New Mexico and its cuisine

(For many, many photos of my trip, click here!)

Over my decadently long University winter break, I took a trip to Albuquerque and Santa Fe -- Albuquerque to meet my boyfriend's family, and Santa Fe to not have to hang out in Albuquerque the whole time -- and as much as I was dazzled by the natural beauty, the art, the distinct architecture, the culture, and the rich history of New Mexico, I think I came away most impressed by the food. (Of course!)

Iowa has a sizable Latino population, and if you've lived here there's no doubt your small town had one or two quality Mexican restaurants. That's probably true of many small towns all over the Midwest, and the US. And when a foreign food enters the local culture and evolves over many generations, it picks up its own characteristics. My favorite local Mexican restaurant, Vel's Amigos in Fort Madison, is unique (as far as I know) in that it uses potatoes and peas in its enchiladas. That is pure Iowan Irish-German hearty comfort food, there! Anyway, what I'm saying with all this is that I'm not going to imply that you can't get good Mexican food in the Midwest. But the Mexican food of New Mexico has developed a very, very special flavor all its own that you can't experience without being there.

The first thing my boyfriend's mother told me was "Watch out -- the chili is addictive." I thought, yeah, yeah, I've tasted chilis before -- but not like this I haven't. New Mexican chili sauce is pungent and flavorful, rich with that complex chili taste but without trying to prove anything about spiciness. The capsaicin in New Mexican chili knows it's spicy, and leaves it at that. It doesn't go about posturing and betting you you can't stand to eat it. The spiciness is a complement rather than a challenge. Generally speaking, that is -- I'm sure the Southwest has its share of insanity sauces, but that's not the point of chili like it so often is out here. (I found that the restaurant with the menu that boasted, "We cannot be blamed for the spiciness of our chili!" served the blandest sauces of all. Kind of like how anything that calls itself "comedy" immediately ceases to be funny.)

"Red or green?" is the unofficial State Question of New Mexico. I was asked it the first time I ordered something in a restaurant. "Uh, uh, uh, chili?" I stammered, caught off guard. The waitress gave me a "well, yeah" look. You quickly learn your preference. I'm a red chili addict. It's deep and dark and velvety and smoky and delicious. I miss it so. I plan to learn to make it soon.

Aside from the chili, there are just so many good quality Mexican classics, and dishes unique to New Mexico. The enchiladas are amazing, just cheesy as all hell -- I don't know how authentically Mexican this is, but it's the way I like 'em. The burritos are big and hearty. The guacamole is rich and buttery. The salsas are spicy and flavorful. The tamales are mealy and comforting. Two New Mexico-only dishes I tried were posole, a stew of pork (yep, I ate meat -- I was a guest and I thought it rude to turn it down, plus I have a "try local foods while traveling" rule) and hominy, and New Mexican sopaipillas. Uruguay, Chile and New Mexico all have something called a sopaipilla. Uruguay's is more like a fried tortilla; Chile's is a sweet pastry with pumpkin. New Mexico's is a big puffed-up pillow of fried bread that's hollow on the inside. Most commonly you bite off a corner and then squirt honey inside to your taste. They can also come stuffed with beans and cheese and other fillings. I did not try this because I liked them with honey too well.

The only thing I didn't like were calabacitas, or squash, which seemed to be a Santa Fe thing -- they were offered alongside or inside everything. I don't really have anything against squash; as a vegetarian I'm aware that it is a really good source of essential nutrients, and once Brian whipped up a butternut squash soup that was delicious. But it's not my favorite. I will admit that I only had one experience with calabacitas, in a "New Mexican Burrito" at the Plaza Café in Santa Fe (Santa Fe's oldest restaurant, and the site of the falsely advertised too-hot chili). Calabacitas were the only vegetarian filling offered. I found them bland and pasty and watery. And also, why not beans?! Burritos should have beans! I'm sorry! Call me a purist! I want beans! I'm a vegetarian and I want my legumes! Also, their tomatoes tasted like cardboard. But that was my one and ONLY blah food experience in New Mexico. A separate post with restaurant recommendations is coming.

My New Mexico experience will most definitely influence my cooking from now on. I've borrowed the Southwestern cookbook Comida Sabrosa from Brian. The only question is what to try first...

Culinary presents

I always get a few presents related to my cooking hobby. Here are the ones from this year:

1. A pastry brush, as a stocking stuffer. Neat! I've been needing one of those! My roommate and I have been using a tiny paint brush since we moved in to our first apartment three years ago, and, well, it's pretty inefficient.

2. Food Path: Cuisine Along the Grand Trunk Road from Kabul to Kolkata by Pushpesh Pant and Huma Mohsin. This is a really beautiful book with huge full-color photos and a lot of cultural and historical information along with the recipes. I'm looking forward to trying them out. A lot of them are meat-based, but they'll make for good exercises in substitution and adaptation.

3. A pressure cooker! Mom found one for 15 bucks at a yard sale, never used. I've been wanting one of these for a while. Raghavan Iyer swears by 'em and I am really looking forward to being able to cook unsoaked chickpeas in 48 minutes. Seriously! This modern world we live in! (Grandma was telling me they first came into vogue when she started out as a housewife, and whenever the ladies got together there was always a story about whose beans ended up on the ceiling. Heehee! It looks like there are enough safeties on this device that you'd have to do something pretty foolish to get yourself blown up, though.)

Other non-food highlights include the Monty Python's Flying Circus Collector's Edition, from Mom, and a subscription to the New Yorker, from my brother. Favorite presents I gave this year included a 15-year-old bottle of Laphroaig scotch for my dad (that was a joint purchase from me and Brian), hand-made portraits of a few of my friends' pets, a Yiddish alef-beyz book I've been working on for a few months for a friend who loves languages, and copies of my NaNoWriMo novel for the grandmas. (It is an economic year for handmade presents.)

French fight obesity with good food

The French are fighting their obesity epidemic...by teaching obesity patients how to cook.

Patients are told that it's okay to sit down to a three-course meal with family and friends, just not to snack and eat processed, packaged foods.

Although fighting obesity with good cooking may seem counterintuitive to some, I think they are approaching this problem very well. If you look at how obesity is spread out in America, you see that the areas with the worst problems are also the areas with the lowest incomes. Cheap food is the worst for us, but if you've grown up getting fed nothing but cheap food by your parents, you think that's all there is out there. (Cf. that poor Wal-Mart clerk who didn't know whether limes were a fruit or a vegetable...) If some of these poor malnourished people (and it is very possible to be obese and malnourished, as David Cross once pointed out) could learn to enjoy cooking and preparing great meals, they would spend more time thinking about, preparing, and savoring food, and less time eating mindlessly.

Now, you can argue that some people don't have enough money to cook well, but I think the idea that it takes a lot of money to have a cooking hobby is a flawed one. If you play your cards right you SAVE money by making your own food. I'm a poor college student and I often have next to nothing left of my paycheck after rent and electric bills, but I know how to go to Aldi, spend about twelve bucks and go away with more than I can carry, and get really good meals out of it. Most ingredients are not expensive, and many of those that are can be used sparingly or left out entirely. Anyone can cook! And I'm glad the French realize that.

Besides, anyone who's been to the Mediterranean can see that enjoying good home-cooked food doesn't make you fat...the Mallorquins were all rail thin, but my host parents overwhelmed me with food every night, and I didn't even have to endure their epic 2-hour 3-course lunches because I was in class. (Now, I DID gain a little weight in Mallorca, but I blame ensaimadas and chocolate a la taza for that!)

One thing, though -- if we follow this example in the US we have got to remember that Europe has something else we don't, which is public transit combined with a virtually big-box-free economy. Part of cooking dinner in Mallorca was walking to the market every day, getting your groceries, and walking back. You also walked from home to the metro (or bus stop), from the metro to work, work to the metro, the metro back home for lunch. Then back to the metro and back to work. And then back home for dinner. There's a lot more walking in everyday life. And I think trusting in public transit, plus trusting in our own two legs, could make all the difference for us...and our waistlines.

Gnocchi di patate

An Italian classic, these savory little potato dumplings are one of my all-time favorite things to eat. This is a perfect recipe for those long winter nights when you are feeling cold, hungry, and extra indulgent. I dare you to try not to eat way too many. Serve it with a nice crispy green salad so you don't feel TOO bad afterwards!

I first learned this recipe from Liz Clark, a chef from my home county, when I took one of her cooking classes in middle school. I've been making it and adapting it ever since.

Gnocchi di patate

Ingredients:

2 medium or 3 small potatoes

1 or 2 eggs

1-2 cups all-purpose flour (you can also try cake flour for a lighter-textured dumpling)

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon nutmeg (more or less depending on personal tastes -- I love the stuff myself)

About 1 cup of shredded parmesan cheese (none of that stuff in the green can, as Lynne Rossetto Kasper would say)

Olive oil

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Start heating up some water in a medium-sized saucepan and bring it to a boil. Wash and peel the potatoes and cut them into chunks. Place them in the boiling water and cook until easily pierced with a fork. Drain and mash. Put them into a large mixing bowl and let them cool down until they're lukewarm.

Add the salt and nutmeg to the mashed potatoes and mix. Then add one egg and begin gradually adding the flour, mixing it with a fork. Add the other egg, then more flour. Keep adding flour until the dough is elastic but not too sticky. How much flour you'll need all depends on the size of the potatoes and the eggs, so you'll just have to eyeball it.

Begin bringing a saucepan of water to a simmer. While it's heating up, dust a work surface lightly with flour and begin rolling balls of dough into roughly 3/4 inch diameter "snakes" with your hands. Ideally this will be easy, but if your dough is a little crumbly, don't worry -- you got a little too much flour in it, but just be gentle when you're rolling it out and it will still taste delicious in the end. (In the event it's too crumbly to work with you can add a little milk.)

Cut the dough snakes into one inch long segments with a knife, then carefully pick up each dumpling with your fingers and very gently roll it across the back of a fork to create a ridged pattern. (An extra dusting of flour can help if it's too sticky.)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a casserole dish by greasing it with some olive oil. Then, once the water is simmering but not boiling, drop the dumplings in batches of eight or ten into the hot water. The nice thing about dumplings is they'll tell you when they're done cooking: remove them from the water with a slotted spoon when they float to the top, and put them in the casserole dish. Repeat until you've got as many in the dish as you want. (Extra dumplings can keep in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for several months.) Then drizzle the dumplings with the melted butter and top them with the shredded parmesan cheese. Bake in the oven, uncovered, until the cheese is golden brown. Let cool for a few minutes and serve.

Additional thoughts:

*If you're worried about all the fat I guess you could leave out the melted butter and use less cheese. It'll still be good...just not as good.

*If you don't have time to bake them, they are quite good just tossed in a bowl with olive oil and parmesan right after they come out of the water. The baking brings out an extremely delicious flavor in the parmesan and adds an appealing crunch.

*I made a recipe for Hungarian "Shlishkes" from Gil Marks' Olive Trees and Honey, and the process was almost identical, except paprika was added instead of nutmeg. I liked the flavor and color so much that now I always do both.

Easy weeknight pasta

I make this a lot, especially when I don't have much time. Cook a half cup to a cup of pasta. While that's cooking, put some olive oil in a skillet. Use a garlic press or mortar and pestle to crush 2-3 cloves of garlic. Add that to the oil. Add a 2-4 teaspoons of Italian seasoning. Add salt and pepper to taste. Heat the skillet over low heat until the garlic just begins to sizzle, and turn it off immediately (remove it from the heat, if you use an electric stove). Pour over the cooked pasta and toss to coat. Top with shredded Parmesan cheese.

You can add tofu, chickpeas, lentils, or meat to make it a more complete meal. You should probably also serve it with salad or add chopped vegetables to it (sautee them together with the garlic until tender -- just be careful to keep the heat low, and keep stirring it so the garlic doesn't burn). It doesn't get old!

Produce is complicated

I was doing my Thanksgiving shopping today at Wal Mart (sorry -- I do have ideals, but I'm also poor) and the girl who checked us out (she was maybe 18, possibly older) didn't recognize fresh ginger, cilantro, romaine lettuce, fresh green chilis, or limes when she saw them, and had to spend a long time hunting through the Wal Mart-issued non-alphabetical pictorial produce chart, with our help, to find them. She also didn't know whether limes were a vegetable or a fruit.

JEEZ LOUISE. This is why there is a nutritional crisis going on in this country.

Review: Blue Diamond Almond Milk

I blame the vegan cookbooks section at the Haunted Bookshop, which I was perusing for ideas this morning, for this impulse purchase. I'm always wishing I could be a vegan, but I love food and eating so much I would hate to cut off such a wide avenue of textures and tastes and smells. Especially cheese. There is absolutely no vegan cheese that is edible. Do not argue with me, vegans, for you have simply forgotten what true culinary bliss tastes like.

So although I know in my heart I could never truly go vegan, I'm always looking for ways I can substitute non-dairy items in my diet. I'm aware of how bad dairy farming is for the environment and I hate that I am a part of that, but at least I can be less huge of a part of it if I find a good milk substitute that I like.

I love soy milk, but the health risks associated with it scare me, especially as a woman. I still drink it once in a while as a treat (imagine!) but these reports have me frightened away from keeping it in my fridge at all times. Plus it's expensive.

Anyway, what I'm leading up to is that that's why I grabbed this carton of Blue Diamond Vanilla Flavored Unsweetened Almond Breeze from the produce aisle of Fareway today. The package made it sound nice. "Luscious Taste!" "Smooth and Creamy!" "The Preferred Taste Alternative!" It's very low in calories, and almonds are supposed to be full of vitamins. Also, since I spent last spring in Mallorca, I have a fond memory of seeing the almond fields blossoming in the sun. There's something so much more foresty and peaceful about an almond field than there is about a vast, deserted stretch of soybeans. They can keep sheep together in the same fields with the almond trees, and it seems to be a much more efficient deal. So if almond milk was as good as soy milk, I thought I might still have a chance at my perfect dairy replacement (it's still expensive, though - $2.49 a carton at Fareway).

Unfortunately, it was too good to be true. While there's nothing too unpleasant about the taste, it lacks the substance of soy milk. It's just white, opaque water with a vaguely nutty, slightly bitter flavor. It might be okay on cereal, but for drinking a cool glass of milk or making some nice hot chocolate, I'm going to stick with the regular kind. Also, I hear that the almond content in it is so slight by the time the milk is processed that you'd be better off just eating the almonds if you wanted to get the beneficial vitamins and fats from them. Not worth it to drink this. Almond Breeze is not for meeze.

2/5.