Villa Victoria Blog

Ensalada de Nopales / Tri-Color Cactus Salad

Nopales are part of Mexico's psyche.  Nomadic Mexica priests had a vision that wherever they came upon an eagle eating a snake while standing on a nopal (cactus), whose roots pierced a rock, there is where they would found their nation.
That site is now Mexico City, the largest city in the western hemisphere. 

The Aztecs cultivated nopales and ate them.  The Spaniards were introduced to them but still considered them a curiosity.  Fray Bernardo de Sahagún, in his General History of the Posessions of New Spain relates:

"There are some trees in this land which are called nopalli...This tree is monstrous:  the trunk is made up of its leaves, and the branches are also made up of these same leaves; the leaves are wide and thick, they have a lot of juice and they are viscous, the leaves have thorns...the leaves of this tree can be eaten raw or cooked"

Today nopales or are scrambled in with eggs and chile; they are grilled and put into salads, they are served in fine restaurants and humble ones; they are used in soups and even tamales.  In 1998, on a trip to Xalapa, Veracruz, while we stayed with the Cano Family on Avenida Revolucion, I made several forays into the neighborhood and its environs.  Around the corner from Mercado Jauregui in Xalapa, Veracruz, some of the street vendors sell neatly stacked perfectly cleaned green nopal paddles.  I saw one young man absent-mindedly picking each spine off by hand.  Another young woman sold them cleaned and whole, but she also offered the nopales diced with onions and garlic conveniently bagged and ready to take home and fry up.

When buying nopales make sure they are firm, unblemished and medium-sized.  To clean, spread a few thicknesses of newspaper out on a counter and lay one paddle flat.  With a paring knife slice the protruding spines off the nopal a few at a time.  Carefully push the spines off to one side with your knife and continue until all the spines are off.  Slice the perimeter of the nopal off and check again for any spines that may be clinging to it and remove them...OR... buy a jar of already-cleaned and preserved cactus!

The nutritional value of cactus can be summed up in two words, fi-ber.  Cactus contains 4% fiber, 0 fat, 1% carbohydrate.  Mexico's flamboyant gourmand, Sebastian Vérti, dedicated an entire cookbook to the nopal , El Nopal: Príncipe de la Campiña Azteca -- Cactus: Prince of the Aztec Land.  Filled with recipes for salads, soups, ceviches, pizzas, tamales, drinks and desserts, the book is a paean to how prevalent nopales are in Mexico.

One of the enduring memories of my childhood is:  I'm riding in the car with my mother along the semi-urban streets of 1950s Los Angeles, California.  She slams on the brakes and pulls over.  I look up and see an open field to my right and on the edge of it there is a stand of wild-growing cactus, sitting there, not being cared for by anyone.  My mother tells me to stay in the car, gets out and goes around to the trunk and opens it, takes out a knife and starts to hack away at the the plant.  She piles about ten pounds of cactus leaves on newspaper she kept in the trunk just for that purpose -- always ready.  She closes the trunk, gets back in, and drives off.

Ensalada de Nopales / Tri-Color Cactus Salad

1/2    White onion in small dice
2        Roma tomatoes, small dice
2 T.    Pickled jalapeño, minced
1 jar    Nopales/cactus (28 oz.), drained, dried, cubed
2 T.    Cilantro, minced
2 T.    Olive oil
3 T.    Apple cider vinegar
1 tsp   Kosher salt
          Butter lettuce leaves

Place all ingredients except lettuce in bowl.  Pat the strips of nopales on paper towels and roughly line up and give them a cross cut, making cubes.  Toss everything but the lettuce and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.  Arrange butter lettuce leaves in serving dishes or platter.  With a slotted spoon spoon the salad over the lettuce leaves.  Serves 4.

Sopa de Albóndigas / Meat Ball Soup

One of my mother’s adages to indicate that something or someone was old was, “…that’s been around since the year they invented soup”. This phrase would always conjure a picture of two scraggley-haired primitives, huddled around a clay pot filled with water and hot rocks, discovering that they could put bits of meat and grains into that water. This soup is a variation of that first soup, except that it has been refined by the addition of mint, tomatoes and bell pepper.

1 lb.      Ground beef
¼         Onion, minced
2           Garlic cloves, minced
¼ c.      Medium grain rice
1           Egg
1T         Fresh mint, minced
1 t         Salt
¾         Onion, diced
2-3        Garlic cloves, minced
1           Large bell pepper, diced
14 oz.   Canned diced tomatoes
2 t         Salt
2 T        Olive oil
2 qt.      Water

In a large bowl, add all the ingredients for the meatballs and mix thoroughly. Form into smallish 1-inch balls and set aside on a platter. In a large stock pot bring the water to a rolling boil. Drop the meatballs in, a few at a time. Don’t put too many in at once – you want to keep the water boiling at all times. When all the meatballs are in the water, turn the heat down to simmer, enough to maintain surface activity with the lid askew. Simmer for 15 minutes. While the meatballs are cooking: In a pan sauté the onion in the olive oil over medium high heat until it becomes translucent. Add the garlic and stir for 1 minute. Add the chopped bell pepper and stir for another minute. Add the tomatoes and salt, stir and let quietly sizzle until the meatballs are ready. Add the sauté pan ingredients to the stock pot. Simmer for 5 minutes and ladle into bowls.

In Mexico, en famille, it is de riguer to serve no more than 3 albondigas, not two and not four. Three meatballs and a lot of liquid in a wide shallow soup bowl is soul-satisfying.  Serves 4-6.

I Can Can! - Escabeche de Verduras

Today I can call myself a bona fide, card-carrying, every-inch-a woman because yesterday I canned. Being able to can just rounds me out as a person.  It gives me a sense of accomplishment and independence -- I could conceivably go off the grid with my my little 4x6 raised garden bed and my 22 quart pressure canner.My mother was an inveterate canner.  She canned tomatoes, peaches, apricots, nopales (cactus), fig jam,tomato jam, salsa verde and purslane (verdolagas). The original urban locavore, she always drove around 1950s Los Angeles, California with a kitchen knife and some newspaper in the trunk of her car, just in case she came upon a bunch of purslane or cactus.  The cleaning of the cactus was ritualistic: clear the table off, spread out layers of the local Spanish language newspaper, "La Opinion",  and very carefully take the spines off, stack them, rinse them, cut them into long four inch-long pieces, cook them and then can them.  It was a lot of work, but it was free food.

I felt that same sense of ritual yesterday.  Monday I bought the vegetables.  Tuesday I prepped the vegetables and cleaned all the jars.  Wednesday I sauteéd each vegetable in olive oil and salt separately and dumped them into a scrupulously clean bus tub.  I added the hot vinegar-water and then started to jar the huge pile of vegetables.

This is the Escabeche (ess-cah-beh-cheh) we made and served at Villa Victoria Take-out.

6 lb. Cauliflower florets
5 lb. Carrots, peeled & sliced
3 lb. Red, Yellow & Green Bell Peppers, cut into broad pieces
3 lb. Onions, cut into broad slices
2 lb. Jalapeños, whole
8 oz. Garlic cloves
.5 oz.        Bay leaves
.5 tsp.       Black pepper
.5 tsp.        Whole cloves
Salt
1 cup        Olive oil
1.5 gal.     Apple cider vinegar
1 gal.        Water

Sauté each vegetable in a big wide flat-bottomed pan.  Squirt a little olive oil, add the vegetable, a sprinkling of salt and brown.  Proceed the same way through all the ingredients.  Heat the vinegar and water together and pour over all of the browned vegetables. This will make about 20 quarts canned.

Sopa de Bolitas de Tortillas / Corn Tortilla "Meat" Balls w/ Tomato Coulis

What to do with that package of old (but not moldy) corn tortillas that has been sitting in your refrigerator for weeks?  This dish, adapted from Adela Fernández' 1989, "La Tradicional Cocina Mexicana" is the answer to that age-old question.    

I used sprouted corn tortillas which have become my favorite lately.  I spread the tortillas out on a cookie sheet and put them into a pre-heated 350˚ oven and immediately turned the heat off.  The next morning they were hard and brittle and I broke them up into pieces.Then I ground them to a powder in a spice grinder.Next I soaked the the corn powder in 3/4 cup raw milk for an hour.

In a food processor I mixed the soaked corn with egg, garlic, onion, epazote and salt.  I rolled the dough into small walnut-sized pieces and fried them in enough hot oil to reach 3/4 of the way to the tops of the balls.  Working in batches fry them until they are golden brown on all sides.  In a blender grind the tomatoes the garlic and serrano chile and sauté in some of the reserved oil until it is reduced a bit.  Add the "meat" balls and simmer for about 10 minutes.  Taste for salt.

1 package 12 count corn tortillas
3/4 cup     raw milk
1 egg
1 garlic clove
1/4 small onion
2 tsp.        salt
1/2 tsp      dried epazote

1 can        tomatoes (14 oz)
1  garlic clove
1 small serrano chile
salt to tasteMakes approximately 32 tortilla "meat" balls.  Serve with black beans.

Tortillas de Harina / Flour Tortillas

I was an apprentice tortilla-maker when I was 14 -- not by choice.  About twice a month my mother would take a large stainless steel basin, throw some flour, salt and baking powder in a mound.  Next she would pour some hot water directly from faucet into the middle of the mound and  mix it into a sticky mess.  Finally she would reach her hand into the large container of Crisco (gulp!) and pull out a big glop and begin to work it into the dough mound.  As the hot water activated the gluten in the flour, the shortening helped break it down and smooth it out.  She would dump the mass out onto a floured board and begin to vigorously knead the ball -- 50 turns until it was smooth and white and bounced back when you stuck a finger in it.  Then she would anoint her hands with more Crisco and start to squeeze ping-pong-sized balls of dough until she had a big pile of little balls resting and waiting to be rolled out.  

This is where I came in.  While she was preparing the masa, the griddle, herein known as comal, was heating on the stove.  The fire had to be very hot, but not too hot.  It felt like a blacksmith's forge.  Then my mother would start.  On a lightly dusted board she would flatten out that ball in 4-5 turns turn around and place the perfectly round tortilla onto the hot comal.  Once it was on the comal, it was my responsibility to keep up with her rapid-fire pace.  After the initial searing (1-2 seconds) I had to pick it up by a tiny corner and flip it over so it could get the first brown spots.  Then I had to wait a few more seconds before I picked it up again to turn it.  I turned it two more times all the while patting carefully to encourage it to inflate like the Balloon Boy's rig.  I learned that there is a right side and wrong side to a tortilla.  The right side is made after the second turn when brown spots form that look like a pretty pinto pony.  The protocol is to fill your tortilla on the other side of right side so as to present it well -- it's all about aesthetics.

Meanwhile, all this had to be done at lightning speed because my mother would crank them out and you had to get a rhythm going or she would get backed up and you didn't want that!  I had to learn how to not burn my fingers and later my fingers got used to it and then I got better and then I could keep up with her. As each tortilla was done, I had to transfer it to a crocheted-edged dish towel
and finally, we would end up with a stack of about 30 beautiful potentialities - ready to be slathered with just butter, or filled with beans and rice, or cooked again on the comal folded over and filled with cheese as a quesadilla.

4 cups       Flour
1 T Baking powder
1 T Kosher salt
1 1/4 c.     Hot water
1/2 c.        Shortening or corn oil

Place the flour in the bowl of a food processor along wit the baking powder and salt.  Pulse a couple of times to mix it up.   Put the water in all at once and process until it forms into a ball.  Add the shortening and process until it is incorporated.  On a floured board knead the dough for several turns until it is smooth.  Put in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap.  Let dough rest for 15-20 minutes.  Meanwhile heat the comal (griddle) on medium high.   
 Makes about 12 tortillas.