Embroidered Mexican Linens (Picture Heavy)

Pregnancy is a lot more tiring than I thought it would be. The first trimester (Spring) was mostly spent curled up in a ball on my couch, too nauseated and exhausted to do more than watch Ugly Betty and Arrested Development on Netflix. The second trimester (Summer) was a lot better. The nausea went away, as did most of the fatigue, but I still had trouble rallying to do much more than what I had to (chores and writing).

Sadly, this involved crafting. There were weeks at a time when I couldn't motivate myself to stitch, none the less put together a cool new pattern to work on. If it hadn't been for my stash of pre-stamped Mexican linens, I might have gone all season without embroidering.

I picked up a slew of these little beauties at my hometown swap meet a few years ago. They're mostly 13"x13" cloths, perfect for bread (or tortilla) baskets. I also snagged a few larger ones (17"x17") for some pretty table decorations.

This is one of the smaller ones. All the little petals were deceptively time-consuming to stitch, especially since I decided to get fancy and do the whole thing in split-stitch. I used variegated floss, which is most obvious on the stems and leaves.

When it was done, I backed it with some pretty Dia De Los Muertos fabric. Note the zig-zag stitching. It was my first attempt at using this stitch for, well, anything!

It's kind of a "companion piece" to the first linen I stitched up last year...which I realize I forgot to post about.

See? Perfect for tortillas!

I also stitched up one of the larger pieces. I fell in love with the fruit motif, and I thought it was an appropriate piece to celebrate the late summer harvest. I already miss the lack of good berries and stone fruits in the stores.

I tweeded the floss for the fruit to get a more "natural" tone, I backed this one with a more classic fruit n' flowers fabric.

This one I'm planning on using more as a mini-table cloth sort of thing. If I can bear to put anything that might stain on it!

I still have about ten more of these babies. It's nice to know that if the crafting blahs set in again, I have a pile of ready-made projects waiting for me.

"Independencia" Dinner: The Conclusion

"Still Life with Parrot and Flag" by Frida Kahlo (1951)

[Note: You can read the first part of this culinary adventure in my previous post.]

When it comes to my memories of "authentic" Mexican cooking, I don't have much to pull on. From my childhood trips to Mexico, I remember mostly delicious homemade soup and restaurant food (including a Christmas Eve dinner of El Pollo Loco).

During the holidays, my mother would sometimes pull out all the stops, slaving over dishes like chiles rellenos with red sauce, bacalao (salted cod), romeritos (a rosemary-like herb) in mole, and flan napolitano. I would invariably reject these dishes (well, except the flan), wishing my Mama would make a roast or ham or some other nice, normal American dish. Now I wish I'd been able to appreciate it more.

We still sometimes do the "traditional" Mexican-American Christmas dishes of tamales and pozole (pork and hominy soup), but time and taste has keep these old-world dishes off the holiday table for years.

So, it was with a real sense of adventure that I embarked on my mole-making quest. I'd rejected the 25-ingredient black mole recipe from Frida's Fiestas, figuring the red mole would be a little more manageable.

A quick note about mole: it is not "Mexican chocolate sauce." Almost all mole recipes are chili-based, with a mish-mash of ingredients that can include a bit of chocolate. This red mole recipe didn't incorporate chocolate at all, instead relying on cinnamon, allspice, and cloves for its spice, and roasted tomatoes and plantain for its base. It also included boiled pork loin, along with some potatoes and masa-based dumplings.

It was a deceptively complex recipe, full of roasting, blending, straining, and stirring. In other words, a lot of steps that I could mess up. I soaked the dried chilies for 20 seconds, not 20 minutes. The dumplings dissolved completely into the sauce. I even burned the sauce, leaving chunks of blackened potato at the bottom of the pot (we transferred pots, though, so it didn't completely ruin the mole).

The results:

Okay, mole doesn't photograph well at all. Just image the scent of roasted chilies, pork, tomatoes, spice...yum. I'll admit, all the little errors added up to a dish that didn't quite blow my mind, but it was definitely not a failed meal...

...especially when it ended with delicious flan.


Even after dessert, there was still one last thing to do to make our Independencia celebration complete: we had to hear the Grito de Dolores.
It's not a song, but a speech that is made every year on the eve of Independence. It's the battle-cry that the priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla gave in Dolores in 1810, to rally the people to rebel against their Spanish colonial government. This rebellion became the start of the full-on war for independence. Or so the story goes.
The Mexican president makes the speech from the National Palace in Mexico City, with thousands of people coming out to hear. This year's was extra-special, being the bicentennial, and was followed with an incredible fireworks display. Even if you don't speak Spanish, take a peek and see what I'm talking about:

I have to admit, I got a bit misty-eyed. Even sitting in my Bay Area apartment, with only a few loved ones, and even a day later, I felt a deep connection to my birth-country like I haven't in a long, long time. I suddenly wasn't worried about making "perfect" mole or representing my culture "correctly." I wasn't thinking about immigration reform in the US, or the drug wars ravaging Mexico. For one moment, I was just another Mexican, proud and free. It was...powerful.

So, all in all, it was a successful celebration. Mama has promised to show me how to make better mole when I come home for Christmas, and I think I may try some simpler dishes from the cookbook before then. It should be fun.

I hope ya'll enjoyed my culinary adventure/history lesson/trip down memory lane. Food is famous for bringing up feelings and memories, and this meal was no exception!

Viva Mexico! Viva la Independencia!

I was born in Mexico, to a Mexican mother and an American father. We came to the States to stay when I was around one year old, so I've spent over 99% of my life in the USA [EDIT: My husband the professor informed me it's more like 97%]. We only went back to visit Mexico a handful of times, and I remember my motherland with a sort of fuzzy nostalgia.

It's definitely not the Mexico of today that you see on the news. My Mexico is a child's Mexico, with bright bugambilia flowers and tissue paper kites, rope swings in the summer and exquisite Christmas lights in the winter. It smells of bollios warm from the oven, car exhaust, and my grandmother's powdery perfume. It's making your cousins cry because you broke the Christmas pinata on your first swing, since you didn't realize it was made of clay and not paper mache. It's being chased by your aunt's posse of viscious poodles in your uncle's mechanic shop. It's watching your baby brother throw a fit in the lobby of the National Musuem of Anthropology, and pretending you don't know him. It's hearing both your parents speaking Spanish to everyone, not just amongst yourselves when you're at home. It's comforting and strange, familiar and alien. It's beautiful and dangerous and a secret part of you that no kids in your class at home know anything about.

Even as an adult, I almost feel like it's a sort of secret identity, a quiet other half that I don't tap into very much. I have been trying to lately, and what better occassion than Mexico's Independence Day on September 16?

It felt extra-important to commemorate La Independencia this year, since 2010 marked both the bicentennial of Mexico's independence from Spain and a century since the Mexican Revolution.

Since I'm not very big on crowds, a more personal celebration was in order. I decided to throw a little dinner party, just for my husband, my good friend, and the aforementioned baby brother who is not really a baby anymore.

Now, beyond the odd dish of enchiladas or batch of salsa, I've never tried any serious Mexican cooking on my own. My Mama gave me a gorgeous cookbook years ago, Frida's Fiestas, Recipes and Reminiscences of Life with Frida Kahlo, and I'd been itching for an excuse to break it in.

The menu consisted of Red Mole, White Rice, and Flan from the cookbook, supplemented with a green salad and roasted tomato salsa. Simple enough, right?

Heh.

Now I know why traditional Mexican cooks spend all friggin' day in the kitchen. I thought it would take me about three hours to whip up this meal.

It took me six. With lots of help.

That doesn't count the hours I spent going to grocery stores, little Latino markets, and the farmer's market in search of all the ingredients. Who knew it would take me three tries to find both dried ancho chiles and guajillo chiles for the mole sauce? Not to mention, the failed quest my brother and I went on to find one little herb called acuyo. AKA heirba santa. AKA oja santa. AKA unicorn hair, 'cause it was just as impossible to find!

Regardless of the acuyo fail, it was still a grand old time. With Chavela Vargas and Pedro Infante serenading us from my new laptop, my brother and I broke in my new molcajete with a batch of Roasted Tomato Salsa.

It's super-easy to make. Just grill a bunch of small tomatoes (I used zebra tomatoes from the farmer's market), garlic cloves (not pictured) and serrano chiles on a comal or frying pan.

When they're starting to char and peel, and they feel soft and squishy when you squeeze them with kitchen tongs, toss 'em in your molcajete (or food processor). Be sure to remove the stems from the chiles. Add some freshly chopped cilantro, and a few dashes of salt to taste. Mush it all up real good.

Transfer it to a glass or earthenware bowl (I swear it tastes better than plastic), and let it sit in the fridge to cool and let the flavors "marry." Or just eat it warm out of the molcajete. It's awesome that way, too.

There's more to this, but I've already rambled on enough for one post. Next time: my Flan-tastic dessert and why you NEED to watch the mole while it cooks...

[The culinary adventure continues here...]