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.

Mexican Chocolate and Pancho Villa's Act of Kindness

This year marks the Centenary of the Mexican Revolution.  The Revolution started in November of 1910.  This month, December, also marks the centenary of an act of kindness towards my grandfather by what some consider a ruthless man.  Sometime in the month of December Pancho Villa and my grandfather, Rafael Andrade Avalos, met in the mountains of Michoacan and I am grateful to be able to recognize the event.

Rafael Andrade Avalos was born in Silao, Guanajuato in the 1870s.  He met my grandmother, Maria Ramos, around 1900.  They had a cattle ranch in Coalcoman and had three children, Domingo, Maria and Rafael.   According to my mother's 1984 autobiography, my grandfather was "second officer in command" of the part of the army of Porfirio Diaz  (below) that was stationed in Coalcoman.   At the start of the Revolution in 1910, Rafael's job was to roust out and execute members of General Villa's army.  At least two times, maybe more, he showed clemency to the rebels and spared their lives.  One woman pleaded with Rafael to save her husband because they had ten children and she didn't know what she would do if he were to be taken from her.  He gave him some money and a horse and told him to "get out of here and never come back -- and take care of your family".  One mother pled for her only son's life.   Again, a horse, some money and an admonition to to "take care of your mother!"  He was sentimental and compassionate -- not the kind of qualities that would serve him well in quashing an insurrection.  Traitor or sympathizer?

One hundred years ago, right about now, the third week of December 1910, my grandfather was traveling northeast through the Sierra de Apatzingan towards Guanajuato, taking his wife and son, Rafael to stay with his family during the fighting.  Traveling under cover of night, my grandmother was on a horse, my grandfather and 3 year-old little Rafael were walking when a group of revolutionary solders found them took them to their hideout.  When they reached their secret camp, they shoved him before the general, who looked at him for a long time and asked, "are you Rafael Andrade?"  My grandfather answered, "sí mi general!"  It was Pancho Villa, one of the most important and colorful figures of the Mexican Revolution.  He ordered the soldiers to let go of him, "because he is my friend".  

Pancho Villa and my grandfather chatted and recalled old times.  He asked after my grandmother, María.  Rafael told him that she was doing well, and that she was about to give birth any day.  The general ordered that my grandfather be given a fresh white horse, several sugar loaves (piloncillo), beans and several tablets of chocolate.  He said, "here, take this so that María will have lots of milk for the baby.  That baby, Eva Maria, was born days after this incident on January 5, 1911 and she was to become my mother. Countless times, when she would make Mexican chocolate (cho-co-LAH-teh) on Saturday nights, she would recount this story to us.  Years later, ever the sceptical one,  I asked her, "are you sure that happened?"  She always said yes and that she remembered having ridden that white horse.  

Chocolate de Leche / Mexican Chocolate 

 1    Mexican Chocolate tablet

1     Quart whole milk

Place chocolate and milk in a heavy bottomed saucepan.  Over medium heat, gradually bring milk to the boiling point, being careful not to burn.  When the milk starts to rise, turn the heat down.  Again, turn the heat up to make the milke rise and repeat his a third time.  By this time, the chocolate will have melted.  Using a molinillo, a whisk, or a hand-held electric immersion blender, beat the chocolate until it is foamy and frothy on top.  Serve hot in mugs.

Serves 6

Off the Grid - Ready for the Unthinkable

I am ready for winter.  This year it will not catch me by surprise.  The local weather prognostication predicts a wet, stormy, snowy, cold winter.  If the power goes out I AM READY!!  I roast my own coffee in a popcorn popper, which is a perfectly adequate way to enjoy freshly roasted coffee.I taught myself how to roast on a Primo 6-kilo roaster when I was the erstwhile owner of Villa Victoria/Cafe Mocambo.  The hardest thing to give up when I closed my business was the roaster -- no, the roasting.  I loved the different stages: the blue-green half seeds, each one held in a state of suspended animation with it's own potential; or the middle stage when the beans have the color of fried peanuts, ready to be salted and enjoyed with an ice-cubey lime-perfumed gin and tonic; and the last stage where their hard edges are smoothed out and they turn roley-poley like plump pillows.  An Ethiopian man once told me that you should be able to see the oil of the bean just beneath the surface -- if you see the oil on the surface, you've gone too far.   I got seduced by the romance of the beans -- an individual far away in Brazil picked these beans one handful at a time, until he/she picked enough to fill a sixty kilo bag and then get paid for that day!  Each bean became important to me.   That handful of beans, having found their way to me, here, in 98118, had been entrusted to me to bring them to their ultimate state.  How could I let that coffee picker person's work all go for naught?  My job was as the stonecutter's or the woodcarver's -- to bring out potential and get out of the way.   Anyway, while gas prices were going up to $4.25 I got the rug pulled out from under me by COFFEE and got hooked into loving it!

I loved it so much that I vowed I would never roast decaf.  Why do you want to decaffeinate a plant that has taken millenia to evolve into being caffeinated?  Has anyone seen what decaffeinated beans look like?  They look dead.   I became the self-styled bad girl of coffee.  No espresso and no decaf -- ¡que horror!  

In 2006 Seattle had a 3 day-long power outtage.  We had a little coffee, but no way to grind it. The fabric of human kindness began to  unravel on Rainier Ave and Martin Luther King St, on Day 2.  I'm still grousing about how the Starbucks on that corner could have ameliorated frayed nerves by having their employees stand outside handing out free cups of coffee.  On Day 3 I asked our neighbors across the street, who had a generator, if we could grind our last bit of coffee at their house.  They consented and saved us from falling into despair.  Fortunately, the power came on that afternoon.

As I roasted more and more on my air popper I began to shed my disdain for the medium.  I began to realize that the beans don't know or care if the heat is fire or electric -- it's the person roasting not the roasting equipment.   The original Ethiopian mother, whose goat-hearding son brought back the berries on which his goats had gotten frolickey, didn't have a gas-fueled Probat 5 roaster.  She had a hearth and a pan.  It's the person roasting, not the roasting implement.  

In the coffee-industrial complex (grow> pick>process>transport>roast>sell) the penultimate step, the roasting, is the weakest link in the chain.  Roasted coffee does not remain fresh very long -- at the most a week and a half then it starts to precipitously degrade.   When was your big box coffee roasted?  If you get 5 lb. at a time, how can you possibly drink all of it in time?

This winter if the power goes out I will be ready for any eventuality.  I will simply light my gas stove, put some beans in my roasting pan, fill my tea kettle with water, grind the beans in my Kyocera ceramic blade grinder, and put the hot water and the beans together in a simple press pot.  I will be totally off the grid, not dependent on someone else in a big box to roast my coffee, not beholden to the electric company, except maybe, the gas company.

Verdolagas con Puerco / Pork with Purslane

In July of 2009 I went to Mexico to attend the first international conference on vanilla, Veracruz a la Vanilla. The conference was held at the World Trade Center in Boca del Rio.   I arrived a few days early.   While I wandered around the city so great they had to name it twice, Veracruz, Veracruz, I went to museums, I walked along El Malecon, the busy port waterfront, and I went to lunch at Sanborns in the historic district.  Sanborns is an institution in Mexico.  It is a pharmacy, bookstore, and restaurant/coffee shop where the weary traveler can go and get a perfectly prepared meal every time.  In 1898 Walter Sanborn, a 22 year-old recent pharmacy school graduate from Los Angeles, went to Mexico City and opened the first bicycle delivery pharmacy.  His brother followed soon after and they went into partnership and expanded the business.  First, to discourage their employees from going home for their siesta, they started to make them sandwiches.  They started to sell sandwiches to their customers, then they opened a lunch counter, then they installed a soda fountain, then they started making ice cream.  To ensure a steady supply of safe milk for their ice cream, they imported milk cows from the United States and introduced large-scale dairy farming to Mexico.  Mexicans are inveterate restaurant-goers and it soon became THE place at which to be seen.  They bought an historic house, La Casa de los Azulejos, all the while, expanding their pharmacy business.  They are known for their quality, luxury goods and service.  The waitresses all wear severely starched and colorful "China Poblana" uniforms, the service is always prompt and there is a consistency in all the locations.  For the traveler, it can be a home away from home.  Sanborns is now owned by Lebanese magnate, Carlos Slim Helú, the richest man in the world.

I was ushered into a bustling, jostling, noisy restaurant filled with businessmen and families having their mid-day meal.  I ordered glass of Paternina Banda Azul Rioja, a creamy bean soup and this plate of pork and purslane.As I cut into the tender pieces of pork bathed in the bright and tangy purslane, I was grateful for the chance to have a beautiful meal, and I considered the dark side of Mr. Sanborn. 

Jack Johnson, the boxer, arrived in Mexico City on August 26, 1918 to a throng of 2,000 fans shouting !Viva Johnson! A couple of weeks later he went to Sanborns for lunch.  He was refused service on orders of Walter Sanborn.  Johnson went to another restaurant where he ran into a Mexican general who was an acquaintance.  The general became incensed at his treatment at Sanborns and vowed to make Sanborn apologize.  Three hours later the general and Johnson returned to Sanborns accompanied by two more generals, two colonels, and several other officers.  They ordered ice cream.  All were served except Johnson.  Three officers found Sanborn and demanded service for Johnson, but he did not budge.  A large, rowdy crowd formed in the store.  One of the colonels called for police support and a group of 25 gendarmes and their captain positioned themselves in the alley outside.  One of the officers threatened to close the establishment and another told Sanborn he was going to take him out into the street and beat him up.  A lawyer prepared to strike Sanborn with his cane.  Sanborn conceded, shook Johnson's hand, and ordered ice cream served to the entire party.   Just imagine, Johnson, three generals and two colonels, coming down from a tense skirmish with little bowls of ice cream!  (Journal of Sport History)

Recently, I adapted the pork and purslane recipe from Marge Poore's 1,000 Mexican Recipes in my slow cooker.

6 tbs.     Olive oil
1            Medium onion, chopped
3 lb.        Kurobuta pork shoulder, cut into large chunks
5-6         Garlic cloves, chopped
1 tsp.      Dried epazote
1/2 lb.     Tomatillos, husked
1            Jalapeño chile, minced
3 cups    Purslane, washed and roughly chopped
1/4 c.      Cilantro, chopped
              Salt & pepper to taste

Heat olive oil, onion & garlic in slow cooker on high.  Put seasoned meat, epazote and tomatillos in and cook for 5 hours on low.  Add purslane and jalapeño in for one hour more.  Taste for seasoning and add the cilantro.

Hattie's -- Saratoga Springs, NY

On August 21 I attended the final concert of the 2010 Saratoga Harp Colony in Saratoga Springs, NY.Afterwards, to celebrate the culmination of four years of music school, my daughter and I went to Hattie's, a bustling, brimming and vivacious Southern Food restaurant in downtown Saratoga Springs.  We elbowed our way into a corner at the bar in the open patio and found a spot to enjoy a mint julep.Called to our table we squeezed around a checkered-top table.  Here is the catfish: The menu hits all the right notes: Jambalaya; Skirt Steak w/ Chimichurri; Red Beans and Rice; Chicken and Dumplings...salivating yet?  When the chef came to our table he introduced himself as Jasper Alexander.  I mentioned that we were from Seattle and then he countered that he had worked at Ponti in Queen Anne and that he was from Magnolia neighborhood!  Who knew that he was a Seattle homeboy?!  

Jasper and his lovely wife, Beth, bought Hattie's Restaurant in the Fall of 2001.  The restaurant was opened in 1938 by Hattie Gray, an African-American woman from Saint Francisville, Louisiana.  Open 24 hours a day the restaurant served up fried chicken, gambling and jazz.

It is my conjecture that Mr. Alexander was drawn to buy Hattie's in Saratoga because he grew up just over the Ballard Bridge which one takes to get to Seattle's iconic restaurant --  Hattie's Hat.