Caldo, Sopa, Caldillo: Soup's On!

Michael Sedano

My grandmother lived on Lawton Street, close to the packing house where she worked. The North side of town stopped where the navel orange groves began and stretched from Redlands to Bryn Mawr and all along the Santa Ana River wash to the mountains. My Mother dropped me off at Gramma's during the day.

Gramma's kitchen featured a wood-burning cast iron stove, lumbrita going all day. Inside the firebox, Gramma kept camotes slow-roasting in residual heat, crinkled cascara dripping with miel. On top of the stufa, frijoles waited in a clay vessel, and always a pot with soup. "Caldo de Res" I've seen it named, but to us, it is Cocido.

Was I four? Three? I remember walking into the kitchen and being guided to a bench at the table. Mom and Gramma begin their visit as my grandmother places a bowl of cocido in front of me. 

Gramma ignores my protests as she cracks chile japones into the bowl, shushing me that chilito is good, and good for me. She squeezes a lemon half into the soup, places a hot tortilla de harina in my hand. Later years, if I whined about hot chile my Dad would tell me to chow down because chile "puts hair on your chest."

The little boy doesn't know that yet. But right now, ahh, the intense pica, mollified by limón, is just right. Gramma pulls a tortilla de harina off the comal and it hits the spot with this caldo. I make a tiny scoop of tortilla, fill it with caldo and into my mouth. A spoon will come later.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but inside, it's so comodo. It's caldo weather, gente!

Three Soups For The Season, y Más

The photograph illustrates a version of my grandmother's recipe. My mother wrote down the familia recipes for my wife and daughter. Our descendants will not miss the flavors of home. Of sentimental importance, I use my mother's cocido / menudo pot for my caldos now.

 

 

 

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks

La Cruda

 

Miguelito sat in the small unpainted room between the front room and the kitchen, leafing through a Hit Parade magazine. Dany Landeros was spinning rancheras on the radio. The boy looked away from the black marks on the paper to study the photograph of “Woozy” tacked to the wall by his Uncle John. “Woozy” must have been the name of the four-eyed man.

 

Woozy was an American, meaning a white man. Jesus next to him was white, too, hasta en color, but that's different, it was a drawing. Woozy’s grizzled unshaven face made him look like a bum in grainy black and white. Miguelito recognized retouching without having a word for it. Somehow the photographer had duplicated Woozy’s eyes giving the bum two sets of eyes, over-under. Fake but compelling to the small boy. 

 

Pondering the provenance of Woozy’s photo—did Uncle John pay for it? Did Woozy give it to Uncle John? Why two eyes?--the boy had not noticed Uncle John stumble into the room. Tall, unshaven like Woozy, Uncle John smiled down at his nephew, his hard-working little sister’s own little boy. Smiling made John wince in pain.

 

John wore the creased baggy trousers he wore last night at El Resbalón. His left leg bore a dark stain and drops of blood dotted his undershirt pointing to swollen crusty nostrils and a bruise coloring Uncle John’s face with black and blue and green and yellow blotches against his deep brown left cheek.

 

“Sientete, Mi’jo,” gramma told him. She didn’t say it the way she invited Miguelito to sit to a bowl of Cocido and her hand-made tortillas hot off the comal. Miguel detected sadness and the stress of helplessly aguantando the fact her oldest child was a wino. In a few weeks, she’d give him money for the Greyhound to Stockton or Fresno from where he’d pick his way down the valley. All his mother had to do every year was worry and send money.

 

John ignored the chair and leaned into the ice box. He took a drinking glass off the top of the white appliance and two eggs from inside. He hastily cracked each blanquillo into the jelly jar, bits of brown shell clung to the viscous egg. Juan looked at Miguelito with his one good eye, the other swiveling with it under the swollen lid. “Salud!” he saluted the youngster. John tilted his head back and let the raw eggs slide into his mouth.

 

“La cruda,” Uncle John said. Miguel recognized the statement as both fact and lament. The boy stared at the empty jar on the table. A single drop of albumen glistened on the rim in the light from the window. A thread of eggwhite stretched and slowly glided down the outside of the glass. Woozy stared blankly from the other room. The moment burned itself into Miguelito’s awareness and he would never forget it.

 

Gramma used her apron to pull open the firebox to stoke up the heat with a piece of orangewood that she pushed into the coals. Then she poured water from the olla into a shiny steel soup pot. In a practiced blur she peeled six tomatillos, sliced a small onion, halved and sliced a yellow lemon into the pot with a Bay leaf and black peppercorns.

 

She walked out to the garden to pick six slender green chile pods and all the red chile piquin on one bush. She tore off two leaves from the tall blue-green plant and walked back to the stove.

 

Uncle John breathed in deeply. The blooded nostril gave off a shrill wheeze and bubbled when he exhaled. He pulled a wadded handkerchief from his back pocket and emptied his nose. Miguel couldn’t avoid seeing the green and bloody mocos Uncle John folded away into his pocket.

 

Gramma added the chiles whole into the pot, followed with a generous sprinkle from a round cardboard box of salt.

 

She pulled the blue-green leaves from her apron pocket. Laying one leaf flat on her palm, she slapped the other palm sharply onto the leaf, three quick slaps. Gramma looked at the leaf between slaps. The surface had a whitish cast now. Gramma peeled off the transparent skin to produce a wet poultice. She did the same to the other leaf and placed them on Uncle John’s face. He went “mmmm,” the pain hidden below the leaves’ cool healing tissue. Gramma cured Miguelito’s frequent headaches with the same tall blue-green plant, whose name he never learned.

 

The scent of burning leña and earthy lemony steam filled the kitchen with deliciously fragrant breaths. Miguelito inhaled deeply and made a secret vow that he would never forget the aroma, nor the moment’s complex of feelings.

 

In a few minutes, gramma ladled some broth into a bowl adding a few tomatillos, onions, and lemon slices. Setting the clear liquid in front of her first born, she said a single word. “Caldillo.”

 

Caldillo

Caldillo is chiloso with lemony flavor from tomatillos and lemon. Not only does gramma’s Caldillo cure la cruda, it cures the common cold. Naturally gluten-free with about 70 grams of carbohydrates in the whole pot, Caldillo is good for what ails you these cold, wet days.

 

6 – 8 whole tomatillos, dehusked.

1 yellow lemon (or lime), halved and sliced.

1 medium white onion, sliced.

6 pods fresh or dried chile arbol.

3 pods chile piquín.

2 cups water.

Salt.

Peppercorns.

Bay leaf.

 

Add to water and bring to low boil.

Serve steaming hot.

Breathe steam, sip soup, wake up, breathe clearly.