with your sauce of choice. I really want to make my own barbeque sauce one day. Perhaps this will be my reward for finishing my dissertation. I don't have the time to experiment with barbeque sauce making techniques right now, honestly I only have a limited time to be in my kitchen these days and even less time to think about creative stories to accompany my recipes. But it is all worth it in the end, because A told me this was one of her most favorite meals. And this meal is pretty inexpensive - the fairy chef would be proud! Thanks for hanging with me despite my infrequent postings. I will try to be better but I can't really promise that I'll be back every other day. I am trying to defend my dissertation in three months - I don't know if it's possible, but in order for that to happen it means I unfortunately don't have much time to eat, sleep, or write anything besides my dissertation. But I'll try to be back, I know my readers miss me. Make this pulled pork and think of me...

Holidays, Traditions and Familia

2009-12-06T22:25:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been an incredibly long time since I've posted to my blog and I must apologize for that. This past month has been quite a busy turn of events. I must say however that A and I have been eating so I hope that assuages any of your fears that we might not have been since I wasn't posting to my bloga. I've missed this space, I've tried to mimic the color of my blog to match the feelings I have when I'm in my kitchen and just like the pleasures of home I too need to feel connected to this writing space. Since my last post I've applied to ten jobs and sent a chapter off to my advisor for review so perhaps a little break, though sad, was necessary.

The holiday season (which I acknowledge as starting around Thanksgiving and running through New Year) is a special time. Ever since I moved away from Albuquerque to go to college in Kansas and then onto graduate school in Minnesota, Thanksgiving and Christmas meant spending time with my familia. I know that as a lesbiana family means many things, it means the ones who birthed, love and care for you, your blood kin and it means the family that you choose to make. And this year while sad that I was unable to be with those who I am proud to have shared blood running through our veins I was able to fully enjoy my own family including A and Sandie and JoJo. I also had a chance to cook my very own first turkey and enjoy the three-day-long preparations involved with putting together a feast of this magnitude.

As a Chicana, Thanksgiving is a holiday that is about remembering the importance of reclaiming and acknowledging histories that are often silenced. For me, it is about remembering losses and confronting US colonialism alongside honoring familia. I like to think about the ways that participating in an event across the nation can one day move us to a place where those of us who voice our opinions about the tradition of Thanks-taking are no longer the minority, rather the norm who acknowledge the pains of our past as a nation and create meaningful dialogues on healing wounds and ensuring these cycles of violence do not continue both within and beyond the US national context. In that way, the meal is important to me, knowing that how a single day can be defined by a meal in such concrete ways so that I know that my neighbor down the street is probably enjoying just about the same meal as I, myself am. Not to elide the very real class disparities that exist in this country, but I am struck by the possibilities of many people sharing in the same meal in many places. I know many have such different connections and/or problems with this "holiday", for me it is but another of many of the contradictions that lie within my soul.

I promise to get back to providing some recipes alongside my thoughts about cooking in the very near future, my life has been so full lately that new recipes have been put on the back burner (pun intended) and I have been rolling with many staples. In fact, all of my Thanksgiving items were completely standard fare, a foil-wrapped turkey slathered in butter, just like my mama does it, green bean casserole, candied sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, rolls and a pumpkin pie, so I don't have any exciting recipes to report back. Also, this meal preparation happened within application and writing deadlines so my documentation of the recipes was unfortunately not a top priority, maybe next year if we host the meal at our place, I'll try to attend to these details a bit better. However, I would like to share some pictures of the big event, because as I mentioned, changing history also means the proper documentation of of stories, so here's mine in pictures.

Of course, the picture A takes of me I'm doing the mundane chore of chopping up potatoes to be boiled.

Sandie trying to find some pre-dinner morsels on my immaculate kitchen floor.

My first turkey, notice how the skin on the right side totally got stuck to the foil, oh well, learned a valuable lesson, when mama says tuck foil around edge of bird she doesn't mean the breast.

An amazing meal on an amazingly sunny November in Minnesota.

A- My amazing partner, so glad that she is part of my ever-expanding familia.

J- My wonderful cousin who was able to spend time with us, enjoy a meal with us and take a nap on the couch following the main event. Followed by, a new tradition - watching Elf and enjoying pumpkin pie.

Sandie wondering if she can have some more turkey.

More recipes are on their way, I'm very much looking forward to doing some major baking in the near future, nothing like Christmas to make you want to gorge yourself on sweets and candies, oh wait, that's every day for me, now I just have an excuse for my behavior!

Halloween, día de los muertos and Loved Ones

2009-10-29T23:27:00.000-05:00

As a young girl in Albuquerque, New Mexico I have always had vivid memories of Halloween. I love pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns and I remember the excitement of carving a pumpkin with my father. My brother and I would get to pick out our pumpkin in the giant cardboard bins outside of the grocery store. I seem to recall always being drawn to tall, skinny ones, the ones that seemed like they might not have been the first choice because they weren't perfectly symmetrical and round. The color was also really important to me, I wanted to find the pumpkins that had different shades of orange within it. What can I say, I was attracted to oddly-shaped pumpkins and had a tendency to anthropomorphize them (but I mean, come on, once you put a face on something how can you not?) When we got home, mom would lay down yesterday's newspaper down on the big oak table and my brother and I would draw our faces for our pumpkins out on paper and then onto the pumpkin. Dad would pop off the top and we would get to reach our hands inside the pumpkin to pull out it's insides. Then he would carve our faces in it. We'd light a candle inside of them, pop the top back on tilted so if something started burning our new pumpkin friends wouldn't ignite into an orange blaze. My mom and I would then toast the pumpkin seeds in the oven with some salt which is the featured recipe for today's post. As my sisters grew up, I took over the drawing and carving piece, as my dad became much more busy at work, and apparently I was steady-handed enough to wield our one large knife. This hasn't changed much in my older years except now my love draws the face and I carve it out. My only insistence for this one was that it have a happy face, and for some reason I also really feel the need to incorporate a gap tooth in my pumpkins so ta da!

A and I usually do the carving together every Halloween but this year I was home alone carving our pumpkin because she was at a work event and I am leaving tomorrow for Kansas for my Auntie's funeral. My Aunt Cynthia Perez Falcon passed away at the young age of 51 years old. She leaves behind a daughter, my cousin who just started taking college classes this semester and a son who is a sophomore in high school. This summer while I was doing research with my familia, I collected her oral history. I was struck by how much she balanced reflection on her past with what was in her future plans. At the time a mere two months ago, I never knew just how precious my request for her oral history would be. As I prepare for a trip down to Topeka, Kansas to pay my respects I've been thinking a lot about what I can pull from her own words as a way to honor her memory. I have become the keeper of these stories and I have the responsibility to share these words with her family. I know she would have wanted this from me. Forgive me for trying to work out some of the things I want to say about her here in my bloga. I think it is relevant as I have increasingly moved away from Halloween as the only holiday I celebrate into incorporating spiritual practices from día de los muertos. My Tía will be laid to rest on Saturday the 31st, and even though día de los muertos follows it directly where we honor our antepasados the 31st will forever remind me of my Tia's generosity, grace, love and joy in the world. She was an amazing woman, a friend and confidant, she would come and visit me while I was at college and even though we didn't get to see each other as often as I would have liked, every time we got together it was a comfortable meeting of two women. I will miss those comfortable times, my friend and my Tía, en paz descanses.

Now back to anthropormorphizing my pumpkin, after I ripped out her guts, I rinsed and dried my pumpkin seeds, this is from that big pumpkin! There is something to be said about the smell of a fresh pumpkin, there's nothing like it and carving one just brought back so many memories for me.

I separated my seeds into two bowls and had decided that I would use two different flavor profiles for my seeds. As you all know, spicy is my forte so I flavored one half of my seeds with some green chile powder from the Santa Fe Cooking School that the Lone Baker bought me and the other half with cayenne pepper. Yum Yum Yum.

Dress your seeds with about one half tablespoon of olive oil and salt them to taste and toss them to coat. Then add your other flavoring, of course this is to taste, as the more you use, the spicier it will be.

Lay out your deliciously coated seeds on a baking sheet as a single layer into a pre-heated oven set to 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. Enjoy some warm right out of the oven and to snack on throughout your Halloween or día de los muertos festivities with your loved ones.

New Mexican Green Chile Stew

2009-10-15T13:36:00.001-05:00

New Mexican Green Chile Stew (Adapted from Bueno Chile Recipe)

I must preface this entry with an apology to my Minnesota fans, this might be a bit more difficult to recreate, as I am using some green chile that was literally frozen and then overnighted by my mama. I will say that I am going to try to recreate this with some other chiles and see how it goes, maybe with some roasted poblano chiles and some beef broth to add some liquid? Who knows, but to my New Mexican followers, this will seem to be a perfect reminder of the simplicity of ingredients and the deliciousness that is freshly roasted Bueno green chile and beef combining into a spicy stew.

My hermanita KRC was in town visiting A and me over her fall break of her freshman year of college at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. My mama had called a few days before to let me know that KRC was missing the (hot air) balloon fiesta that Albuquerque hosts every October and green chile. She said she couldn't do anything about the balloons, but she could do something about the chile, so she overnighted me some fresh roasted green chile that my dad buys and freezes, a container of Bueno green chile to make a beef stew and two packages of Frontier flour tortillas. It was like heaven when it arrived on my doorstep a few days later and I of course had to test the tortillas to make sure they had weathered the journey ok. Once KRC arrived I used the fresh roasted to spice up breakfast burritos (to which my sister said, "this is better than the Frontier's breakfast burritos" and while they were good I am not sure they really surpassed the quality of the Frontier, but I try. The next day I prepared a green chile stew like my dad does by following the instructions on the side of the Bueno canister.

You basically need three key ingredients and the other ones can be added for extra flavor or not. These main ingredients are potatoes, bueno green chile and beef (stew meat). Since I had some smaller red potatoes left over from the week before I decided to use these, and honestly preferred them over the Russet browns. (Sorry if this seems superflous but I get so annoyed when the recipe doesn't tell you what kind of potato to use!) In your pot heat 1 Tablespoon of canola oil.

Then throw in your stew meat to brown for about four minutes. Turn periodically to ensure every side becomes brown. I like my stews a bit heartier so I added about one full pound of beef while the bueno recipe only calls for one half pound.

While your meat is browning chop up your 3 small potatoes into bite size chunks/cubed. While the meat was browning my sister was napping on the couch and A was playing video games online. It was such a nice time with my family, I don't know what it is about soups and stews or a pot of beans but it really just inspires reflection on how lucky we are all to have familia to love us and provide support right at the most important times. My sister's visit couldn't have been better for me in terms of reassessing priorities and remembering that life is about living (as opposed to working so hard in the attempt to live at one day in the far off future). And so, while I browned my meat and cut my potatoes I thanked the heavens for my familia, green chile and chilly fall afternoons.

I then added in my potatoes and browned for four more minutes and stirring occasionally. In between stirs I totally would peek out to the living room and see my wonderful family enjoying their lives in our one weekend where are lives could continue to intertwine. KRC's head was on the arm of the couch as she quietly slept, totally wore out from our night at the MN Rollergirls' Derby the night before, and my A was cute as always, saying things like her usual, "it smells SO good." That really warms my heart. I'm also thankful that I created this blog and now the memory will stay with all of us in the event that we forget these wonderful times.

The smells of beef and potatoes totally lured my kitchen assistant in to check out the action. Here she is looking a bit wonky eyed, but I'm going to say that's because of the cool lighting that I caught as the afternoon sun actually peeked in our window that day! How artistic no?

Poor thing didn't even get anything out of that except maybe some minced garlic that went flying onto the floor (as I minced). I used four cloves of garlic (when the recipe calls for only 2) what can I say, I love garlic. Throw that in and get ready for the main event, the chile simmer.

Now, for those of you who are not from New Mexico and/or have never seen green chile, this is what it looks like when you buy it chopped. Notice this is quite different than say, getting it in those miniature cans. This actually has some heat to it, you can tell it was roasted before put into the container, and it's been marinating in it's own juices. Also, probably because of the processes behind canning or something, this is much more flavorful and full of liquid. When I popped the lid off of this I almost cried. Now, if any of my fans are rich you can have your very own Bueno green chile mailed to you for the cheap price of $27.99 for the actual container (WOAH! seems a bit pricey, but it's actually for six containers) and $50 shipping, (again, WOAH!) I'm not sure how much it cost my mom to overnight this to me, but the take home message is, if you're in NM, stock up and bring home if you can (via car - you might have some issues in security with this).

Pour this deliciousness into your pot, add 1/2 teaspoon of salt and give a quick stir. Allow to bring to a boil, then lower to simmer for about 20 minutes and then you're ready to eat the best spicy stew you'll ever taste. In fact, it is this stew that I feel has ruined my taste for any other stews that are not spicy. Bland stews forget about it!

Serve with two warm tortillas that you heated on your stove. Don't even think about microwaving these, please it hurts me when people do that. Take the extra minute to heat your skillet, it will be worth it I promise. Cozy up with your familia and share some laughs about the crazy times you had the day before, most of all be thankful that you know the deliciousness of green chile. This entry is for my mama, who is the best mama in the whole wide world. I love you. And for my hermanitas (KRC and KMC) for being the best hermanitas ever. I'm so glad all of you are in my life.

Beef Fajita Marinade Deliciousness and a Baking Revelation

2009-09-26T22:39:00.001-05:00

I realize I haven't posted in a while but it is because of of my amazing work ethic I've been exhibiting on that other writing project. I finished a complete draft of one of my dissertation chapters! Only two more hard ones to go and I'm done! (Not to say I don't still have a lot of work) I feel so proud. In fact, this is somewhat inspired my baking revelation! I usually hate baking, hate may be a strong word, but I tend to not have the patience for it and baking makes me worry that I've messed it all up and I have to wait until it's done baking to see if I've done everything right. While I was baking this beautiful cake (that ended up being perfect) I realized that baking is a lot like scholarly writing. It takes advance preparation (read whole recipe/read other scholarship), the putting together of things in a certain order (dry ingredients, wet ingredients/several sections come together to make a whole) and some faith that it is all going to come out all right (rising dough and/or baking time in the oven/knowing that you will get the right combo together and have a finished product sometime). Yes it's hard work, but you have to have faith in the process, the more you work at it the better at it you'll be, the better prepared you are in advance then the more likely something better will come out of it! Like this deliciousness...

I made this cake to bring over to A's friend/co-worker, S' house for a dinner that we planned because she wanted to cook with me based on my prowess! This isn't my first invitation to someone else's kitchen but I am very excited that my blog has inspired the potential for cooking collaborations.

I decided to bring a marinated steak for fajitas. This is a really great and easy marinade, I made it the morning of our dinner and allowed the meat to soak it all up for about twelve hours. If you are marinating a meat, I would definitely suggest the longer the better. The flavor of the steak was absolutely tasty, grilling it outside on S' giant grill also enhanced the flavors. The pictures that I have of the process are of my time making fajitas a couple of weeks ago on my grill pan, not quite as awesome as the outside grill, but an amazing implement to have in my kitchen arsenal.

This marinade will be enough for one pretty large sized steak. Squeeze the juice from two limes. Add one tablespoon each of olive oil and red chile powder (or to taste). Cut up about half a jalapeño, two cloves of garlic (minced) and whatever else you think might add a tasty flavor, in the case of the other night I added in some chopped onions. Let your steak soak it all in, it will totally be worth it.

This was a really thick steak but I recommend seven to five minutes on each side and then you're good to go. Don't forget to quickly saute some onions and peppers to top your fajitas. I often throw the second half of the jalapeño in with my veggies to add some flavor, apparently I'm a sucker when it comes to jalapeño, I mean seriously, I might have a problem.

I like to make sure I don't have them too soggy, I like them with a little bite and crunch in my fajita, so literally they're only on the stove for a few minutes, I try not to stir too soon after they head in for their olive oil dip, so that the onions and peppers can be brown and deliciously caramelized.

Slice your meat into thin strips and pull your tortillas out of the oven. I like to warm them in foil for fajitas because to the soft tortilla juxtaposed to the crunchy veggies and chewy carne is heaven.

Assemble it all together and you have a really great meal that is relatively easy to do. Serve with sour cream of course and some salsa/pico if you feel like you need some tomato.

Here are my awesome fajitas along side some Mexican rice, I'll divulge those secrets on another post, but for now, I will just revel in the power of positive thinking, weekly writing action plans and persistence, because all of these things make it possible for me to survive. Thanks for letting me have this venue to talk out some things, it feels good to be in this informal voice instead of dissertation voice, it's a balance that I need to achieve to make all of my writing better. And make these fajitas, especially if you're in the mood for something fast and filling, and maybe try to bake a cake from scratch, you'll be surprised if you can accomplish baking a cake from scratch, you might just feel like you can do anything!

La Kitchen Chicana or Brown Hands

2009-09-14T15:34:00.007-05:00

My abuelita's hands making her delicious enchiladas

As I have been an official blogger for at least a month now, I thought it might benefit my readers if they knew a little bit about how this blog emerged. Specifically, a conference paper on Gloria Anzaldúa was the initial inkling that I might want to engage with the issues of food, identity and family in a meaningful way. For those of you who know me are probably in no way surprised by this revelation, because her seminal text Borderlands/La Frontera defines my life and my approach to so many things. But as I begun to think about these ideas, A's mother, my wonderful mother-in-law J or as I often refer to her as, The Lone Baker also started a blog a little bit before mine took off and she really made me think that it was worth a go. I briefly mentioned in my last post about the ways that I feel trapped in the Borderlands as an emerging food blogger. By this, I mean, I don't feel my recipes are necessarily going to win any major food awards anytime soon, but it's always been more about the process and what goes on behind the scenes that has been important to me. What was it that made a hot dog in a tortilla so good? I laugh to think of how I define my own identity as the ways that Mexican food (tortilla) and American (hot dog) come together to form Mexican American? I promise this is not the last that you will read on the topic, but I love the ways that my identity can be traced through both enchilladas and pot roast, meals served to me by my abuela and my grandmother respectively. I am so happy that I created this blog as an outlet to explore my identity through food and perhaps share a recipe or two.

The real reason for this post is that I wanted to put a link to a piece that gives a little more into the backstory behind this blog, well, a little piece of the puzzle so to speak. I am going to be a regular contributor for a new online ezine called LuchaVista Magazine the inaugural issue just came out today and has a poem and piece about my family and the role of food in their lives. I urge you to check it out because it goes hand and hand with my blog, if you're interested. Check it out by following the link: Brown Hands, Comida & Love

Thanks for reading.

Kr's (Mini) Tuna Melts

2009-09-04T20:17:00.017-05:00

Printable Recipe

Long before Brangelina, more like back in the day when Brad and Jennifer were still together lived the infamous Krandace. Two resident assistants living in Oliver Hall at the University of Kansas on the fifth and eighth floors became one over the course of our sophomore years. Amidst fire alarms, calling the KUPD on students smoking pot, busting up keggers, avoiding Cutco knife salesman and honoring our 10:00pm curfews Kristy and Kandace became Krandace: the ultimate life long friends. As our lives intertwined throughout our college years and Kr worked her way up the Res Hall perpetual ladder by our senior year (I mean, given a few more years we would've been in that main office - that is just how awesome Krandace is - just ask Dr. Stoner!) Kr had worked her way up into having her own kitchen and multiple room apartments our last summer together and began working her way around the kitchen.

I feel it is important to divulge a bit about Kr's background. You see, she comes from a culinary-inspired family where there is cocktail hour and courses involved for every dinner! Quite a change from anything I had ever known growing up. I guess that's how you roll in the burbs of chi-town. Anyways, Kr has always amazed me in the kitchen because I believe R and B's (her parents') positive attitude about food and finding flavors that mesh well together translated into her own ambitious mixing of whatever she has in the kitchen to make delicious meals, I should know she had done this on plenty of occasions long after Krandace had to physically part (but clearly never in our heart). Check out her free spirit here as a guest blogger on Graficionada. But the point of this heartwarming story is one time, I do believe in my first apartment in Minenapolis, Kr and I cooked up some delicious tuna melts, this is a little bit of an adaptation but tuna melts are always a quick and easy lunch or dinner meal. So consider this for one of those times when you don't have much in your kitchen but you're hungry and need something filling. The amount of foods used here was enough for two people with leftovers depending on your appetite. Thank you Kr for your wonderful spirit and being the Kr to my andace.

Now, onto the meat! Two notes about my beautiful display of ingredients here:

1) I forgot a key ingredient to tuna melts - mayonnaise ugh, I try so hard to make it look pretty and this is what I do, leave out key ingredients.

2) La Kitchen Chicana is not a professional operation, I am happy about this for the most part, sure my femme sensibilities sometime push me to want prettier bowls, or dream of shopping sprees at expensive cooking, baking and dish stores but I do recognize that I have an amazing arsenal of plenty of more than adequate cookware and dishes in my kitchen. However, I am often amazed at how much money, time and effort a lot of food bloggers spend on their kitchens and their blogging. Imagine my surprise when The Lone Baker informed me that most of these bloggers have professional photography equipment to make beautifully lit photos, that alone means some serious money is involved. Then to begin to think about the amazing equipment these bloggers have in their kitchens one can become quite upset with one's own lacks in the kitchen area. I like to say what I lack in equipment I make up in love. Well, as the doctoral candidate that I am, we all know that I am not in any sort of financial situation where I can spend endless amount of money on professional photo lighting so that I can make prettier pictures, nor do I have the time to take hundreds of pictures of my food from every angle (people seriously do this - but I do scarily see the appeal) to be honest if I capture the gist of the thing I'm ok with that (for some examples of this type of blogging behavior check out the blogs that had their pics chosen on Food Gawker or one of my other favorites Pioneer Woman.)

I think these are important issues to discuss on the interwebs because blogging and the internet in general has been seen as a "liberatory" tool of the masses. In fact, I have a (albeit small) audience of people who put up with my ramblings in this published format and blogging becomes a means of communication around issues that one might not have access to in the realms of the general/mass media. Clearly, one of these issues should be global capitalism and the selling of certain "ideals" in terms of what you should be if you are a food blogger - mainly, a well-off housewife comes to mind. But what about those of us who clearly do not fit into this world? Am I destined yet again, to be in the borderlands (see Gloria Anzaldúa for more) of cyber space, trying to navigate a world that presumes class privilege while making foods that are meant for those who are clearly not in that status? It's almost too much to bear, but I keep on because I think this blog is as much about my identity as a Chicana who loves food as it is about the food I make. I'm sure I have plenty more of this to discuss but that will come, with my ruminations on future meals. I fear my audience is ready to get to the recipe already.

A perfect way to ponder these very issues is to make up these CHEAP tuna melts and share them over some lively conversation - be my guest. A and I however, enjoyed ours watching Project Runway, so maybe this is more a suggestion and definitely not lead-by-example type advice. Open and drain two cans of tuna. Add some mayonnaise I would say this is about two heaping tablespoons. Mix with a fork to combine.

Now add the secret ingredient, that when I first made these for A she was like, "hmm... what is that in there? It's good but different." That special ingredient would be (yellow) curry powder. Add in about 1/2 tablespoon and a teaspoon (to taste) of red chile powder. Mix it in thoroughly. At this stage I also add in a pinch of kosher salt and some freshly cracked black pepper.

Next comes the delicious crunch. chop up some jalapeños and put into your tuna concoction. I love jalapeños and since I have a high tolerance for spice I put in about 1/4 cup chopped pickled jalapeño peppers. I would NOT suggest putting in this much if you are using a fresh jalapeño, chop that finely in that case but do not add this much or you might die from over-spiced tuna melt syndrome. At this point I also add about 1/4 cup of shredded cheese - I'm using again the three cheese blend from Trader Joe's here, my favorite for easy melting.

Stir it all together and you should have something pretty chunky because of the cheese and the jalapeños and you're ready to go.

Since we're making mini tuna melts today, I cut up about half of a french bread loaf that I got at Cub that morning. It felt fresh at the time, to my disappointment it was really dry on the inside, meaning it was really difficult to cut, I think I lost about two pieces due to squishing them and their insides crumbling out. You may of course use whatever bread you would like.

Then give a little piece to your kitchen assistant, just to make sure it's edible. A will be happy to know that Sandie is working on her poses. Look at her smiling with her eyes, or is she contemplating how to bite my finger off for some additional protein? Alas, we may never know.

Now, I decided to use my Broil King because I wanted to make them all at once. You may of course (which might be the preferable method) use the broil setting on your oven. I had a hard time getting my tuna melt to melt with the BK unfortunately so, I will either use a lower setting (because my bread did get toasty) or put this in the oven to broil to ensure the insides get heated enough. There's almost nothing worse in your mouth than a lukewarm, soggy tuna sandwich. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I used butter to coat my Broil King and then I was able to make this many mini sandwiches from my tuna mix. I let both sides of the bread toast but flipped the top up onto the sandwich part sooner than later in an attempt to warm up my tuna to make it nice and melty.

When your bread gets toasty and your insides are melty, you're ready to eat! You can see that I've paired these with some delicious macaroni and cheese. This made me feel like I needed to add some different colors in my food but another day means another meal means another lengthy blog about it. Until the next time we break bread with one another...

Fresh Radish & Cucumber Ensalada or A Note about Onions

2009-08-24T20:17:00.012-05:00

Printable Recipe

A's friend and co-worker S was taking a little trip to the land of cheese and she was gracious enough to unload some of her CSA veggies to us before she left as she wouldn't be able to use them. She was describing what she had to give us before and I already started envisioning a radish and cucumber salad dressed with lime and vinegar. Of course, jalapeño and cilantro would want to be friends as well. And so, we joined all in a lovely embrace of tart salad goodness. You will need to have all of the ingredients above and any other fresh veggies you might have on hand that you might need to get rid of. I used half of the cucumber because I didn't have very many radishes to balance it out. I also love a pretty cucumber, so I peeled some stripes into it. Also, I was making it a little more palatable for my lovely partner, she's usually adverse to cucumbers (unless they're pickled) so this falls into the general category of feed it to her even if she acts like she doesn't like it. I thought (rationally of course) that peeling off the peel might make her mistake them for something else.

You should slice it as thin as possible. Lucky for me I have a nice sharp knife exactly for these purposes. However, one of those slice-your-finger off julianne thingies would have done a really good job with this. I think the thin slices really made the salad.

Give a little piece to your kitchen assistant. She's so patient in her favorite spot in the kitchen. She also wants to tell you that one time A accidentally dyed her favorite rug robin egg blue. Lucky for her she bleached it and it came back to it's original color. Otherwise someone might be mad... me or Sandie, you can guess.

Give your radishes the same treatment - minus the pretty stripe peel (unless you want peppermint candy-inspired radishes).

Add into a bowl and keeping going down your list of ingredients, slicing and dicing. Next up, purple onion.

I'm trying to like onions more. They are such an important ingredient in Mexican and Mexican American cooking. But here's the deal, my mama does not (and I don't believe ever has) love onions. So this means I have to try extra hard to begin to like them. I like them cooked and in most foods, I think they smell lovely sauteing, especially like when I make them in my spinach quiche (which is what I paired this wonderful salad with tonight). But what onions really remind me of is my mama - as her extreme hatred of them is pretty much scarred as a notch in my brain. This distaste for onions was so bad that she singlehandedly changed her own mother's cooking to sin cebollas, siempre. She also somehow convinced my white grandma to make her little small portions of onion free dishes (of which I can't seem to remember currently) but this was no small feat, dare I say this means white grandma actually might love my brown mama. On top of this, I was forced to eat the small non-onion dishes then because when you're little and your mama doesn't like something, you don't like it either, it's a standard practice, just ask anybody.

Anyways, back to onions. Onions always make me cry. Paradoxically, this makes me kind of happy. Not because the release of endorphins associated with crying feels good, but because of the wonderful book Buried Onions by Gary Soto. The main character, Eddie, is constantly talking about how he smells onions buried under Fresno and that the oppressive smells of the onion actually make the inhabitants of the city cry (whether they know it or not). Not to give away the whole point of the book, but buried onions become a metaphor for so many things in the lives of these residents' and the only one who can really see it is Eddie.

Because of this book and because onions always make me cry, the onions also make me contemplative as I'm crying over them in my small kitchen. I am reminded of millions of families who have and continue to toil in the fields to pull up onions. I've never pulled an onion out of the ground but I can imagine, in the heat of dark soil, they probably do stink, and perhaps being in a field full of lots of burning onions in the brown dirt might inspire some tears. I don't mean to paint a picture of farmworkers as pitifully crying in fields as they pull up whatever-season-produce, because farmworkers are full of dignity in the fields in which they work, and this is noble work that not many think about. As far as I know none of my familia have worked in the produce fields. However, my great-grandfather on my mother's dad side laid down the railroad from Missouri to Colorado via Kansas and Nebraska. My mother's mother picked cotton in the South with her familia when she was young on many of her trips across the US/Mexico border. So I know the ways that hard labor shapes a person, I know the pain because it lives through me in my historical memory. In this vein, and in thinking about Soto's book I often remember these memories and feel them vividly when I am cutting an onion and crying, thinking about the ways that my own relationship to the onion that has landed on my cutting board, knowing it was touched by a farmworker's hand, before it came into my own. The onion to me holds a lot of power, it can make you cry and then you have to examine why you're crying - because while it does hurt a bit to have onion fumes enter into your nasal canal and water your eyes, it also becomes the avenue for you to explore some deep, repressed feelings if you let it. What I can assure you is that the next time you peel or cut an onion you're not going to forget to ask yourself why you're crying.

After you've finished crying because of your onion, or for whatever reasons you might be crying as long as you've contemplated why it might be that you did, de-stem some cilantro for the rest of your salad.

Next if you're feeling like some spice in your life, grab a jalapeño - I'm often amazed at how many of these I manage to have in my house at any given time. See this little piece of the end, that's how much I put in my salad, it added a bit of a kick, but it wasn't making my eyes water like that sliver of onion did. I love jalapeños but they just don't make me cry like my onions do.

I had a chance to use my jalapeño corer again today! I just scooped out was was in the middle of that little piece I chopped off and then finely, finely diced my pepper. Since I was just throwing it in with the other ingredients and I didn't want A or myself to choke on a chunk of jalapeño I decided finely dicing was the way to go.

Doesn't it look pretty and yummy? I totally snuck a taste (can't trust kitchen assistant with that job) to see how hot my pepper was. I wasn't disappointed. Lastly it's time to dress your salad. My abuela makes this delicious cabbage and carrot salad that is literally dressed with vinegar, salt and pepper and it is almost my favorite salad of all time. It might also be because she painstakingly shreds every inch of that salad out by hand and that gives it some extra love that cannot be replicated by shredding that takes place in the Cuisinart 5000 power food processor and definitely not with the pre-shredded cabbage and carrots you can get in the "I'm too lazy but bourge enough to buy pre-cut vegetables" area of the produce fridge at the grocery store. Anyways, the point of this rant is that I was saying, a) you always have to make it with love or else why bother and b) my abuela makes this delicious salad with vinegar as the dressing and I thought, what better way to bring my salad up to a delicious state but to dress them with some aged, white wine vinegar. I would've used just some plain vinegar but I didn't have any in my cabinets! The horror! Oh, and don't forget to squeeze half a lime in there (or to taste), my lime was small, I would actually say probably one tablespoon would do.

The white wine vinegar gave it the tart and sweet finish I was looking for. There were a lot of delicious tastes all mingling into one tasty accompaniment to my quiche (see who says I can't cook French food) that was serving as our main course. A even ate all of her salad! Including all of her cucumbers. What a nice little hot summer meal. It was light and refreshing all around. Fresh vegetables, check. Vinegar, check. A little creativity, check. You can do it too! I just know you can!

Sorry again for the bad pictures, my kitchen does not have very good lighting and I'm usually like an ogre in there trying to take pretty photos - as in my hunking shadow tends to block out what little light I do actually have in there. You can't tell here but I cracked some freshly ground pepper over mine and it was very tasty. I do like how I have the close up view of the salad here, but again, everything looks so dark and sad - which is unfortunate since it was quite a cheery dinner minus the tears I had to shed when slicing that onion, but one might say, I'm learning to love those tears.

PS: Has anyone seen Princess Protection Program starring the adorable Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez? I'm watching it now with A and having conflicted thoughts on it... more on this later I suppose.

Chicana Cous Cous Salad & Green Chile Turkey Burgers

2009-08-19T20:46:00.032-05:00

Printable Recipes:

Chicana Cous Cous Salad

Green Chile Turkey Burgers

Well, I just got done with my weekly search for Assistant Professor positions and let me just tell you, procrastinating with my food blog is not going to take away from my chances on that slim job market. The good news is (see I'm all about positivity) while there might not be any jobs at this very moment you always gotta eat. This week is a special two-for-one kinda of deal, where I'm sharing both the side dish salad and main dish for a complete meal idea. If you have 16 hours to kill go for this deliciously tasty meal. Just kidding, it only took a couple hours, but you will thank me when you make the delicious cilantro lime vinegarette from scratch to adorn your alliterative Chicana Cous Cous (CCC) salad. So sit back and enjoy the meal that A said was one of the best she's had in a very long time!

The CCC Salad is an inspired recipe for a Women of Color potluck BBQ I will be attending on Friday. I wanted to try it out before I actually fed it to others. I had originally signed up to bring a pasta salad, but then it was suggested that we bring something from our culture. So, I decided, I would make a new recipe using my favorite Mexican/Southwest flavors and make a pasta salad out of it. A's response was, "but I hate cous cous." Well, even she managed to choke this down.

Let's start with the CCC salad. Once you assemble all of your ingredients (as with most salads) it's a quick and easy side dish, or could even stand in as a side dish. The amount of spice in the salad makes a refreshing cool salad sophisticated and a great accompaniment to any bbq type meal. So, to make your dressing. Take one quarter cup of cilantro, de-stem it and throw it into your food processor. If you don't have a food processor, finely chopping your cilantro should work just fine. It's all going to be mixed into your salad eventually and it's really a matter of what consistency you want it to be in there.

Chop/Pulse it until it looks like this! Take a whiff it will smell delicious. I must admit when I was younger I was kind of not a fan of cilantro. Now I'm pretty sure it runs through my veins. Just wait until I have a yard garden in the not so far off future (once I get that tenure-track job baby!) it will have cilantro coming out of it's ears.

Then take your jalapeño pepper (you can use whatever hot pepper you prefer here or omit it if you don't like spicy food) and de-core it if you happen to have the very fancy jalapeño corer like I do. It works like a dream! I chose jalapeño because it's a classic for Mexican food no? And it's one of my favorite peppers. I think this also runs through my veins.

Add it to your food processor and let it rip. I added the bottom half of my jalapeño that was pretty much de-seeded. Don't however make the mistake I did of whiffing it. I know it's tempting but if you want to threaten your entire nervous system into almost shutting down, go ahead. However, if you don't want to choke on the inhalation of jalapeño fumes and learn your lesson the hard way, be my guest. I assure you that it will be hot as you have not really tempered it beside de-seeding it.

The good news is after all this chopping all you have to do is add in the rest of your ingredients into your dressing and blend. I added in one half of freshly squeezed lime before blending. I love using that top hole on my food processor while your foods are chopping and blending pour in 1/8 cup of white sugar, 1/4 cup oil and 1/4 cup white wine vinegar and you will have an absolutely sweet, light, refreshing and spicy vinegarette that will almost not make it onto your salad because you'll want to keep tasting it.

Next make up your cous cous, even if your partner tells you she doesn't like it. You can of course do this part first and then make up your dressing, but if you're spreading out your work on your meal you can make up your vinegarette and chill it until you're ready to dress your salad. This is one bag of cous cous that yielded 5 cups of cooked cous cous (try saying that five times fast). After cooking, let your cous cous come down to room temperature before you begin adding in your other ingredients. I made my cous cous while writing my dissertation (surprised?). I like cous cous because in honesty it takes the least amount of time to cook, as once you put it in boiling water you immediately leave it and let it fluff up on its own. I appreciate food that can cook independently of me.

Chop up your veggies. I made the mistake of only putting in half of my green bell pepper and only half of my container of cherry tomatoes, but I would highly suggest the more the veggies the better. A also mentioned that avocado wouldn't hurt the salad. If you do want to add that in I would suggest getting an avocado that is not fully ripened so that it holds its shape when you toss it in and doesn't make your salad a goopy mess. Otherwise you might end up with cous cous guacamole and I'm not sure that is really what you want to happen.

Feed your kitchen assistant some veggies. She'll like it. Notice that pink tongue. Adorable. I swear she should be in modeling.

Look at how beautifully this salad is coming along! Although, to be honest I wasn't able to find the freshest produce at my favorite Cub Foods on Lake Street. Oh well, maybe next time. It tasted fine, it just didn't look as vibrant. Again, you all just wait until I'm a professor then I'll have my own backyard and my own garden.

Now, for the key ingredient - fresh corn, and thank goodness it is corn season! I added in corn cut from two freshly cooked ears of corn. I've always wanted to cut it off the cob like this and it was very satisfying! I estimate this was about two cups of corn off the cob. If for some reason you're in a time bind, I guess you could drain and rinse a can of corn but I wouldn't suggest that. I would however, suggest if you have a grill to roast the corn. I was going to roast mine on my gas burners but I heard my partner's lawyer voice in the background of my mind saying, "you're going to burn the house down" so I dipped them into some boiling water instead. Humph. I want a grill!

Now, part two of the key ingredient. Mexican corn is absolutely delicious, it's buttered and cheesed and cayenne peppered in a spicy, creamy, steamy delicious treat. So, I tried to mimic this in my salad (minus the queso). I buttered my corn with just a tad of butter and about a tablespoon of cayenne pepper. Mixed it, tasted it and it was spicy goodness! Not as fun as eating it off the cob, but delicious none the less.

Add all of your ingredients together. I would suggest putting this in a pretty glass bowl so you can see all of the deliciousness at once. A definite improvement that I will be making when I remake this on Friday for my BBQ potluck.

Toss it all together with some tongs. Watch out for flying cous cous. Call in kitchen assistant to take care of spillage if necessary.

Pour in your dressing - this is how much my recipe yielded and it was a great proportion for the amount of cous cous salad I cooked up.

Toss again and you have your finished product. You should chill it for about half an hour if you didn't chill at any point during the process. Doesn't this look so yummy? I promise you won't be disappointed! Pair it with burgers or any of your other cookout treats or even fajitas. You decide, it will be a hit though, I promise.

Now for the main event: Green Chile Turkey Burgers! The salad was a lot more fun for me to make, but the fact that I got to try out my NM Hatch Green Chile that I found at Trader Joe's made me very excited.

Also, A loves turkey burgers so I felt confident I could make one up with my own twist because of my confidence of mastering my turkey burger recipe from Everyday Food. In a bowl I mixed up some ground pepper and kosher salt (not pictured) into my meat. Be careful not to squish it too much then your burgers become tough and not fluffy - not sure if that's the right adjective, but it's what is coming to mind, and honestly I think it works better than juicy.

Combine all of the ingredients, starting with 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper for additional seasoning (since canned green chiles are not hot at all). I considered using my green chile powder that the Lone Baker keeps me up to stock with but decided to pump up the spice factor just a bit. Then mix in 1/2 cup of shredded cheese, I used Trader Joe's Three-Cheese blend today which I suggest, and half of your can of green chile. I also threw in some more purple onion from my previous recipe that I was too mad at for making me cry to throw away! Good thing I didn't it added a nice flavor to the cooked patty. I then pat out my burgers like so.

They then were covered with foil and sent to the fridge until after I picked up A from work. I'm glad to say that I need a lot on my plate to be productive. I have always been like this since I was young and so scheduling in my cooking around writing and reading and picking up A was very fruitful. I think I wrote about four pages of my dissertation when I made this up. Looks like I'll be making this once a week if I can assure this type of dedication to my studies.

I was also very excited as my loyal readers know, of the opportunity to use my Broil King 6000. Well, that's what I call her, isn't she a beaut? She cooked these burgers up like no one's business. I've been making breakfasts on her on the weekend, but this was amazing because A suggested I throw the buns onto the griddle to and they were toasted and delicious. (I suggest throwing them on clearly a bit closer to done.)

I am absolutely terrified of raw meat, so I cooked each of these burgers for about twelve minutes on each side, flipping every six minutes or so. When I say terrified, I mean terrified, the thought of biting into a raw turkey burger seems so unappetizing. So, I was sure to cook these up for a long time. You could probably go less on the time if you made your burgers thinner and spread the meat out amongst six. However, I don't do it like that, I like a round, juicy and thick burger so do at least twelve minutes per side. One way I can tell that they're ready is by looking at the meat around the edge of the burger get done.

Sorry for the poorly lit picture(s), go back to the first one to remind yourself how pretty it was. I served it with spicy mustard on mine and mayo on A's. She loved it. We also had fresh corn with the burgers and CCC Salad. Overall, we were stuffed and happy. I just wish I had a grill. But I pretended I was a fry cook on Broil King, de-cobbed some freshly cooked corn and wrote four pages of my dissertation. Overall I would say that's a successful night spent in La Kitchen Chicana no?

Enchiladas a la 'buela

2009-08-05T13:55:00.013-05:00

While on my dissertation research journey I was lucky enough to spend some amazing time with my abuela. She is the inspiration in a lot of ways to my own love of cooking. Her delicious enchiladas, tacos, gorditas, salsa, sopa (rice) and fried chicken are unmatched in my opinion. Whenever my abuela would make us enchiladas or tacos it was an amazing adventure. All of our mouths would water in anticipation for the hours before it was made. Abuela would wake up early in the morning to start the sopa (which by the way is not an easy recipe) and her famous chile sauce, which I have tried numerous times to replicate but never really very successful. You see, like many grandmothers mine does not use recipes, she learned how to

make things by observing others, when she worked in a Mexican restaurant as a young woman in El Paso, Texas and then when she worked in a family restaurant in Greenleaf, Kansas my

abuela has been learning how to make food through sight, smell, taste and touch since she entered the kitchen. I aspire to be able to do the same one day, for some things I can, but when it counts I really feel like I need a recipe, which of course my abuela does not have. There's something very clear to be said about the history and power of oral tradition in my familia!

I also struggle with what I should do in terms of sharing family recipes. In some ways I understand that family traditions should be shared and that food is not "owned" by anyone. It's like people who feel they thought up something new, well, no one actually has "new" ideas. I feel similarly to food, which should be somewhat evident from the fact that I have posted things on my blog related to others' recipes and not really created anything "new". What is new of course, is each of our interpretations of recipes or family foods that have been passed down from generations. I have more to say about this, but I'm not sure this is the venue for this discussion. What I will say is that this blog isn't so much about a recipe per say, but about the process, which means that I won't be divulging family secrets of how to make the Estella Navarro Falcón enchilada sauce, but there will be important techniques to illuminate the old ways and the true ways to make enchiladas. I also feel as though since I didn't make it I can't divulge the recipe but when I do make these one day dear readers you will learn the truth. Don't be afraid. Heat up some crisco or lard if you have access and your heart can handle it.

The other thing about my abuela, in addition to not using recipes, is that she cannot simply be bothered to hold still so that her nieta could take a picture of her process. So, her hands are blurry, also she is a very modest and shy woman and did not want to be featured (besides her

hands) on this blog. Respecting her wishes you'll just see her in a masked abuela kind of way, kind of like superhero behind the scenes. I of course snuck in a picture of her cooking for her daughters (three out of four of them) and her granddaughter (me) but will not post it here, maybe one day I'll post it with her permission of course. She was however, comfortable with showing her magical brown hands, thank goodness.

Gather up five or six corn tortillas and dip them (carefully!) into your hot grease. You want the temperature up high enough to fry lightly but not high enough that you're going to lose your eyebrows in case a piece of your tortilla accidently falls off. Flip them over, don't leave them in there too long, we're not making tostadas. Then they are headed for a chile bath.

Just like this! Since my abuela saw me clicking away on the pictures she decided to take this opportunity to give me a teaching lesson!

It's almost as though my abuela wants to write her own food blog! She showed me that you can use utensils to dig out your tortilla, here she's using a wooden spoon.

And here she's using her fingers to dip them, but be careful because the sauce is simmering on the stove. You can also see here that she's added the chile dipped tortillas to her general pile of fried tortillas that are waiting for their time in the enchilada bath tub.

After they go into the chile it's time to put in what they are putting inside your yummy fried, sauced tortillas. On this day abuela usually just has shredded cheese, but I guess it was special and she made her carne that she puts in her tacos too. Shredded beef cooked with onion and papas.

Now if you ever want to make tacos you need to have this concoction in there. Again, there is no recipe, but basically you brown and simmer beef in some oil, until most of the liquid is gone and then you add in some boiled potatoes that have been cooked most of the way and are diced. Then you let this simmer together and mold together as thickening agents. This tastes amazingly delicious in tacos.

My abuela rolled the cheese enchiladas first and set them aside in this dish (so we could all eat at once). And then tackled the meat ones. She ended up making half and half or so. My favorites are the cheese ones because that is what we would always have whenever we went to see abuela in Kansas. The beef ones were still tasty though. You can of course put anything you want in an enchilada as long as there is some type of chile on the outside, abuela didn't put any cheese in with the meat enchiladas that she made on this day.

By the end of this wonderful enchilada making factory, with abuela rolling like mad, we had about this many. And of course between the five of us we polished all of these off with no problems. At this point abuela also told me that if you wanted to you could put the dish in the oven and warm them all together (this will also harden the tortillas some more. She also told me that if you didn't want to make your sauce from scratch you could buy one at the store, to which she said, "you know, there are some pretty good ones out there." Me, I would never do this, as I feel I would be disgracing my abuela's hard work by using it out of the can. But if one is in a pinch you can always turn to these shortcuts.

My abuela also made some fideo (a Mexican tomato pasta dish) that was our accompaniment for our enchiladas in addition to a nice green salad. This really rounded out a delicious Mexican meal. My belly was full of warm food and I was able to do a family interview for my research and collect my Aunt Gloria's oral history. Good food helps productivity, and this definitely helped me along my path to complete my dissertation. Now if my abuela could only make me a meal every day I would be done with that pesky thing by now!!

When I grow up I'm going to...

2009-08-04T17:38:00.005-05:00

eat whatever candy I want whenever I want! Yes, this was a constant saying that I said to my mother and she also said to her mother (funny enough). Now, that I have "grown up" a little anyways I do have candy whenever I want, as many of my readers can attest, I LOVE candy. I mean, when people on facebook do quizzes or top fives or something like that which tell you to list the five things closest to you (no cheating!) at least two, if not three of those items around me are probably candy. I nearly squealed in delight when I found a bag of red hots at the dollar store last week when A and I were in the search for bingo daubbers before we left to go to the casino (and to play bingo!) so clearly candy is important to me. I love sugar candies, hard candies, soft candies, and chocolate and dark chocolate and oh, did I say chocolate? So, I had

been having a craving like no other for one of my favorite snacks and I just thought I would share, because now that I'm able to have candy whenever I want to, I need new aspirations like, when I grow up I'm going to get a manicure and a pedicure every other week, but I digress.

This recipe is also inspired by Julia Child. Yes, I mean the foodie/gourmand of all time, Mrs. Julia Child the great. I've been reading her memoir, My Life in France in preparation for Julie and Julia that is coming out on Friday (I'm so excited!) and I was thinking about how she herself also admits to not initially knowing how to cook. So, in that way, I am honoring her in the ways that she passed on information about the foods she did eventually learn how to cook, yet she never took herself all that seriously at the same time. Why do we eat the foods we do? I think because they taste good right? And for anyone who doesn't know about the best candy/nut combo in the whole world, it my dear friends, is my duty to teach you.

My best friend in high school taught me a lot of valuable lessons as I was coming into woman-hood. Her mother should get the credit for this wonderful creation because when I would go down to her house in the valley we would boldly charge into her pantry full of goodies and get out the can of salted cashews and the giant bag of plain M&Ms.

Yes, I know that Mars Co. has gone through extensive pains and troubles to change the notion that the plain M&Ms are in fact not actually "plain" but rather "milk chocolate" (I told you I know my candy ESPECIALLY M&Ms) but I am going to refer to them as "plain" because that is what they were called when I first discovered this tasty treat. Come to think of it, I did a speech in my college speech class that my best friend from college can attest to Kr to my Andace on these very issues - M&Ms. Aw, memories. Also, I refuse to call them "milk chocolate" out of sheer principal once they campaigned to resign my FAVORITE color of M&Ms and had that nonsense vote for which color to replace it with...

But this blog post is not supposed to be about my political views on M&M colors. It's about a tasty treat. Pour out your bag of plain M&Ms.

Pour in your bag of salted cashews, I got these out of the bulk bin at Cub Foods, don't they look delicious?! And I think it was a better deal than getting them in a can because these are almost all whole pieces! I bet your mouth is watering huh?

I really suggest making sure you get the salted ones because the sweet and savory mixing of the salted cashews and the plain M&Ms is divine. Stir your nuts and plain M&Ms and then eat a handful. I suggest two M&Ms to one whole cashew to achieve the proper ratio of chocolate to nut, but I'm not a control freak, you can do as you wish. The final step is to tell everyone you know that you just made this delicious snack mix so as to ensure that you don't eat the entire thing in one sitting. Luckily there is a lot left for later. Also, this is perfect for getting your blood sugar back up to a good functioning level: protein + chocolate = heaven.

Waiting for my butter to soften

2009-07-30T22:00:00.008-05:00

A's birthday is coming up in approximately 48 hours and I have been working my fingers to the bone conceptualizing her cake and as what I thought would be a sweet and relatively cheap romantical birthday present. Who doesn't want a homemade/completely made-from-scratch cake for their birthday? Well, let me just say this has neither been a cheap nor easy process. I made part one (half) of the cake before my beer and popcorn snack (pictured above - YUM). But this started way before baking commenced in La Kitchen Chicana.

My plans were put into action on Wednesday when I took a trip to Williams Sonoma at the one and only "Place for fun in your life" Mall of America to get some supplies. For one aspect of the cake I was in need of a fine mesh strainer much like this one. In fact I did get the mid-size one, of course it was missing it's price tag and me being me thought, oh well, how bad can it be? Well, $45 later I guess that's how bad. Shit.

The ideas behind the trip and plannings and several baking jobs is due to the grand (casino) celebration I am planning for A's birthday. We will not be home to celebrate A's birthday, Sunday August 2nd, rather we will be relaxing and playing slots and bingo, a snapshot of our future old-lady relationship of when we'll be at the bingo hall after some seventy years of bliss much like these amazing women. So, as we celebrate her 29th year I decided I would bake a mini-cake so that we could just transport a small cake that could easily be consumed in one sitting by two people. Thus the planning, baking and messing began. This also led to me having to purchase 4 6oz ramekins (also another pricy investment), an offset spatula for icing another pretty penny. Well, I'm sure you get the point, I have to make these cakes freaking good otherwise my investment (I should've seriously bought stock in Williams Sonoma) will be for naught.

This is what my kitchen looked like after I had completed about 1.5 aspects of a 3-part cake. Clearly I cannot divulge what I was up to in the kitchen because I'm sure A is waiting on the edge of her seat to see this blog post. I'm amazed her presents are still wrapped! Here you can see some chocolatey goodness in my bowl ready to be saran wrapped and lidded into the fridge to rest until cake construction day (tomorrow!) But this picture is really a testament to the unspoken aspects to cooking and baking projects. The mess. Seriously, you should see my La Kitchen Chicana when I'm in there doing my thing, it's like a tornado. This is after I had already cleaned up from a raspberry concoction (part .5 of 3) and this was the second time I had to face the mess tonight! The messes were so bad I am kind of dreading the actual baking day tomorrow!

Doing the dishes isn't exactly a loathsome task and I love to have a clean kitchen. Perhaps I feel this way because I have the luxury of my own in-apartment dishwasher. But I digress, I had plenty of time to contemplate my cake and my blog posts, and my dissertation outlining. I had the water up so high that I got a mini-facial out of the deal. I also felt quite refreshed from the hot, steamy water giving me somewhat of a heating treatment for my right wrist that was sore from transcribing today.

I did manage to fix La Kitchen Chicana up after a long day. A special note to The Lone Baker, thank you. Many of the things I did tonight could not have been possible without your love, patience, guidance and generosity. I would not have my cuisinart food processor that I used twice this evening. I would not have nearly the motivation to make delicious food. I wouldn't be able to admire my broiler king griddle on top of my stove because that is its home for now, I may not have been inspired to be baking and cooking all of the time for A. I definitely wouldn't have my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer which will be put to use tomorrow for my cake batter. Lone Baker, you are an inspiration, thank you for believing, thanks for answering my questions at all times of the day, especially when I'm in the Barnes & Noble cookbook section wondering what cake book I should buy. A and I love you very much!

Guacamole Guacamole!

2009-07-30T19:11:00.010-05:00

Printable Recipe

Well, I have returned safely from my cross-country trip to my honey A telling me "guess what honey?! I volunteered you to make guacamole for my staff retreat tomorrow!" My response... hmmm, I'm not really in the mood and I'm not that confident in my abilities but since it involves an avocado (or three specifically) I guess I'll give it a try. It's not like I haven't made it before, or seen my abuela make many batches upon batches of guacamole with freshly squeezed lemonada yum! But, it's just guacamole is such a personal thing, so many different ingredients can be chosen or omitted so this leads to a dish that many people expect different things from. Imagine my trepidation then when I needed to make enough guacamole for seven of the Minnesota Justice Foundation's finest. This post is especially difficult because as my abuela cooks, there is no true "recipe" it's more like throw a little of this in, a little of that, as you'll see on the recipe card almost all of the ingredients have "to taste" after them. So, it's up to you and I even had to estimate how much of each ingredient I actually put in to actually post this entry! Not too easy!

Because I HATE brown avocado I tend to chop up everything that I am going to put in my guacamole before I peel the avocados. Here you see my delicious tomatoes. You can of course use any kind but these looked the best in the produce aisle so I cut them into fourths.

Then I chopped up my cilantro, with some help from two out of three of my kitchen assistants! The process of taking pictures was time consuming and I was supposed to have my dish ready to go and A came home to get her guacamole and was not happy when she found me taking pictures of my ingredients! But, look at how cute Sandie and A are as they're helping me rinse the cilantro!

After you wash, mince and chop all of your ingredients: tomato, pepper, cilantro, peel your avocados, de-pit them and cut them up into at least quarters. They should slice very easily. **Side note: look at my new shiny red bread box that A bought me

It's so wonderful to have a photographer during my cooking time! A totally helped me by taking photos of all of my steps (almost) from here on out.

At this point squeeze one half of a lime onto your avocado to prevent browning. You can of course use less, but I am a major lime addict.

Unfortunately because of time constraints I wasn't able to fully document my new jalapeño corer that I picked up along my many travels in Nuevo Mejico. It was AMAZING! I cut off the top of the pepper and then inserted my corer in, and gently and quickly scraped out the insides of my pepper! This made slicing and dicing the pepper absolutely amazing!

From this step you need to add all of your ingredients to the bowl, your garlic, salt, tomatoes, cilantro, black pepper, onion if you're using it (I had a special request not to so it's not here) and mash mash mash! I used a big fork, I don't really know of any other tool that will do the trick as well as a good ole fork.

Your finished product should look something like this. Here's the portion of guacamole I took for myself to ensure that I had actually made it edible for others. Unfortunately in A's haste to get to her staff retreat she took my pretty bowl full of guacamole away. But you get the picture, guacamole is like your favorite i-pod playlist, only you know what you want and what will make it good, but there are also always crowd favorites that many people might enjoy.

Off to my next project! I'm baking a cake for A's birthday this weekend and I still have plenty to write about from my travels, including my abuela's enchiladas that are about the best thing I've ever eaten. Yum. Off to my Boulevard Wheat and popcorn snack now!

Away from my Kitchen

2009-07-15T17:37:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to let everyone (who cares anyways) know that I am currently on my dissertation research expedition across the country. So, this means La Kitchen Chicana is going to be kind of empty of Chicana cooking anyways. Although A did assure me that she would take some pictures of the meals she'll prepare for herself but I took the camera on my trip in hopes of perhaps doing some reviews of the delicious meals I might encounter on my travels. Think Rachel Ray's $40 a day meets Samantha Brown on the Travel Channel. Well, that's rather ambitious but, I'll try to keep abreast of any food interests that might influence my kitchen somehow.

Of course, it's my only night in Lawrence and I left the camera at my friend's house so we're clearly off to a good start.

I guess these will just have to be "mental pictures", 'cause let's face it, when was the last time you heard Lawrence, Topeka or Emporia, Kansas were exactly culinary epicenters anyways? Maybe it's best that the camera was left at home so as to not document my oh-so-soon consumption of a drenched with house-made spicy mustard grilled turkey sandwich and (at least) 3 wheat state golden beers from Freestate Brewing Company that is about to commence in t-minus 2 hours...

Buttermilk Oatmeal Pancakes

2009-07-13T19:54:00.011-05:00

Printable Recipe

I got this recipe from my wonderful hairdresser K who got it out of a Cooking Light magazine - I think this is where it's from, sorry I don't have the exact reference but I'm pretty sure this is where it came from. It's delicious and nutritious for two pancakes it's 160 calories with 5 grams of fat. I've doubled the batch which usually yields about 16 pancakes. Keep in mind you do need to soak your oats overnight in the buttermilk, so if you're going to make these delicious treasures you need to plan in advance.

Add two cups of oats to two and a half cups of buttermilk. Then you put this into the fridge to marinate overnight.

It will look like this before you put it in the fridge overnight. A note about these pancakes -they are absolutely divine. You know it must be true because in general I HATE pancakes, yet I crave these. My hate-affair with pancakes began when I was about 10 years old. My family had moved to the beautiful island of Kawaii for the summer for my dad's work and he had promised to take my brother on a deep-sea fishing trip. I should say that this might have been my first feminist moment, I loudly protested that it wasn't fair that my brother got to go deep-sea fishing and I didn't. So, the morning of the expedition we rose early and were treated to some buttermilk pancakes from the box, you know the kind. I gobbled them down with my stomach turning from being up so early and for my first trip on the open sea. I don't remember much of the trip because I was in a sea sick haze, I did see dolphins, which was awesome because at the time I wanted to be a marine biologist. But the point of this story is that I tossed my pancakes right overboard. And ever since then well, pancakes have never been the same, let's just keep it at that.

These pancakes however, will never be tossed. After they've soaked overnight the batter is a lot thicker. See exhibit A above.

Add all of the ingredients to the oat and buttermilk ingredients. 1/2 cup egg beaters (or three egg whites), 1/4 cup whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup flax seed (I never have this on hand so I leave it out), 2 tablespoons of honey, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil.

Mix all of your ingredients together and you are ready to make some delicious pancakes.

This was my first experience with my Broil King griddle - I must say, it sure beats making pancakes two at a time on a skillet on the stove, when you flip them they don't flip and then they're a crumpled mess - well with the Broil King there are no worries of that happening unless you're totally inept and you try to flip your pancakes too soon.

Kind of like here. I didn't flip toooooo soon, but I could've left them on their back side just a wee bit longer. The normal procedure with pancakes is to flip when there are no more bubbles in the batter. With the Broil King however I noticed that it was time to flip when the outer edges of the batter on top began to brown, it was quite helpful to notice this small change in your pancake! Flipping on the royal Broil King was a dream come true.

This was my first set (clearly they're a bit misshapen - but I cut off the bits around their edges with my spatula and those were sent to my kitchen assistant for tasting.

I think she likes them.

I tried to capture the browning around the edges of the pancakes in this photo, not sure you can see it, but the batter changes colors around the outside and makes for a good indication for proper flippage.

I got kind of confident for round two when I decided I would put up six pancakes at once. Yes, six pancakes at once! This was pretty much a dream come true!

Look at what beautiful pancakes I've made, see this is why if you don't really like pancakes this will draw you in and make you crave them! They're soft and chewy and a little sweet from the honey and delectably cinnamony.

They were so good that Kitchen Assistant #2 (JoJo) thought maybe she would come and check out what was going on in the kitchen. Kitchen Assistant #1 (Sandie) took some issue with this - she did end up getting pancake bits between each batch. Who can blame her?

My finished product. I decided to let them cool on a rack because A was still asleep when I made these early on Sunday morning, you can't see the time on the oven but it was 8:30am or so. She was asleep and I didn't want them to get soggy. Again, I often make 16 because I'll have two when they're hot with some delicious maple syrup and then refrigerate the others and have them as tasty snacks later. A little peanut butter on top is a major power booster, I'll eat one in the mornings before going to the gym and it will give me amazing energy then I'll have another one when I get home to make it until lunch. They're really filling even though they aren't very many calories, they're thick and chewy and you won't be disappointed. I promise you won't want to toss these bad boys!

Works in progress

2009-07-11T21:41:00.007-05:00

So, as my loyal readers may or may not know, yes all three of you, I am about to embark on a two week dissertation research quest "vacation". If by vacation one means doing five interviews over a five day period then a 10+ hour drive and another interview and then an academic conference then yes, call it a vacation. But how this all relates to the kitchen is a funny story. You see, A has these "ideas" about what the good "rich wife" should do when she leaves her "rich husband" to fend for herself. She had a quip about me preparing meals in advance and then labeling each with reheating instructions for all 13 days I'll be gone. I said, "yeah right". See I tend to think that if/when I am actually a "rich wife" then I might be a little more inclined - as it stands however I just like to pretend to be one.

But the point of this longwinded story is that I tried to find a recipe that would be quick and easy but would also be able to be frozen and eaten at another time. NOT because I needed to keep A fed while on my "vacation" but because as an occasional temp worker I'm often trying to find something quick and easy to take to lunch that's really a no-fuss kind of thing. So, on the world wide web I found a delicious and nutritious idea for a sweet potato and black bean burrito which of course I would add my own touches to. The best part of this story is when I told A about my plans she said something like, "who's going to eat that?!" But that response, my friends, is for another post.

Using my bean pot from The Lone Baker which had to take an 8 hour soak today since I hadn't used it in a while, here are my black beans soaking with some cilantro sprigs. Doesn't that look yummy? I'm super excited about what's to come from this. I've started to become rather snobbish about sodium in my food, and other additives that one finds in a variety of foods. The recipe can definitely use canned black beans, which you know people always advocate for rinsing and draining to rid yourself of the salt they add to the cans, but I decided to do my beans the good old fashioned way. I thought, hey, I've got time on my hands, I'm only supposed to be writing a dissertation, what's a little bean soak going to harm anyone? As per winePhixation's request I will be posting the rest of the experience as I continue on with it tomorrow.

In other news The Lone Baker sent me this amazingly large Broiler King electric griddle for my pancake making. I'm thinking I'll be making up a batch of oatmeal pancakes courtesy of my friend K via a cooking light magazine... I should look up that exact reference when I post the recipe tomorrow. But here it is in all its glory - ready for some pancakes and A also noted, concurrent quesadilla making! Yum!

I couldn't help but share this photo of our cat who I found wrapped up in the bubblewrap that came around Mr. Broiler King. She is my second kitchen assistant but she usually just lays in the light of the sun streaming through the window or at the base of the refrigerator most often she is in the way of me opening said fridge's door, or in the path of my other kitchen assistant, Sandie scrambling underfoot toward falling food. I love my little family - A, Sandie and JoJo make cooking worth it!

The Lone Baker and La Kitchen Chicana Collaboration

2009-07-05T22:52:00.009-05:00

The wonderful Fourth of July holiday took A and I to visit her mother (who happens to be The (one and only) Lone Baker and step-father in the lovely Moorhead, Minnesota. (Side note: The above picture documents a lot of flooding up in the Red River Valley which is exactly where we were - see the debris piled up on this bridge? Scary! Moorhead and Fargo are ok now, I just thought this was a cool pic of some of the damage the area had recently dealt with.)

Before we left, The Lone Baker called to make sure that I was bringing up my New Mexican Red Chile Sauce because she was preparing pulled pork for tacos and wanted to marinate it in my sauce! For her pulled pork recipe, see her blog entry on the subject: Slow Cooker Pulled Pork. I was excited yet nervous, knowing that the entire dinner was pretty much hinged on my sauce - if it wasn't good, the whole meal would be ruined! We pulled into town and The Lone Baker said hi quickly and then proceeded to ask where the sauce was! We brought it inside and it went straight onto her pulled pork and marinated as we settled into to our wonderful accommodations. The aroma quickly filled the house and our mouths were watering! The other main event of the night was that The Lone Baker had made corn tortillas for our tacos - and a delicious faux chile releño which set off the meal perfectly. The tacos were great, and everyone loved our meat and sauce collaboration! I just wish I would've taken some pictures and truly documented our tacos because they were great.

Here's a picture of our marinated pulled pork the next day, there was so much left over we decided to do a red chile pulled pork quesadilla an even truer collaboration because The Lone Baker was so inspired by my chicken quesadilla post that she wanted to try out some quesadillas with the left over pork and the left over homemade corn tortillas. Note the beautiful light that comes into the Lone Baker's Kitchen and the wonderful materials she has to work with! Here are quesadillas with a layer of cheese and the pulled pork adorning them. Don't they look marvelous? We decided to do three flour and three corn tortillas.

Here's another shot of our flour tortillas waiting for their final touches. Another layer of delicious cheese and it's flour tortilla hat.

I was in charge of finishing these up while The Lone Baker worked on preparing the pans and the corn tortillas.

On the corn tortillas we used queso fresco. Look at how beautiful they looked! And if we thought we would even make a dent in our pork we were seriously mistaken!

All of our friends coming together nicely.

The marinated shredded pork was so good A ran in from the living room and just had to have a few bites!

Here are our quesadillas all in a pan making friends and getting melty! I am so jealous of the Lone Baker's equipment - she cooked up all of them at once! In my kitchen one quesadilla per skillet- two if I'm working with the small corn tortillas!

The Lone Baker's kitchen is magnificent.

She finds these amazing tools just hidden in her bountiful cabinets! This is her birthday present and it sliced and diced these quesadillas in seconds!

As you can see the flours were quickly devoured and the corns were on deck.

During the meal I managed to catch this lovely shot. I promise I wasn't the only one eating - it seems as though the Lone Baker, Mr. Lone Baker and A are a bit camera shy. But, clearly they were enjoying the meal because it was quickly disappearing.

I had so much fun at The Lone Baker's house - there was delicious food every meal and I felt I contributed a valuable addition to two of them. I came home two pounds heavier than I left - I'm not exaggerating, the scale at the gym told me so this morning. But, overall it was worth it. On the way home we heard a statistic on the radio about how the French eat and live the best in the world - that opposed to Americans who spend an average of 40 minutes eating per day the French spend hours. We chuckled to ourselves that amidst the corn tortillas, red chile pulled pork, fresh baked bread, steaks, potatoes, and delicious homemade shortbread, that this is definitely never the case at the Lone Baker's - where we all eat like royalty, or at least like the French.

Tasty Chicken Quesadillas

2009-07-02T21:22:00.007-05:00

Last night I cooked up one of my quick and easy favorites - chicken quesadillas! Delish! Always a crowd favorite. A always gives my meals a 1 through 5 star rating. 1 star means it was inedible, 2 stars means A will never eat it again, 3 stars means it was ok, maybe could tweak a few things, 4 stars means she wants it again, but it could still be improved and 5 stars means it was perfect and she wants it again next week. Needless to say, this meal is a 5 star all the time! The beauty of a quesadilla is that you can use what you have at home and experiment with different ingredients. And La Kitchen Chicana is always stocked with tortillas and cheese.

Here are my ingredients for the night. Now, I am no Sham-dra Lee but I do like to take shortcuts in the kitchen when I can and when it doesn't jeopardize the overall quality of my end product. So, I usually use the left over aspects of a whole rotisserie chicken as my protein, shred it quickly and it's ready to go. The debate between corn or flour tortillas is one that often weighs heavily on me. Lucky for me, A loves flour tortilla quesadillas while I prefer corn. As a Chicana I love both - corn from the homeland and flour from Nuevo Mexico. New Mexican food rarely uses corn tortillas whereas Mexican food (authentic) rarely uses flour. You can understand my confusion then when it's time to put the tortillas on the skillet, topped with cheese. It's also incredibly important to have all of your materials ready to go as it literally takes seconds for the cheese to melt. As you can see in my photo I decided I would be adding in some avocado to make the best quesadilla I possibly could last night.

I've heard of some people who put their tortilla in the microwave, top with cheese and press the start button. As a Chicana, I cannot endorse this method. Nor, can I endorse the put in oven and bake method, although there are some tasty concoctions that do actually come out of the oven and involve tortillas - they just can't be quesadillas.

The cheese should be melted all the way - like so. You need to be able to pull your quesadilla apart and have the cheese be all gooey. Otherwise, you're just doing it wrong. Also, when using shredded cheese you're probably going to get it all over the place, outside the boundaries of your tortilla and that's ok! I just found out that A's favorite part of her quesadilla is when the cheese cooks on the griddle, hardens and attaches itself to the outside of her tortilla. Next time I'll be sure to make this happen more for her.

This is A's meal, two quesadillas with fajita size flour tortillas, chicken and cheese. Garnished with some pico and sour cream. Yes I could make my own pico but who really has time for that, I mean I'm procrastinating enough with this blog from my dissertation - if I was slicing and dicing tomatoes, onions and jalepeños all day I really wouldn't make ANY progress on my dissertation and we simply cannot have that!

Now, to witness the whole process with my quesadillas. Since corn tortillas are smaller than flour I was able to fit both on my griddle at once. This thing isn't technically a griddle, but it's not a skillet either. Should I know these things? Hmm... how does one go about finding this out? I guess I'm going to have to do some research!

Start with a thin layer of cheese then top with your chicken. I would also suggest throwing any other items in here now so that you're able to melt the cheese around your ingredients to prevent them from falling out of your quesadilla when it's time to move tortilla to your mouth.

Here I forgot I had sliced an avocado so I put it on after my additional layer of cheese. I tried to make a pretty design here but was unable to make the one on the left as nice as the one on the right. I could however, live off of avocados for my entire life. I'm thinking avocados and red chile need to meet one another and become acquainted.

Again, no matter what is inside your quesadilla, the cheese needs to get gooey and your tortillas should be crispy on the outside. This is a delicate balance, not so crispy you will lose a tooth or your tastebuds will be overwhelmed with charcoal, but crispy on the outside and still soft on in the inside.

Doesn't this just look so yummy? And it literally took me about 10 minutes after I shredded the chicken which took 10 minutes - so prep to table 20 minutes. Of course, when you become a quesadilla expert you'll be racing to the finish so you can get that bite of gooey cheese!

I just had to show off the inside, look at how delicious that looks! Cheese, chicken and avocado - heaven. In fact, I remember turning to A and saying, this is a slice of heaven, I really need to take a picture of this. As I said, quesadillas are easy, inexpensive, quick and can incorporate whatever you have in your fridge. I love corn tortillas with mozzarella cheese - I used to make them all the time for lunch when I was still taking classes, I'd make them in the morning before I left for school, wrap them up in foil and microwave them for five seconds to warm and have a delicious and nutritious lunch/snack while I read my feminist theory.

Other possible combinations for delicious quesadillas - shrimp, cilantro and lime for a "fish taco" quesadilla, cheddar, egg and bacon for "breakfast burrito" quesadilla, cesina, onion and cilantro "taco al pastor" quesadilla, olives, artichokes and feta for Greek quesadilla, you know the options are endless, I can't wait to hear all about what you create!

A note about the absence of my kitchen assistant - Sandie. The one drawback to making quesadillas is that I can't make them all at once with this method so I make A's and then I make mine. Well, with this system Sandie can't be bothered to be in the kitchen with me because she's too busy begging for a piece of chicken or cheese or tortilla morsel from A out in the living room. Sigh, maybe next time I'll get her full attention!

New Mexican Red Chile

2009-07-01T21:44:00.013-05:00

Imagine my surprise when I was at the Cub Foods on Lake Street (my favorite grocery store outside of Trader Joe's) and I went into the Mexican area of the produce section and there were dried red New Mexican chiles. Thinking to myself, "how could this be?!" I of course immediately threw them into my cart after looking around and seeing no other packages I just thought it was meant to be. Every time I go home, I always ask my mama to take me to Cosco so I can get a package to bring back to MN to remind me of home. Funny thing, these New Mexican red chiles came from St. Paul - but this is neither here nor there. Well it's maybe here, and there, because my dissertation works to show that Mexican Americans are in the Midwest, so how can New Mexican red chiles be in MN unless we are here too?

So, after running home and looking up my red chile sauce recipe, I decided right then and there I wanted this blog to be able to allow me to theorize the connections between my food, my familia, those who eat my food and my identity. So, I photographed all of the steps of my process, so here is what went down in la kitchen Chicana day one.

First I rinsed and dried my NM Red Chiles, cut them open, de-seeded and de-veined them. I Used the paper towel to scrape the seeds out but kept some on reserve to add some heat later.

While I was busily going through twenty of these bad boys. I just couldn't help but notice this precious little dog paying extra careful attention to my actions. This is her favorite position in the kitchen, waiting for my chopping skills to throw something off the counter to her. Unfortunately she didn't get anything good out of this cooking session.

After de-seeding and de-veining I placed my chiles on a parchment lined baking sheets. This is one of my favorite baking sheets that Mama Jean gave me! Also making a key appearance in this recipe, my red Staub, again, courtesy of Mama Jean. I toasted the chiles at 250 degrees for about ten minutes turning them twice during the process.

Here are some of the seeds that I reserved for adding some more heat. The drying of the chiles already takes some heat out of them and I wasn't sure how hot my sauce would be.

I went ahead and transferred them to 4 cups of water where the chiles were about to be boiled after toasting

Post toast - the chiles were darker in color and putting out some delicious smoky/hot/peppery smell. It made my mouth water just thinking about that perhaps soon I could have my own red chile sauce... but what would I do with it? This is clearly going to be about a five post journey in the decisions on what one can do with the sauce that is obviously going to have to happen another day...

I then transferred all of the peppers into my water and cranked up the heat, wanted to get this boiling. After it boiled I let it simmer while I peeled my garlic because apparently in a Staub water boils a lot more quickly than in my teflon-coated pans.

Here are my chiles taking a dip after just a minute the water was already bubbling. Perhaps in the future I will let this boil a little more. The problem with using the dried chiles is that you kind of have to rehydrate them back to life, and I'm afraid I might not have done this well enough. I'm sure I'll have plenty more opportunities to get this right in the future though!

I thought I'd be clever and peel my garlic while I was waiting for my pot to boil, turns out my pot had to wait for me to get done peeling the garlic. I added this much to my sauce, I LOVE garlic, I probably would add even a bit more for my next batch.

Combining all ingredients in my blender (did A get me this blender or did Mama Jean? Either way notice it's beauty here, the prettiest blender I ever did see). And yes, the chiles, the water the chiles were in and the garlic all went in here.

Blend. But don't liquify - unless you really know your blender, things will be hot and if you learn the hard way like I did, the power of the liquify will blow your top off and spew red chile sauce all (and I mean ALL) over your kitchen and your arm, scalding you in the process. At this point though, it smelled delicious.

Another view of my blended sauce, should've just stuck with it here but no... I had to go and liquify.

Here I used half a stick of unsalted butter, you can use shortening here too for a thicker/richer flavor (I would've used it but I didn't have any on hand) and 4 Tablespoons of flour. Melt the butter all the way and then slowly stir in the flour. Here in this picture is the evidence of the "liquify" button - my Staub would've been nice and clean ready for the sauce part two, but I liquified into it :-(. I could've washed it out, but since the sauce was going back in here I though, what's the point!? Oh well, first post, there is no where to go but up from here.

At this point I just combined the sauce back in with the butter flour mixture to thicken it up a little. Some people prefer to put their sauce through the strainer before adding it back in to cook, I like it thicker. Personal preference I guess. At this point one should also salt to taste. I don't really like salt so I tend to not salt excessively, if others want more salt of course feel free to add it in.

Now, if you were going to use the sauce immediately or within the week I would recommend simmering it for about 10-12 minutes, but as I was jarring mine up to bring as a gift for Mama Jean for the 4th of July celebration at her house I decided to simply jar it with the understanding that it (like a fine wine or cheese) should be aged before serving.

In other words, pour it out of that beautiful jar and heat it on the stove for 10 minutes. This is how much my 20 peppers yielded. Although, again, had I not liquified I would've had closer to a full larger jar too. Well, this Chicana's tired and headed to bed, I totally took pictures of tonight's dinner, strangely, not involving any chile, but delicious none the same you'll just have to wait till I get to that on an otra noche. Overall, my first foray into my blog was somewhat successful. I dipped a flour tortilla into my sauce and it tasted pretty yummy. Not very spicy (disappointment for me) but this means that more people can enjoy it.

I see some carne adovada in my future...