2026

 Meditation for a New Year • January 1, 2026.

Michael Sedano

The sun this grey January day rises only to be shrouded by grey overcast making January First twenty-twenty six one of those cheerless winter days, wet, chilly, just the day for a fire, for remembering, for locating space to hold the fulness of memories.

This day, this year, is time for taking perspective. Now that so much has changed, there are ideas to pursue, experiences to relish, to find a place for some memories to rest.

2026. Another first day of the year. 80 of them in a lifetime, 57 of them since getting married and starting our tradition of eggs benedict on New Year morning. Three years since Barbara died. Today, I appreciate our tradition in a solitary meal, sorting out what was joyful and important.

Our first New Year, 1969, arrives clouded by dread it would be our only and last. I have 18 days remaining until reporting to the Draft. July of ’69 I’m immersed in high adventure, stationed atop the world’s highest missile site near the Korean DMZ.

I take R&R in Tokyo for Xmas and New Year 1970. (Link) Barbara flies to join me. We spend our second new year day in Tokyo, knowing we have only a few hours until my leave expires and her flight to LAX. We have a deluxe Japanese breakfast served in the Shibuya-ku Ryokan Barbara reserved for our reunion week. She wears the silk kimono jacket we bought on our first walkabout and shopping foray and smiles at my camera.

Tokyo is everything Korea isn’t. Abundance versus rationing.  I have not eaten fresh fruit since July. Army mess halls don’t serve fruit of any kind. Stores in Tokyo look like Grand Central Market in DTLA. I buy ten tangerines every day to devour sitting on the tatami, laughing with Barbara counting down our measured days together. 

We remembered that week for the rest of our lives.

I thickened the hollandaise in the microwave this year, and while it was delicious and mostly silky, it wasn’t quite right. Today’s breakfast is a good NewYear memory, packed into yet another January First. 

I sipped Korbel Brut and cleaned up the kitchen. Then, because I can, I finished the champagne reliving cherished memories of days before everything changed, relishing thoughts of the coming year. I always do that.

Boatyard Chile Verde: Gluten-free and Company-worthy

Note: Versions of this recipe appear in a 2019 and again in  2021 La Bloga-Tuesday column (links). Today’s recipe employs high-tech machinery, a Ninja food processor that reduces preparation time to minutes.

Michael Sedano

One of the first places I visited after I was discharged from the US Army in 1970 was Santa Barbara. Before the service I’d gotten a BA at UCSB and was one year into an MA in Speech when my uncle Sam he said a’knock-knock, here I am.

Nostalgia aside, I wanted to help Kathy and Jim build their dream, a 40-foot cement boat.

Kathy and Jim were the most adventurous people I knew from before the service, and here they were, living in a shack of the boatyard next to the railroad tracks, planning a dream.

I positioned my Valiant over the railroad track rail located in a grassy lot with other railroad detritus. I lifted an end to allow Jim to get a rope around the steel and over my bumper. We lashed the other end to the Valiant and slowly I drove the few miles to the boatyard, thankful for level streets and underground drainage. The keel of the dream awaited a framework.

That was Day 01 of the cement boat tragedy. Two years later, Jim had constructed a re-bar and steel mesh superstructure. A crew of friends reported for two full days of hard work pounding cement into the wire gaps. 

They had to eat and I created this recipe for chile verde. It's uncomplicated and expandable to feed fifty, or just enough to feed two to four.

When Kathy and Jim had the craft seaworthy, Jim sailed off to Southeast Asian waters and disappeared. Kathy went in search of her partner, signing on as cook on freighters plying Southeast Asian waters. Kathy’s most-requested dish was Boatyard Chile, a recipe originally prepared on a one-burner gas stove in a decrepit boatyard shack.

That was circa 1971, we cemented the boat. Fast forward fiftysome years, after Alzheimer's, after the fire, to an actual house of my own, a modern kitchen equipped with a fancy Ninja food processor and guests scheduled for a holiday house warming. With the right tools a cook can do anything, including recreating a labor-intensive pork and chile stew in no time at all.

Note to hand-choppers: don’t be dismayed. The electric devices are convenient shortcuts but not a secret to delicious chile verde. It’s ingredients, preparation, time, and love.

Tools Save Time on the Front End. Cooking takes all the Time required.

Fresh and manufactured ingredients. Today's preparation used ½ lb tomatillos.

Choose a meaty piece of pork. The meat shrinks in half from cooking, so plan the raw weight with shrinkage in mind. A quarter pound of cubes per diner will be just about right for small appetites. 

I start the night before with the pork and the beans, clean the kitchen, and in the morning everything's in order for a day's joyful kitchen business. It's a party I'm giving and there are flan and frijoles to make. The frijoles cooked to done last night and need reheating. I get the pork on the low flame and turn to dessert. Flan is really easy--eggs and canned milk. Bake the concoction in a bain marie. Refrigerate and just before serving, turn it over onto a glass dish for a spectacular presentation that tastes as good as it looks.

The Thing Itself: Chile Verde  

Toss the raw pork into the freezer for at least an hour to partially freeze it. The solid icy texture makes trimming and cutting fast and easy.]

Trim away the bigger pieces of white fat and cube the meat into fork-size tidbits, about ½" cubes. Toss the cubes with seasoned corn starch (salt, pepper, garlic powder, cayenne or Gebhardt's chile powder). 

Refrigerate the cornstarched pork overnight.

Three hours before serving time, start cooking. If you make this first thing in the morning you give the chile verde several hours to sit and build more deliciousness when you reheat it.

Rattle Those Pots and Pans

Take the cornstarched pork out of the icebox to come to room temperature.

On lowest flame, fry the fat trimmings, adding water to prevent burning. You are rendering the fat from the gristle. Every once in a while, add water and smash down the sebo chunks to release the tasty oils. Lower the flame and turn to the main event.

Prepare the vegetables.

Wash everything, hands and knives and cutting boards, and vegetables.

1 lb+ medium size tomatillos

2 chiles Anaheim / canned chiles are useful when fresh aren't on the market

1 bell pepper

big pinch of cilantro leaves and a few stems

1 medium onion

six to 8 dientes de ajo

two roma tomatoes

Ninja or food processors don't work magic without help. Quarter all the vegetables--or smaller--before committing them to the chopping vessel. A few seconds is all the veggies require to be ready to cook down into a delicious, semi-thickened chile stew.

This good chop will cook down rapidly into a flavorful ambrosia.

Heat olive oil on high flame in the bottom of your deep soup pot. Lower to medium heat and add the chopped vegetables, a can of El Pato tomato sauce, a can of diced tomatoes (or double your fresh ones), a generous helping of Gebhardt's chile powder,  and a TBS water. Stir vigorously, lower the flame.

Use the pan you're rendering the fat--remove the fried fat. Cast iron works best for frying and browning pork chunks. Add the starched pork and lower the heat to medium flame. Stir the meat around until no pink shows on any surface.

A few more minutes to get rid of the pink

Add the meat to the cooking vegetables and stir.

Add some water to the pork pan and scrape the bottom as you boil the water. Pour this gravy into the cooking chile verde. 

Waste not, especially all the flavor in the frying pan!

Cover, lower the flame just above its lowest point, and simmer an hour. After 45 minutes, test the pork; it should fall apart on your fork when it's ready to serve.

When The Gluten-free Chicano feasts in large groups--as he did recently to kick-off the holidays-- Boatyard Chile is on the menu accompanied by red enchiladas, frijoles, and flan. 

Cooking these delights is a two-day pleasure of meticulous work, patient cooking, and happy guests.

Provecho!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukha, Happy Kwanzaa, Feliz Navidad. Prospero and Gluten-free Año Nuevo!

Soup the Gluten-free Way: Making Menudo

 

Soup For A Cold Day: Gluten-free Menudo 

Editor's note: Soup, and how can I get some right now? And, if it's not Sunday, how can I get some menudo right now? You might be in the sierra madre searching for its treasure with Fred C. Dobbs, you might be sitting around the chante with antojo. There's always the same answer: make some. This recipe and absolutely true story, originally appears in La Bloga January 21, 2013, and again on January 23, 2024. 

Like good menudo, a good recipe and column is worth repeating, especially as the second in this Fall season's La Blga-Tuesday gluten-free soup series.

Not so worth repeating, in fact, not at all, the Güiros shown all perished in the Eaton Fire. Once I find permanent residence --I am about to move for the seventh time--I shall buy new tools, acquire bamboo, and get back to fashioning my bamboo Güiros. Or make another trip into the wilds where that anciano reputedly continues to make his wondrous instruments of puro joy.

The Gluten-free Chicano Makes Menudo - A Naturally GF Food

I had been collecting güiros in the remote barranca near my grandfather’s birthplace. The old indio who makes my güiros was showing me new designs and I lost track of time. I would not reach the highway before darkness so I faced being trapped along the trail and at the mercy of wild peccaries, random cucuy, and the critters of remote darkness.

I knew better than to stay with the old curandero güiro artisan, whose conecta to cucuy had given me night sweats for a month the previous visita, so I made for a settlement deeper into the barranca, the güiro maker shaking his canas telling me I'd be better off spending a sleepless night halfway up the cañon than risk what awaited me further down the barranca. I reached the small village just after sundown.

Already gente were streaming to the tiny zocalo. Señoritas done up in their finest hand-embroidered blusas, the whirling colors of their full loose skirts and faldas mixed with their bright excited laughter. Their mothers gave me el malojo but I had a talisman from el viejo.

Small clusters of men laughed in the shadows, as men will, at some off-color remark or a prediction about the night's prospects. I kept a wary eye on one vato who had taken a dislike to me on an earlier visit.

A trio of musicos, a violin, a guitar, and a güiro, on the kiosko segued from a warming up cacophony to a sweet rhythmic version of Agustin Lara's Solamente Una Vez. There was a magic to the song I'd never sensed before, especially the long sweeping raspas of the güiro. Romance swept the plaza until everything became a blur of passion. De repente, I was whirled into the light to find myself waltzing with the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

Candlelight caught her pupils and shone through her lustrous reddish black hair. The music drowned out everything but her eyes. The softness of her ample waist and soft sheen of sweat on her lightly pimpled brown forehead took my breath, and I whirled her across the dirt faster and faster as the güiro roared above the evening's magic. I was so intoxicated by her allure I thought I'd been enchanted and I was in a ghost story when someone pushed me into my partner and the music abruptly stopped.

"Hijo de la chingada madre, suelta a mi hermana, cabron pinche gringo." 

A glint caught the edge of the machete the vato brandished at his chest, pointed at mine. The shadows stirred, the dance floor rapidly emptied. I stared into the vato's eyes without blinking. Then I smiled. "¿Y tu, que vas hacer con esa navajita, mi'jo, rasparte las uñas?" 

I still have not decided what surprised the vato more, the reductio ad absurdum, my diction, or the fearless glint of my ojos hinchados and ruthless half-smile.

Outrage surrounded me. Vatos had bunched up around us thinking to see blood shed--mine. But in a flash of an eye I had disarmed their local champion and twirled his machete like a juggler with a chain saw. Much as the crowd wanted blood, they wanted it to be my blood, not the local chingón. As I gently pushed my dance partner out of harm's way, she reached her lips to brush her hot breath across my cheek. I turned to quiet the murmuring crowd...

To make a long, long story short, I convinced the mob to let me treat them to a bowl of homemade menudo. I was pleased that, so far from anywhere, the village had a Wolfe stove.

Here is the recipe that earned me a dance with every woman in the ville, and the hearts of all the mothers. Flirting Abuelitas hinted I should come calling on their nietas, pressing me with photographs whose subjects were avatars for every panaderia calendar I'd ever seen except without the arrow in a breast.

The admiration of all the caballeros reflected in the abrazos I got and all the tequilazos I downed. At dawn, after they'd tasted my menudo, the cheering crowd carried me and the güiro-playing musicos around the plaza on their shoulders.

Ingredients

5 lbs honeycomb tripe. (The fuzzy tripe is OK, too.) Put in freezer until half frozen.
1 head garlic.
1 large onion.
2 cans hominy.

Pata Optional: 2 6" lengths of beef leg bone or 2 pig knuckles.

Red chile sauce (boil dried Anaheim, Negro, New Mexico, Guajillo, and Arbol chile pods with an onion and a head of garlic, purée, strain) or, 1 jar Gebhardt's chile powder, or 2 cans La Palma chile sauce (puro chile, no tomato)

Six or more sprigs dried oregano (a Tbs or so crushed leaves)

Preparation

1/2 fill large pot with cold water.

Strip fat from underside of tripe, get it all!

Cut half-frozen tripe into 2" x 2" pieces (it cuts really easily when half-frozen).

Put the panza into the pan and add the chile, unpeeled head of garlic ditto the onion, (you'll remove these later), oregano, tbs salt. optional a bay leaf.

You can make a chicano bouquet garni by wrapping the ajo, cebolla, sprigs of oregano, in cheesecloth and tying into a bag. When using fresh bay, dip the bay leaf into the boiling broth then take it out in 5 minutes. 

Turn up the heat. When the pot begins boiling, lower the flame to a medium simmer, cover, 3-4 hours. If you are in a hurry, boil the hell out of it for an hour and a half, (or pressure cook it for 1 minute after the vapor ctarts rocking).

Monitor to ensure you don't reduce the tripe to soft squishy unpalatable gunk. The meat is done when, with a bit of effort, you can cut it with the edge of a fork

I add the hominy when the tripe is nearly done. Dump the cans of hominy, water and all, into the menudo and add more water if you need more soup. Adjust the flavor: more salt, more chile for flavor or for picoso.

Serving Menudo

Garnishes are critically important. Diced onion, cilantro leaves, crushed chile de arbol or chile piquin, oregano leaves. 

Halved Lemon or Lime--do not use this recipe and serve quartered limón, or a cucuy will haunt you. Never offer bottled lemon juice or the cucuy of fine Menudo will never forgive you.

Serve with hot tortilla de maíz. Wheat-eaters sharing your table will enjoy bolillos or tortilla de harina.

For an authentic touch, put a peeled onion cut in half and a knife on the table so you can score the onion then slice the diced cebolla directly into the bowl without cutting themselves. People will look at you and declare you're eating like a Chicano or a Mexican.

Así es.

Provecho.

Invitation to a Guest Column, or a Comment

La Bloga welcomes guest columnists on subjects dear to the writer's heart. La Bloga is the oldest Chicana Chicano Latina Latino literary y más blog in the universe. 

In November we celebrate our 21st year sharing poetry, short fiction, critical essays, gluten-free comida, foto essays, community events, new books for children, YA, and general readers. Y más.

Click the mug shots at the top of the page to email your ideas.

La Bloga especially welcomes community dialogue on issues raised by one of our seven regular writers. There's a link at the bottom of this, and all columns, to join in with your commentary. Be sure to check the Notify Me box to follow your and others' comments.

Late Tuesday Antojo: Enfrijoladas

Flashback to 2016

Something makes a person hungry; for a certain taste, a particular food, a quién sabe que longing. An antojo, a feeling all antojado for enchiladas suizas, or all antojado for freshly squeezed jugo de toronja, or quién sabe que, right?

Today, el Gluten-free Chicano was hanging out with Michael Sedano and both of them got all antojado for enfrijoladas. So we looked into La Bloga's twenty almost 21-year archives to see if we'd previously featured this resplendent elegance of simple ingredients and memorable deliciousness worthy of an antojo that has to get satisfied pronto.

voilà

 https://labloga.blogspot.com/2016/03/enfrijoladas-potluck-company-or-everyday.html 

It was the department party for the TAs. A pot luck. The department would supply the beverages, the TAs brought the food. One of the TAs came up to me and, in a gesture of camaraderie, warned "Watch out for the enchilados, they're really hot."

The myth of Mexican food had struck again. The dish prepared by The Gluten-free Chicano is anything but chiloso. Some tastebuds are more sensitive than others, and that particular crowd, it turned out, was typical of many. "Mexican food" means burn your mouth delicious.

By now, most diners understand "Mexican food" doesn't have to start out chiloso, but that's always an option, either in the preparation or serving a hot salsa on the side.

The enfrijolada can be made really hot by adding any number of chiles to the mix. Serving a pot luck or dinner crowd, the Gluten-free Chicano tones down the fire.

Pre-heat the oven to 350º.

Cube chicken meat (the Gluten-free Chicano used a COSTCO roasted chicken and removed the breasts for this dish).

Mince a medium-sized onion, six or eight branches of cilantro, a couple teeth of garlic.

Add ⅓ can of diced tomatoes.

You can use black olives but the Gluten-free Chicano wanted a more piquant flavor so this preparation added a dozen pimiento-stuffed green olives.

If serving people with appreciative taste buds, finely mince two serrano chiles.

Add a cup of grated sharp cheddar cheese.

Fill generously.

Soften a good quality corn tortilla in hot olive oil in a small frying pan. The Gluten-free Chicano prefers Diana's brand of extra large tortilla de maíz. The manufacturer uses only corn, lime, and water, no xanthan gum and no additives.

Using tongs, dip the first tortilla on both sides until it is flexible. Transfer that to a plate. Dip the next tortillas on one side, and place the oiled side up on top of the stack.

The tortillas will cool enough to roll by hand.

Add a large pinch of filling and spread it across a softened tortilla. (You can soften the tortillas in a microwave oven. Wrap them in a dish towel and microwave for 30 seconds on high. But work quickly because microwaving makes them sticky as they cool).

Roll into a tight bundle

Roll the tortilla around the filling, packing it toward the edge. Slide it over and roll another one.

Repeat this until the baking dish is filled. If you run out of space while rolling, just roll on top of the done ones.

Fill the baking dish snugly

Prepare the frijoles. If you like the consistency of fried beans, make them a bit watery so they spread easily across the rolled surfaces.

Top with left-over stuffing

More than likely, you'll have some chicken remaining. Save that for tacos, or for a deluxe dish, spread the tops of the enchiladas with the mixture.

Add a layer of beans; fried or de la olla.

These are frijoles de la olla, straight from the refrigerator.

Slather sour cream or crema mexicana across the surface

Use a spatula or a fork to spread a layer of crema across the top.

Garnish with shredded cheese

Garnish with shredded cheese. Here you can get fancy and add queso fresco crumbles.

Set the timer for 45 minutes if using cold ingredients, 30 if using warm filling.

There are two schools of thought on service. I prefer to find the open-ends and spatula a single enfrijolada to each plate  (or two for larger appetites). You can cut through the top like a casserole and serve a 4" square.

Bake. Note the open ends for serving

Enfrijoladas is a low-cost, highly nutritious, and gluten-free dish. Beware "gourmet" tortillas as the "gourmet" part means some menacing industrial entity has added wheat to the masa.

A crisp green salad, a hearty red wine, or lots of Bard's Gluten-free beer will make the meal a major hit.

"Damn," one of the TAs said, pushing away from the table to get seconds, "I didn't know Mexican food could be so delicious! I'm sure glad you're in the program."

The Gluten-free Chicano's No-Asco Meals

Variations on A Theme: Gluten-free Platos Principales

Michael Sedano, el Gluten-free Chicano

People who avoid gluten in their food avoid obvious dangers like bread and pasta, and hidden gluten like soy sauce, malt, french fries cooked in the same vat as breaded foods, and any number of unsuspected foods, like canned soup or restaurant sauces like red enchiladas and chile colorado. There's a lot of delicious restaurant cuisine a Celiac will not dare eat. 

Gente with celiac disease--The Gluten-free Chicano is one of them--religiously conform to a gluten-free diet, standing in grocery aisles reading every label, quizzing restaurant staff, eating in the same restaurants ordering the same food repeatedly because it's known or proven, this time, safe. 

Dining at home remains the gluten-free person's safest way to ensure a happy digestive system with the added benefit of home cooking's epicurean pleasures. Today, La Bloga-Tuesday shares meal ideas for gluten-free Chicano food dining, and one Honorary Chicano Food dish. These are company food, and generally easy and fast from knife to table.

There's one catch when dining with wheat-eaters, the asco factor. Offer some diners a "gluten-free" dish and their noses wrinkle and faces speak volumes about distasteful experiences in the past with gluten-free analogs of real food. 

All the meals presented here should be gluten free but check your own ingredients before getting out in that kitchen and rattling those pots and pans.

Note, también, diabetics like el Gluten-free Chicas Patas count carbs and eat smaller portions. Soups and the platos presented here, come with low carb counts.Not only are these meals gluten-free, here is low-carb food diabetics will totally scarf down and ask please may I have some more? Do people still say "scarf down"?

Walk a lot. Eat lots of soup. Stay away from wondrous foods like pizza, spaghetti, flour tortillas, warm bread smeared with before an unquestioned dinner of chile colorady, and you might lose weight and exert control over your body mass. Eat right. Eat delicious gluten-free food y vamos a ver.

Breakfast: Two Variations on Weenies con Blanquillos

"Weenies con huevos" has that alliterative ring. When little Gluten-free Chicanito was under his grandmother's care, she explained the natural world as it existed in her backyard. She kept chickens and I would collect the eggs which, the first time I referred to them as "huevos" I got gently corrected. Huevos are what a boy or man has between the legs. The gallinas give us blanquillos, that's what we eat.

My gramma grew up in Michoacan on the shores of a lake where the boats caught fish with butterfly nets. I never learned the name of her rancho or pueblo or what her Purépecha homeland was like. I have only that dim recollection of her story in one of the two languages I was growing up into. I order "blanquillos" in local eateries and get blank stares, an occasional smile of recognition.

This dish is a classic for most raza kitchens, something a child gets in their earliest solid food regimen. For real tasty sausage and gluten freeness, The Gluten-free Chicano uses halal or kosher product, like Hebrew National all-beef weiners.

The Gluten-free Chicano's standard egg and weenies breakfast includes a starch--either papas or frijoles, fresh tomato, aguacate and fresh fruit, and fruit or vegetable juice, as available.

Elegant Lunch or Light Dinner: Balsamic Reduction, Burrata Cheese, Tomato Salad

Balsamic Vinegar Honey Reduction originates far from Aztlán, in Italy, where the Latinos originate. And, you'll find balsamic reduction on fancy restaurant menus, at a premium price. When you taste that twenty-dollar salad, you'll marvel at the exquisite flavor of tomato and balsamic reduction.

You can duplicate that restaurant experience casí a few dollars, and for twenty, you can feed--impress them--two or more happy diners. Sin propina.

Balsamic Reduction: Easy to Make, Eyeball the Measures

Heat a shallow pan over a low flame.

Pour in a quarter cup of good commercial Balsamic vinegar.

Squeeze in an eighth cup of honey.

Splash in some Tapatío or other hot chile sauce.

Add a tiny pinch of salt.

Stir constantly. Bring to a boil for five to ten minutes, or until the volume of black liquid is halved.

Let cool.

*Note: Ensure the balsamic vinegar does not contain barley-derived caramel color.

**NoteNote: Honey make a faster thick sauce. It's not necessary and you can reduce balsamic with no added ingredients.

Drizzle balsamic reduction onto the bowl or plate. Center a ball of burrata cheese in the dish. Lay sliced fresh, or lightly roasted, tomatoes around the cheese. You can use fresh mozzarella slices, too. Garnish with fresh basil leaves, optionally, thinly sliced fresh garlic. Drizzle the whole presentation with reduction.

Ground Beef: Two Variations On Albondigas

The Gluten-free Chicano prefers soup to any other food, at any meal or snack. Albondigas soup is a fast and easy standard in el Gluten-free Chicas Patas' kitchen. The Gluten-free Chicano developed a fierce antojo recently, out of the blue thinking about the porcupine meatballs that were a favorite in his twenty-five cent elementary school cafeteria lunches. 

Restaurant ground beef dishes often include flour or bread to thicken the mix and put them off-limits to gluten-free gente. But albondigas, meatballs, need not contain gluten ingredients. Nor are they fast food. 

Cooks who use food processors or blenders can make meatballs in a whiz. Hand-made albondigas take time but add satisfaction to the cook's day.

The secret to a good meatball is finely minced vegetables. The porcupine meatballs have a lot of bell pepper in them, and more rice than soup meatballs, and don't have the yerba buena that makes albondigas such delicious eating. Otherwise, a meatball is a meatball: good ground meat, rice, onion, garlic, (bell pepper) egg, salt, black pepper, chile powder.

Twenty minutes cooking time, but the longer the better with these two meatball dishes. Flavors build and meld when spices and carne rest after being mixed and formed. Then, once cooked, those flavors continue to blossom until reheated and served at breakfast or lunch, or tomorrow's dinner.

Look for detail recipes for gluten-free Porcupine Meatballs and gluten-free Caldo de Albondigas in upcoming La Bloga-Tuesday columns. Here is a link to a La Bloga-Tuesday column featuring Mexican Chicano Fish Soup, Caldo de Pescado.

Soup: Caldo de Pescado

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2025/02/review-regalos-gluten-free-caldo-de.html

Ingredients with carb counts FYI

Everything- <100 grams carbs or 25 g per bowl

6 oz fillet Cod 0 gm
Black peppercorns (ground is just fine) - 1g per tsp
Carrots - 8g per cup, boiled
Celery - 4g per cup raw
Cilantro - .7 per sprig
Garlic - 1g per clove
Elote - 17.12g
Onion - 10g large bulb
Rice - 45g cup cooked 
Salt - 0g
Tomato - 4g each
Bay leaf-.45g
Jalapeño chile-.83g
Serrano chile-.41g
Water to make 4 bowls
Butter-.01g

This is an incredibly useful carbohydrate counter: (link):https://www.carbohydrate-counter.org/advsearch.php 

Comida de Cuaresma: Tortas de Camaron

That time of year when some people endeavor to eschew meat, especially on Good Friday, brings the delights of making and eating nopales--opuntia cactus paddles--in red chile sauce garnished with shrimp omelettes made with dried powdered shrimp. 

Don't translate the food gente. "Cactus with shrimp pancakes" lacks the mouth-watering anticipation that comes when you pronounce nopales con tortas de camarón as you remember back to your youth when gramma or mom used to make nopales, and not just during Lent. Nopales con tortas de camarón are good all year round!

Today's The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks column has a bonus, a wondrous, unique, recipe featuring pumpkin and hominy to add taste and texture people will enjoy and devour all the helpings you offer. 

Do please cook the recipes and let el Gluten-free Chicas Patas know how it turns out for you. You're encouraged to share your own tricks and recipes for nopales.

La Bloga welcome Guest Columnists. If you're a gluten-free cook or baker, send your column ideas via email. Click on our fotos above for the link.

Provecho!

Peeling Nopales the (Mostly) No-Espina Way

Any time a cook prepares fresh nopalito pencas, an espina or two is sure to find a finger or palm. Así es, the romance of el nopal. If you collect your nopales from the garden your likelihood of tiny painful finger pokes increases. Enjoy!

A sharp paring knife and careful finger placement between the espina carbuncles are two secrets to preparing nopales.

Use a washable cutting board or work on newspaper. 

Meticulous Method: Draw the point of the knife around the spiny perimeter of the cactus paddle, cutting away the outer ¼ inch of spininess.

Sensibly Fast Method: Hold the penca flat on the newspaper and draw the knife across the face of the penca nearly horizonally. Most espina nubs slice right off along the path of a sharp edge's travel. 

Dip the blade in a glass of water to wash away espinitas.

Steel the blade frequently to keep the edge slicing effortlessly.

Wash the pencas. 

There's a white espina in the top the foto below, in the middle where the two pencas meet. It would be disagreeable to find that on your tongue, so wash and inspect.



Slice the pencas into ¼" strips. Draw the blade at a diagonal through the strips.

The nopalitos are ready to use raw in a salad, add to a stew, toss in when you scramble eggs. 

Below, nopales simmer with carne de puerco. Later, the cook will add una torta de camarón to soak up some chile.

See below for The Gluten-free Chicano recipes for nopales con tortas de camarón and a really fancy yet economical pumpkin hominy and nopales guisado.

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks
Nopales con carne de puerco y tortas de camarón
Michael Sedano

Grown from single penca planted in 1960. ©2013msedano

You know it’s Springtime when opuntia cactus of the right varieties form plentiful buds and you keep an eye on them over the next few weeks until the pencas are large and still tender, deep green and ready to be picked, peeled, diced and cooked up.

But early February is not Springtime. The nopales stand bereft of buds. Still weeks to go before we can return to the old nopal and harvest some of its tender offerings. When he bought this land in 1960, my father kicked his heel into the hillside here, to soften the dirt. He dropped a penca where he worked and stepped on it, pressing it into the earth.

When there was still open land and groves in Redlands, people who didn’t grow their own knew the best places to pick nopales. Just as gente knew the groves where the best verdolagas grew, a favored field where the kelites were almost weed-free, they knew where the best tunas--hence the best nopales--grew. Nopales were a feature of the local landscape; in the wash, in alleyways, in a corner of an empty lot.

Unusually thin penca.

Some nopales are more delectable than others. The ones with fuzzy micro-espinas are inedible just because they're so much hassle, no one I know has ever eaten one.

Pencas need to be new growth, healthily green-colored, free of complicated espinas, and a scant half inch thick, so diced chunks have skin on two sides.

Always ask permission before cutting someone's nopales. Most gente will exchange recipes and urge you take a few more. I've heard some tipas request a few dollars to allow a forager to pick nopales.

Today, the local Mexican markets sell diced nopalitos in plastic bags, as well as whole pencas if you want them for grilling, or to cut your own.

The nopal forms the heart of comida de cuaresma. With scrambled eggs for breakfast, in a pickled salad for lunch, and Nopales con tortas de camarón for dinner, those observant of the Lenten stricture against eating meat find hearty eating in nopales.

I, like my people, always preferred the dish with pork, hence today’s The Gluten-free Chicano recipe features pork as well as shrimp and eggs with nopales. The dish is completely gluten-free.

Nopales con carne de puerco y tortas de camarón is down-home cooking, but also company food.

Ingredients
Medium onion
4 teeth garlic
three or four branches of cilantro
Two pencas or 1 pound diced fresh nopales.
1/8 lb chicharrón broken into 2" squares.
1 lb pork, 1/2 cubes".
Serrano or jalapeño chiles, sliced thin.
salt, red chile, comino powder, black pepper.
Eggs – 2 people per egg
2 oz ground dried shrimp powder (1 large package)
Baking soda
limón or lemon
Tomato sauce
Water or broth, maybe milk

Nopales exude a viscous gum during cutting and cooking. This is a natural thickener to the sauce but can be unnerving to the first-time user.

In a smoking hot pan...
Mince onion and garlic and wilt with the sliced chiles in good olive oil.
Add cubed pork, brown.

Add sprigs of fresh cilantro.
Toss in the nopalitos and fry until they turn a deep green.

Lower the heat.
Add one or two cans of tomato sauce and the water from rinsing the cans.

Stir in pieces of chicharrón and let simmer twenty minutes or however long it takes to make a batch of tortas de camarón.

Tortas de Camarón
This torta is an omelette thickened with powdered shrimp.

Separate eggs. Add a pinch baking soda to egg whites.
Beat egg whites to light peaks.
Blend in egg yolks.
Stir in 1/4 cup of water or milk, salt, black pepper.
Stir in half the package of powdered shrimp.
Assess your needs. Add water and the rest of the shrimp if you'll need to make more tortas. The mix should be thick enough to form dollops, not pour.

Squeeze a lime or lemon half into the egg-shrimp mix.

In a hot pan...

Drop generous tablespoons of egg mixture into hot olive oil and spread the pancake with a spatula. Turn and cook until center is done. The tortas will brown very nicely.

Float the tortas atop the nopales and serve to table.

Place a torta or two on each plate, cover with a scoop of nopales and carne de puerco. Eat with your hands and tortilla de maíz.

Refritos, green salad, cold gluten-free beer, hot conversation at your option.


The Gluten-free Chicano cooks
Chile Verde Con Granitos Y Calabaza
https://labloga.blogspot.com/2013/09/gluten-free-chicano-cooks-bluebird-on.html
Michael Sedano

pork meat, peeled hatch chile, cubed pumpkin 

Company was coming and the Gluten-free Chicano was busy as an agent provocateur at a peace rally. The Gluten-free Chicano wanted something easy but not ordinary. He had the perfect ingredients on the calendar—the day before, Frito Lascano held his annual La Pelada and the Gluten-free Chicano had 30 pounds of roasted Hatch chile in the refrigerator.

The fastest use of freshly-roasted chiles is soup. Remove stems and seeds, chop lightly then whiz in a blender. Add water or broth to keep the blades moving. Make a cup of chile paste. In a saucepan, heat the chile, stirring in broth, milk, half-and-half, or yoghurt, or cream, to produce the thickness you want. Serve in a fancy bowl with a chile ring garnish. Prep time: 10 minutes.


Serving soup is for a less engaged day. I decided to make a variation of Frito’s "pumpkin soup". 

This distinctive stew gets chewiness from granitos plus texture from lots of meat. The bit of sweetly aromatic squash adds interest to the mélange of richly spiced vegetables. The chiles determine the chilosoness, so be prepared with habanero or other hot sauce if your chiles are not.

The preparation illustrated here at La Bloga and at Read! Raza came out famously. Gente took home plates, and I wanted to freeze some to make tamales.

Most Mexican food is normally gluten-free and this pork stew is normal. A non-meat alternative adds cubed papas in place of pork, and reduces cooking time to around half an hour.

Ingredients to serve 20 or freeze for later
3 lb boneless pork
1 bag diced nopales or 2 pencas
2-3 lb roasted green chiles
2 cups white hominy with liquid
2 or more cups diced orange squash like butternut, pumpkin, or banana squash
Fresh cilantro
4 green onions
Onion, garlic, comino, salt

Sharp knives.
Cut everything to the same proportions.
Cube meat and squash to ½” or 1” cubes.
Dice/chop onion and nopales to size of grains of hominy.
Chop the chiles after removing stems and seeds.
Thinly slice 3-6 dientes of garlic.
Slice green onion into 2" pieces, chop greens.

Deep, wide sartén, or large saucepan. Medium flame.
Lightly brown the aromatics and squash.
Add pork and brown.
Add chile and its juice, mix together.
Add granitos and some juice, mix together.
Add green onion
Chop a big pinch of cilantro stems and leaves, sprinkle on top.

Reduce heat to lowest simmer.
Cover and cook two hours, stirring regularly.
If you added too much liquid, slightly uncover lid and it boils off.

When this chile verde is done, the pork is fork-tender, the base viscous and saturated with flavorful liquid.

Serve over steamed rice (for excess carbs) or just ladle some chile verde into bowls and the guests will come and go, walk around the room, and talk of Michangelo.