Gluten-free Caldo de Cocono and Cranberry Sauce You Deserve, Underdog Poets

In Memoriam Bonnie Lambert and José Lozano, QEPD

Michael Sedano

Bonnie Lambert, landscape  painted in workshop

José Lozano

As November 2024 drew to a close, Chicanarte lost two giants of the culture within a few days of one another's transition, José Lozano and Bonnie Lambert.(two links to artist websites)

Jose Lozano's engaging line drawings augmented with color and infused with humor and insight into social events and human foibles caught the attention of architects who selected Lozano's tribute to musician La Marisol to adorn the side of a building at the perimeter of el pueblo de Los Angeles and leading into and out of the city's administrative center. 

Bonnie Lambert's colorist impressionist canvases never fail to gratify viewers and attract collectors. La Bloga-Tuesday happily shared numerous events that included Lambert. A good friend of fellow painter, Margaret Garcia, Lambert helped Garcia lay tiles in a massive craneo now in the garden at Plaza de la Raza (link).  Bonnie sat with others in Garcia's studio the afternoon I sat as the subject (link). 

Here are fotos from an exhibition and workshop Bonnie Lambert conducted in Fontana, California in 2022.

Bonnie Lambert after the workshop, finished work on wall.

Lambert's Palette

Bonnie Lambert portrait of a woman painted in workshop

 

What's in a Name? Cocono, Pavo, Guajolote, Turkey

Michael Sedano

My grandmother was the best poultry dresser in the Inland Empire. People drove great distances to reach De Young's Poultry in Redlands, California, for a turkey dressed by "Emily", gramma's English name. My elementary school teachers loved the bags of feathers I regularly brought.

My grandmother was from Michoacan, purépecha gente, and she brought the word from her tierra. Cocono was gramma's name for the bird, which she raised at home, as well as processed at the poultry purveyor in Redlands. If you've ever heard a live turkey sing you have not heard "gobble" but a throaty cluck that sounds like the name, co-OH-cono, CO-coh-cono. 

Thankstaking creates more dismay than a celiac ordinarily endures at mealtime. Traditional holiday feasts come to table laden with gluten: bread rolls, bread stuffing, canned soup-based sauces, crispy onions atop the casserole, pie crust. 

There’s cross-contamination in the kitchen with utensils stirring and cutting bread and flour concoctions. There’s cross-contamination on the table with serving spoons and scoops.

Ay de mi, what’s a celiac and other gluten-intolerant tipa tipo to do, when she or he sits at an invited table and cannot be fully in control of the meal prep? Not eat.

The Gluten-free Chicano is grateful that turkey cooks don’t dust a turkey with flour when it’s baked. This means there’s going to be a carcass and soup.

El Gluten-free Chicas Patas happily shares a recipe for the tasty after-thankstaking soup of his dreams. Holiday and any meal featuring cocono means a wondrous caldo in the following days, and lots to freeze for non-turkey eating months.

The basic vegetable mix includes leftovers from the meal preparation, i.e., onion, garlic, carrot, celery, bell pepper, tomato, parsley, papa.

Step 1: remove most of the bird meat and store it to make mole, tacos, curry, à la king dishes. If you’re lucky, you’ll have the neck, wings, and drumsticks. Break the breast away from the back to fit into the pot. If you enjoyed a large bird, save half the carcass, wings, etc. in the freezer for a deep winter soup.

Step 2: rough chop the vegetables. The Gluten-free Chicano saves the tops of carrots and root end of celery for soup.

Step 3: half-fill the soup pot with water.

Step 4: place the carcass and veggies into the water and turn the heat to medium. Cook one hour or until the meat falls off the carcass, legs, and wings. Add water to ¾ fill the pot.

Step 5: Remove the root end chunk of celery and other relatively inedible ingredients.

Step 5 ½: Remove the bones from the water, strip off the meat to return to the pot. Add water.

Step 6: chop and slice onion, celery, carrots, bell pepper, tomato. Add to the pot.

Step 7 (options): add gluten-free rice noodles and cook until al dente; add papas and cook to soft; add rice and boil until the grains blossom; add no starch and enjoy a rich (cloudy) consommé.

Step 8: 

dinner bell! Serve with limon and a side of homemade cranberry sauce.

Rough chop veggies for a rustic hearty treat

There's a lot of meat on a turkey carcass. Boiling lets the meat fall right off into the broth.

Break bird to fit, cover with water. This turkey was roasted with citrus.

The kitchen, the whole house, grows redolent with delicious aroma
surpassed only by several bowls.

Here’s The Cranberry Sauce You’ve Waited For

Controversy has attached itself to canned whole-berry or jellied purée; opinions vary on either cranberry sauce, often negative. There’s no reason to strike up a dinnertime whine, just make your own from fresh cranberries.

La nieta has been The Gluten-free Chicano’s cranberry sauce kitchen partner since she was five years old. This sauce is perfect for children to lend a hand during the oft-frantic days before the feast.

Ingredients: fresh cranberries. Sugar. Toronja. Orange. Lemon. Lime.

Step 1: put the cranberries into a cooking vessel. Cover with sugar—not too much, wait to taste and add sweetness as needed. Turn the heat on low.

Step 2: zest the citrus, add to the pot.

Step 3: chop some cascara, one or two inches of zested orange and grapefruit peel.

Step 4: chop a few slices of the citrus fruits add to the pot.

Step 5: you’ll hear the cranberries pop in the heat, and notice liquid begins to build up in the pot. Stir and smash the concoction as it cooks. After ten minutes or so, the mélange is a beautiful amalgam of ingredients. Taste. Add sugar to cut the bite of the berries.

Step 6: transfer the finished cranberry sauce to a spectacular crystal serving bowl, or whatever bowl you have. Clear glass is good to allow the diners a visual treat. 

Step 7: refrigerate until an hour before dinner. Let the sauce sit at room temperature.

 

Cover raw berries with sugar and add more later, to taste.
This is three bags of berries.

There's no substitute for a zester to get just the flavor buds out of a citrus.

Lots of zest and a modicum of citrus pulp make a wondrous treat.

When berries start popping, start smashing.

Citrusy Cranberry Sauce ready for the table

Underdog Bookstore, Hidden Gem in Hidden Gem

One of those hidden gems of a city is Monrovia, California. The city's a short detour off the busy freeway heading to Pasadena to the West, the road to the Inland Empire and Las Vegas on the East, and it's worth more than just a momentary look-see.

The city's beautifully restored Victorian structures house businesses and gente. The shopping district--S. Myrtle Street--is a quaint anti-mall of sidewalk storefronts and unique specialty stores. And in the middle of the district, bookbuyers will find a non-profit community-centric bookseller, Underdog Bookstore (link).

La Bloga-Tuesday is happy supporting this independent business, especially with its active programming of poetry readings and book release events like Carla Rachel Sameth's 2024 reading from her Secondary Inspections (link).

Underdog brought an invigorating reading at the end of November featuring Teresa Mei Chuc and Hazel Clayton, along with an Open Mic. It's a pleasure to share fotos of the readers.

Teresa Mei Chuc

Hazel Clayton

Open Mic Readers

Angela Clayton

Jackie Chou

Mary Torregrossa

Joe Dominguez

Name Unknown

Thelma T. Reyna

Michael Sedano

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 

Way-Back Machine: Cocido Is Soup For the Ages

Michael Sedano

I've been eating Cocido as long as I remember food. Today's La Bloga-Tuesday column isn't that old, but it has some miles on it. The recipe first saw our screenpages as part of La Bloga-Tuesday piece on November 17, 2015 (link). when we celebrated the Bluebird Reading series that wound down to the last songbird at that time.

We remember you, Bluebird! Órale, what a memorable reading series!

With weather changing from balmy to breezy to downright miserable it's time for nourishing, hot, ever-ready comida. Soup is just the food to meet those standards. This beef vegetable soup--restaurants call it cocido de res, caldo de res, or just cocido--is easy to prepare. In cold kitchens, leave the pot on the stove on low flame to fill the room with aroma and keep the soup hot, and ready to eat, at the drop of a ladle.

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks
When the weather outside turns frightful, it’s time for Cocido

The Gluten-free Chicano's second-earliest memory of food grows out of visits to my grandmother’s home on Lawton Street in Redlands, California. My mother would go to visit her mother and as soon as I stepped down into the kitchen, gramma would sit me at the rough plank table, turn to her wood-burning stove and ladle out a steaming bowl of cocido. She kept of pot of cocido going every day.

Same thing when we went to visit little gramma--my mother's grandmother--at the Las Cuatro Milpas tortilleria on Mt. Vernon in San Bernardino. There was always a pot of cocido going, along with a guisado and beans, and the world's hottest chile salsa--the air around it made me cough.

“No, gramma, pica!” I would object as she crushed toasted chile japonés pods into the caldo. I don't remember her exact words but it was something about the picoso being good for a boy's growth, how it would keep me healthy and strong. Especially that chile japonés, and sometimes a chile piquín. She was right.

The other day, a doctor walked into a hospital room I was occupying and asked if he was in the wrong room, “I’m looking for a seventy-year old man,” he declared. I tell everyone I owe my youthful appearance and resilience to eating chile every day. A day without chile, my motto goes, is like a day without sunshine. Except when I was in the Army where there was no chile to speak of (Korean chile was insipid and had no bite), I've enchilared myself nearly every day of my life.

A week without cocido is somewhat similar. I never tire of the rich beef broth and soft-cooked vegetables of my favorite food. In the twenty-some years I worked in Vernon, California, I lunched on cocido two or three times a week. Diana’s on Pacific, Avila’s El Ranchito on Santa Fe, and Millan’s mariscos on Soto, all in Huntington Park, were in a race for the best non-homemade cocido in El Lay. For The Gluten-free Chicano, the measure of a Mexican restaurant is the quality of its cocido de res.

But homemade cocido is always the best, for three key reasons: First, cocido is easy to make. Second, you have left-overs. Third, left-over cocido tastes even better the second and third day.

Ingredients – These vary based upon what’s in the reefer. In this instance, The Gluten-free Chicano forgot the carrots and ear of corn.

Beef rib bones.
Celery stalks and the root end.
Onion.
Garlic.
Red papas.
Tomato (fresh or canned).
Cabbage.
Garbanzos.
Bell pepper.
Carrots.
Helotes (or frozen cobbettes).
Cilantro.

Cook by feel--Have a sense of what you're doing and visualize the final product.

Use a large soup pot. Salt and pepper the meaty bones then brown them with sliced onion and diced garlic in a little olive oil.

Add your water (make two quarts or a gallon, depends on how many mouths you're feeding, or who is eating), a pinch each of salt and coarse ground black pepper, a handful (a cup) of dried garbanzos, the root end of a head of celery, the carrot ends, and bring to a boil.

Cover the pot, boil on medium to high flame for half an hour or longer. The wafting perfume of the broth will beckon household members to the kitchen and everyone can stand around and get hungry. It's the smell of home sweet home.

Cut the vegetables into spoon-size or slightly larger portions. Cut the cabbage in quarters.
Use the entire pepper and pull out the stem later.

Add the vegetables to the boiling soup stock. Cover and simmer on medium flame
an hour or longer, or until the meat falls off the bone. Add the corn on the cob in the last ten minutes if you like
a crispy bite, otherwise put the corn in along with the other vegetables.

This is medium flame, doesn't touch the bottom of the pot. This lets the soup cook at a leisurely pace that
intensifies and melds all the flavors to full wholesome richness.

Serve generous portions of vegetables and broth in large bowls.
Garnish with crushed chile japonés or chile piquín. Serve with lemon or
lime halves. Restaurants serve chopped onion and fresh cilantro, and
room-temperature rice. A spoonful of rice dipped into the
hot soup cools off the soup. If you're avoiding complex carbs, no rice.

Get a good quality tortilla de maíz. If possible, a tortilla made without guar gum or preservatives, just corn, lime, and water. For wheat-eaters, a freshly rolled tortilla de harina hot off the comal is a good option. Don't place flour tortillas against corn tortillas or you contaminate the gluten-free food.

A successful bowl of cocido leaves nothing but huesos and maybe a bit of cabbage stem.

¡Provecho!

Cooking and the Soltera, Soltero, Solterx

Cooking for Companionship

Michael Sedano

I recently became a no longer married man faced with the prospect of cooking for one and dining alone. There are also new joys of cooking for a companion, dining and enjoying the fireside with a good meal, conversation, companionship. Cooking, and eating together, fashions increasing intimacy between strangers. Propinquity and liking are just a first consequence.

My new state makes me little different from the bachelor I was in April1968, a grad student living alone in Isla Vista, looking for steady companionship in the UCSB relationship desert. I enjoyed companionship on the debate circuit; the occasional date into Santa Barbara or Goleta. 

All my friends had graduated and moved to Frisco. I was solitary and dug it with a little equivocation.

Work and study, eye women at the burger bar, have coffee alone in the student union after class, cooking a lot of spaghetti cause it's easy, eating cold cereal for breakfast, alone.

Millions of single people share my kitchen predicament, but unlike so many others, I cook when I need to make an impression. Cooking at home saves money.

This brings me back to late May, 1968. Barbara and I enjoy a couple of  dates, resulting in Barbara asking to cook me dinner in my Isla Vista apartment. Barbara lives in Santa Barbara, so an evening meal takes on importance, on the courtship scale, an 8 out of 10.

Barbara wants to impress this guy, but Barbara is broke, and not a cook. 

The roommate, raven-haired Paula, has a boyfriend who cooks like a chef. Don gives Barbara a recipe for stroganoff. At forty-five cents a pound, Barbara can afford hamburger. My mom cooked stroganoff from round steak; I adapt the recipe below from hers. That was Barbara's competition, though she has no idea when thanking Don and Paula.

There was no question I loved Barbara already. Our town-and-gown relationship was desperate for a steadier companionship. Our second date found us getting along, comfortable like future lovers. We had auguries and ganas. 

A good meal would cement the foundation. Barbara told me how she wanted to impress me with her kitchen prowess. Her confidence and experimental attitude told her to go ahead and do it. Paula said I hope I don't lose a roommate.

A few months after that first meal, we provisioned at a Bakersfield mall and hit the road north.  Almond groves whizzed past in skeletal monotony when I asked Barbara to make us sandwiches for lunch.

“On the road? While we’re moving?” 

Barbara's family had not eaten in the car, on the road. My familia's lonche style was just dip the weenie in the mustard, wrap a slice of white bread around it, hand me a pickle, and next stop, Salinas. Barbara skeptically unwraps the loaf, effectively spreads some mayonnaise with a wooden coffee stick, lays bologna on the single slice of white Webber's bread, folds it and takes her first bite of a sandwich on the road as almond groves whizz past.

My bride tells me it is the most delicious bologna sandwich she’s ever eaten. Probably tells me that just to swell my head. We won't talk about pooping under a highway bridge, another first.

That May, 1968 afternoon, The Doors play on the stereo as I take my chair at the sturdy formica table that doubles as a study desk in every apartment in the mile-square Isla Vista student ghetto. Tonight in IV, hundreds of men are sitting down to meals cooked by a woman hopeful this food will feed his soul as well as his appetites.

I’ve cleared away my papers and books. Barbara lays two plates on the barren off-white surface. The singer wants his fire lighted, and my fire won't catch. I stare at the plate listening to Barbara hopefully offering me “beef stroganoff” from her hand. It is the color of shit on a shingle brownish grey with stirrings of white sour cream.

You gotta hand it to Barbara’s toughness. She sat there and watched my face grow aghast then I swing into action, pulling catsup from my cupboard to stir tons of that shit into the stuff on the plate until it takes on a grey-pinkish color. Barbara stares at what I've done to her food and gets asco. She doesn't have that word, yet.

I explain, apologetically, I do not eat white food. That doesn't sound right. I don't eat white-colored food. My food has to be red. Or brown. Preferably “spicy”. But not white. White-colored.

That was the night Barbara learned what “asco” means. White food gives me asco. She also learns to forgive me for boorishness. I offer to discuss how the basis of a long-term relationship, a key to companionship of the best kind, is red-colored food. She is tolerant, hurt, steaming.

That was 55 years ago. She stuck with me. Five months after we marry, I go into the Army for 19 months. My mother takes Barbara under her wing as soon as my ass hit Ft. Ord for Basic. My Mom teaches her daughter-in-law Mexican Chicana cooking. 

When I return from 13 months in Korea, in 1970 in time for our 2d anniversary--our first together-- Barbara’s repertoire of my comida is completely professional. There is nothing she cannot cook, and cook right, just like my Mother used to make. And it is all red. 

And ever shall be food without white, white-colored food, así es. Era.

Upshot

I was fortunate Barbara had a thick skin and saw something in me so she stuck around. Not all Solterx are in for the same kismet. It behooves them to sharpen their kitchen game. Expanding one’s courtship repertoire into the kitchen is a sure-fire something. 

The Gluten-free Chicano, remembering how it was back in 1968 before being struck by lightning and white food, white-colored food, offers a series of courtship food for the person with passing familiarity with the kitchen. The most important element is having an experimental attitude and the confidence in your abilities to overcome any obstacle.

Courtship Food

Gluten-free Beef Stroganoff on a Budget

“steak pieces” the butcher calls the tray. Odd-shaped strips of beef trimmed off carcasses in the process of cutting meat into t-bones and filets. The bargain isn’t the 4.99 a pound but the work half-done for me.

These fotos illustrate two servings. Cooking for one means having left-overs. Stroganoff for breakfast means find a friend and feed them the night before and don't have sobras. Stroganoff is fancy eating, courtship food. Plan a good playlist.

"Steak strips" are the right size, you could cut them in half lengthwise. Half-freeze them to make slicing a breeze and you won't cut your fingers. Cover the meat with garbanzo flour while the onions wilt in hot olive oil.

The Gluten-free Chicano uses his suegra's cast iron frying pan. Such a pan is a universal kitchen tool for everyone from tyro to chef.

Keeping the flame high, stir the meat and onions, add the sliced mushrooms. Increase quantities to feed more people, stir more vigorously the more volume you're moving.

When the meat has greyed, mostly, add equal volumes of tomato sauce and water. Add a lot of liquid if you like a lot of sauce. Some people love their noodles / rice / mashed potatoes to swim in that rich stroganoff sauce, that rich red stroganoff sauce. 

Lower the fire to simmer.

Cover the pan and simmer 20 minutes. Stir or shake the pan now and again.

Two large dollops of sour cream look like this. If you like extravagance, just use an entire container of sour cream. When you're doubling this to feed four, use the whole container.

Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul-nourishing Comida

Six strips of beef
Halfcup sliced mushrooms
4 slices off a white Onion
⅓ cup tomato sauce, ⅓ cup water (totally variable here if you want more sauce)
Good, healthy, sprinkle garlic powder, or 1-2 dientes minced
½ cup Cheap red wine
½ cup Sour cream (2 big scoops with a tablespoon)
Garbanzo flour, or other gluten-free flour
Coarse ground black pepper, pinche sal

Dowse the sliced beef in Garbanzo flour.
On a hot flame, get olive oil smoking
Wilt the onions and garlic for a few seconds

Add the beef and stir and stir.

Stir in the tomato sauce and the water. Make a thin soupy volume.
Stir in ½ cup or less of cheap red wine.

Lower the flame

Simmer for 20 minutes, covered. (You want all the alcohol and half the volume of liquid to reduce away, becoming puro flavor in the meat/hongos stew).

Stir in the sour cream.

Cover for five minutes or so, until the sour cream is fully blended and heated. The more sour cream, the longer you cook it to make a rich thick sauce. (If you added too much water or it didn't boil away enough, serve it anyway. Next time, you know.)

Serve over rice or gluten-free egg noodles.

If served as a courtship meal, be prepared. Get the ingredients to make eggs benedict for tomorrow’s breakfast. 

 

Enchilada Problem-Solving: Chilaquiles Instead

The Gluten-Free Chicano Cooks

Gluten-free Enchilada Pie

Michael Sedano

there’s no tortillas, I don’t eat bread

there’s no tortillas, for my refrieds…”

That’s not exactly how Lalo Guerrero sings it, but that’s what my refrigerator sings when I begin the process of making dinner. In my life, cooking a meal is one thing that’s certain, and it’s all mine, to plan, shop, prepare, and share. There's special importance to this duty along with its inherent joy. Mealtime ought to be automatic enjoyment as the day’s one respite--

These days there’s always an obstacle. It’s not that there’s no tortillas, there aren’t enough. And I knew it yesterday when I moved the small can of Las Palmas enchilada sauce, picante, out to the kitchen. But I couldn’t get to the grocery store. 

Old mother Hubbard and I went to my reefer  (she brought her own, five feet long) to see what’s to see: everything today is a down-to-the-dregs leftover: a few slices of pork chop from stir-fry, chunks of white and yellow cheddars, a nub of fresh mozzarella, a manchego wedge. There’s cilantro and half a brown onion. 

A tortilla compromise: Quesadillas, Tacos, Tostadas, something else, would have to present itself. More than anything, I have the antoja for enchiladas. But not to make just four. Compromise: chilaquiles. 

I grew up eating rolled enchiladas de queso. When I was in the Army and overseas, my Mom taught Barbara how to make enchiladas.  My gramma and my mom made onion-cheese red chile rolled enchiladas. Rolled. No other. 

One relative serves her husband a tortilla folded over the filling and baked. Barbara and I call that “no-love enchiladas” and my Mom agreed and never got over that slight. But I understand “quick & dirty”; that’s evidently how Manitos Manitas Manitx do theirs, red or green. Folded.

The past 40 years or so, I’ve routinely rolled meat and cheese inside my enchiladas. I served this variation—her sauce--to my mom when she lived with us, and she liked them, no secret disapproval of how her son gets fed. When you eat my enchiladas, you’re eating my gramma’s cooking, those are my mom’s enchiladas.

That’s not what ran through my thoughts holding that bag of four tortillas. I am tired and worn out. Wednesday can’t come soon enough—that’s my day off. So tonight it’s gluten-free cooking, estilo quick and desperate.

The Gluten-free Chicano’s Quick & Desperate Enchilada Pie

Ingredients • about 85g carbohydrates total. 

4 tortillas

4 oz meat

½ brown onion

1 cup grated cheese of mix varieties

Cilantro

Corn starch, absolutely pure corn

Las Palmas picante enchilada sauce. (Hot or mild red enchilada sauce (no tomato). I intended to buy green enchilada sauce, so that would work, too.)

Comino

Rerfried frijoles

Sour cream or Crema

Pie pan

No-stick spray

(see the carb counter at the bottom of the page)

Work At Your Own Pace Though This Takes No Time At All To:

Spray the pie pan and set it near the work area.

Pre-heat oven 375º. Middle or top rack.

Wrap tortillas in a dishtowel, microwave 30 seconds. Let rest and they'll grow supple enough to use to roll enchiladas, as was my intent today. But the first tortilla I took from the wrap cracked from age, or manufacturing defect. I stared at the broken tortilla in my hand, my resignation I'd roll four enchiladas only, frustrated. In momentary rage, I ripped the cracked tortilla in half. 

This decided my menu. I tore all the tortillas into strips then divided those into rectangles. Chilaquiles for dinner. I wanted to get it done, be serviceable while respecting the food. I lost myself at the chopping board and everything was cool. I didn't have to make four.

Mince onion with cilantro.

Grate cheeses. (The reason I have these chubs of cheese is they're so small, grating them endangers knuckles, absent extra care. I am extra careful. A food processor like Cuisineart makes grating no challenge. As a child in the 1950s, and until 1963, I was my mother's cheese grater. I went away to college and Mom replaced me with a Cuisineart.)

In the Microwave oven, I reheat refrigerated beans to spreadable consistency. Add water if you made them dry-style.

Chop, mince, food process, the pork into ground protein. You could fry up some taco ground beef or  pick meat off a chicken carcass. Set aside.

Pour half the can of chile sauce into a microwaveable vessel.

Stir 2 TBS corn starch into the cold chile sauce and dissolve all the lumps you see. Cover with a dish or film and micro 2 minutes. Stir and micro 1 minute. You want the chile-cornstarch more than twice as thick as straight from the can.

Spoon a couple TBS of sauce into the bottom of the pie pan.

Put the torn tortillas in the pan.

Add onion-cilantro, stir together. If I'd gotten to the store, I would have added black sliced olives.

Reserve 2 TBS sauce. Pour the warm sauce into the tortillas and mix.

Keep mixing, use a fork and separate the pieces stuck together. Every surface needs coating.

Spread the ground meat across the top, forming a thin layer.

Spoon beans around the edge of the pie pan and flatten them in a circle toward the center of the pan. Be decorative and make a ring around the pie pan.

Slather sour cream atop the ring of refritos.

Cover the open surface with cheeses. Dribble reserved red sauce across the cheese. Also spatula the red sauce out of the cooking vessel. Use all your red or green enchilada sauce.

Place the food on a flat cookie pan and Bake at 375º for 40 minutes. 

Cool for at least half an hour. 

The masa becomes completely saturated with the thickened chile sauce as it boils. As the pie cools from boiling, the tortilla custard settles and thickens.  When you cut your gluten-free quick&desperate tortilla pie, the insides flow only a little if it's cooled enough. 

Serve covered with an egg or two. I served a bed of chopped lettuce with a scoop of cottage cheese and canned pear slices.

Tomorrow, the refrigerated sobras are a beautiful dish. Reheat for a minute or so in the micro, or turn on the oven to 350º and give it 10 minutes. 

I served breakfast like I serve at dinner, with an egg. And if you got to the store in the meantime, some sliced tomatoes and aguacate, a hot salsa on the side. But if you'd gotten to the store, these would have been rolled enchiladas and where would we be?

Carb Counting via http://www.carbohydrate-counter.org/advsearch.php

8g    4 tortillas

0g    4 oz meat

8g    ½ brown onion

2g    1 cup grated cheese of mix varieties

18g    Las Palmas picante enchilada sauce

1.5g   Cilantro

14g    Corn starch, absolutely pure corn

.01g   Comino

28g    Refried frijoles

6g      Sour cream or Crema

Pie pan

No-stick spray

about 85g carbohydrates in the entire meal.

Antepenultimate Tuesdays In Octobers

Michael Sedano, The Gluten-free Chicano

California's on-again, off-again Fall hits with a vengeance like clockwork every October. That was true back on October's antepenultimate Tuesday in 2016, and, with global warming, I hope it's not truer this year, the vengeance part. 

Here, in Pasadena, most people put on a sweater or sweatshirt until the sun burns through the overcast, then it's afternoons of playeras and chanclas. Coverup again around sundown, when it's time for a hearty dinner. Something savory, not heavy, good for you. And, of course, gluten-free.

A savory fish soup is just what the calendar and el tiempo and el clima and El Gluten-free Chicano call for. Here's an updated recipe for Caldo de Pescado from October 11, 2016. Back then, el Gluten-free Chicas Patas enjoyed Frito Lascano's annual La Pelada and stocked-up on roasted rajas. Social isolation put the kibosh on peladas. Hatch chiles, however, have found a niche in local grocery stores. Truth be told, any "large green chile" will be just right. Some people, and restaurants, serve a bell pepper-only caldo.

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks 

Caldo de Pescado: Naturally Gluten-free

Skies darken earlier as Fall wanes into Winter, and with dropping temperatures, a steaming bowl of caldo de pescado hits all the right spots for dinner or lunch. In fact, if you make a big pot, you can have dinner and lunch, maybe even breakfast of this richly seasoned hearty preparation. 

Ingredients 

Cabbage 

Carrots 

Red potatoes 

Celery 

Onion 

Garlic - 3 dientes 

Bell pepper

Hatch chile

Helotes or corn kernels 

Canned tomatoes 

Tomato juice

Frozen cod filets 

Limones 

Cilantro, Salt, pepper, powdered coriander, bay leaves, olive oil, water. 

My kitchen stocks these ingredients in partially used quantities. I had the nub end of a celery, half a cabbage, most of a big red onion, and half a red bell pepper. I used another whole bell pepper because half isn't enough. 

The Gluten-free Chicano seeks value and finds it in bulk frozen cod at the grocer. One filet per person, let it defrost for a couple hours until soft enough to cut into spoon-size chunks. A partially-frozen filet slices into easily spooned cubes.

I like the cabbage cocido style, so slice half a head into four wedges. 

If using fresh corn, clean and break in half. For this preparation I had a jar of Niblets Corn (half a can) in the icebox and used that to good advantage. 

Get an edge on your knife with a steel, then carefully chop everything except the cabbage into spoon-size pieces. 

Add the root of the celery, the top of carrots, the tops of bell peppers. After cooking their flavor into the broth, pull them out and feed to the hens. La Chickenada loves them.

Pour a scant helping of olive oil into your soup pot and get it hot. 

Add the chopped vegetables and cook on medium heat for a few minutes. 

Add the fish and stir it into the cooking vegetables. 

Add as much chopped Hatch rajas as you need, based upon the hotness of the flesh and your diners' palates. You want the soup to be lip-smacking picoso but not so much that those of a different palate won’t enjoy the meal. You can offer powdered cayenne or dried chilitos, along with the lemons and onions and cilantro as the standard condiments.

I had half a mason jar of whole peeled tomatoes, so I added them—the equivalent of 3/4 of a 28 oz can of whole peeled tomatoes. I rinsed the jar and added the water. 

Add a cup and a half of tomato juice then enough water to fill the pot ¾ full. The vegetables exude liquid, too, so leave room. 

Add the dry spices and cilantro. I didn't have fresh cilantro so used some dried coriander. Stir in three small bay leaves, scantly generous salt, several pinches of coarsely ground black peppercorns.

Place the cabbage and helotes on top, bring to a happy boil, then cover and lower the flame to small simmer. Leave it on the fire for an hour or until the cabbage is soft enough to pierce easily with a fork. 

As this caldo slowly simmers your entire home fills with the aroma of puro love. Preparing this caldo is a lot of work, and all those ingredients combine to form a lusciously enticing perfume that reflects your labor. 

Speaking of love, The Gluten-free Chicano is using his mother's 1941 cocido/menudo pot.

Scoop heaping mounds of the vegetable and fish into a bowl, add as much liquid as you want. In the fotos below, I doubled the liquid before serving.

Serve with fresh lime or lemon halves to squeeze into the savory broth. This is excitingly filling without being heavy. That means you don't have to serve quesadillas, nor tortillas, for that matter. A tort, however, is useful to push food onto the soup spoon. 

¡Provecho!