"Los Barrios Family Cookbook" - Vermicelli Noodle Soup with Meatballs - National Hispanic Heritage Month

Date I made this recipe:  October 24, 2016:  Better late than never to observe National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 – October 15)

Los Barrios Family Cookbook – Tex-Mex Recipes from the Heart of San Antonio by Diana Barrios Trevino, foreword by Emeril Lagasse.  "Los Barrios, named one of Esquire's Top 100 New Restaurants in America."

Published by Villard (registered trademarks of Random House)

ISBN:  978-0-375-76097-6; copyright 2002

Purchased at Moon Palace Books, Minneapolis, MN

Recipe:  Vermicelli Noodle Soup with Meatballs (Fideos con Albondigas) – p. 147-148

Two words:  Toasted pasta!

Reader, who knew that toasted pasta would bring out so much flavor in this dish?  No I! (En Espanol:  Yo no!)

So as you can see above, I missed the window of opportunity to observe National Hispanic Heritage Month during its designated time, but I had this book queued up so I decided to run with it.

You should see the pile of "For your consideration" cookbooks I have on deck each week.  The cooking events for which I could use a book in my collection far outweighs my ability to use them.  I consider the fact that I made this recipe a week later a win.

The book itself is not unfamiliar to me as I often see it displayed as a "face out" (i.e. put on the shelf so you can see the cover) or an end-cap (shelves at the end of the aisle), but I never bought it.  And then I had occasion to visit Moon Palace Books in south Minneapolis and this time around, it came home with me.  Timing is everything.

Los Barrios is not only the title of this cookbook but a 30 year-old restaurant in San Antonio serving Tex-Mex recipes.  In the Acknowledgments section, the author notes that Random House approached them to write a cookbook when it's usually the other way around.  I commend them for their foresight.  Plus, even though Tex-Mex cuisine has been popular for some time, it was just starting to get a toe-hold in 1999, when this book was optioned.  Now, of course, there are many, many Tex-Mex cookbooks as well as cookbooks from several other "Hispanic" countries such as Puerto Rico, Cuba, South American, Central American and of course, Mexico.

When I delved into this cookbook, I was in the mood for something light and this fit the bill.  I also wanted to avoid a lot of spices, specifically chiles, as I don't have the taste buds for that.  Still, a full recipe of this soup calls for six serrano chiles.  You put them in the soup whole but I still held back on the amount lest my tongue start on fire.

The author notes that this soup – Vermicelli Soup with Meatballs "eats like a meal" which is one of the reasons I made it.  And she was right.  I used both a fork and a spoon to eat this delicious – and easy – soup.

So back to the toasted vermicelli---even though the instructions were pretty clear (heat oil, toss vermicelli back and forth until golden brown), I still had this niggling feeling that I was missing a step like say, cooking the pasta first.  Cooking it didn't seem right, but I have been burned before (no pun intended) by missing or incomplete instructions.

Enter YouTube:  you can find instructions on how to make just about everything on YouTube and there were several videos on how to make this soup.  And yes, Virginia, you do indeed toast the pasta uncooked for several minutes until it is golden brown.  And then when you finish blending your tomato mixture, you add it to the pasta and let it simmer for a few minutes so that it cooks.  Brilliant!

The only thing I changed up was that I split my pasta in half before adding it to the pan.  But if I made this dish again (and I might because I quite enjoyed it), I might add a bit more everything to it except the chiles.  I would have liked a bit more cumin and garlic powder and a tad more tomato puree in the soup but otherwise it was great and easy to make.

This cookbook, like the restaurant, serves up a wide variety of recipes, including breakfast.  I was tempted by a few of the breakfasts, then changed my mind and thought about making some salsas and some enchiladas before deciding that soup was good food.  There's a recipe in the book for soup without the meatballs but I love meatballs and so I went with the full meal deal.  And let me tell you, this recipe really is a full meal deal because half a recipe easily filled my 3-quart saucepan.  I cannot imagine what a full recipe would look like.

So there you go, my "better late than never" homage to National Hispanic Heritage Month.  Enjoy!  ("Disfrute!"

Vermicelli Noodle Soup with Meatballs – (Fideos con Albondigas) – serves 6 to 8 (Ann's Note:  generously!)

For the meatballs

1 ½ pounds ground beef

¼ cup white rice

2 eggs

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

For the soup

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

One 12-ounce package vermicelli

½ onion, sliced

½ green bell peppers, sliced

6 serrano chiles with stems

3 tomatoes, quartered

1 tablespoon salt, plus more to taste

½ teaspoon ground cumin

¼ teaspoon garlic powder

¼ teaspoon pepper

To make the meatballs, fill a large pot with 4 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

Meanwhile, combine all the meatball ingredients in a bowl, mixing well.  Form the mixture into meatballs the size of a golf ball.  Add the meatballs to the boiling water, reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer for 15 minutes.

While the meatballs are cooking, heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat.  Add the vermicelli and toss back and forth with 2 spoons until golden brown, 5 to 6 minutes; do not allow the noodles to burn. Add the onion, bell pepper, and chiles and saute until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine the tomatoes, the 1 tablespoon salt, the cumin, garlic powder, and pepper in a blender.  Add 1 cup water from the meatballs and blend until smooth.  Add the tomato puree to the vermicelli, stirring well, and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the tomato mixture to the meatballs and their broth and season with salt.

Author's Note:  Leaving the stems on the chiles prevents them from bursting during cooking, which would release their seeds – the source of their heat.  To make individual servings spicier, simply serve a child to anyone who wants one, so they can open the chile and stir the seeds into their soup.

Ann's Note:  I made half the recipe but used only one serrano pepper because I am a wuss.  I don't know how that translates in Spanish but there you go.  Three (half recipe) would have been asking for it; six for a full meal – in my opinion – is dangerous!

"Rachel Ray 30-Minute Meals 2" - Spanish Beef and Rice and Spicy Chopped Salad with Tortillas

Date I made this recipe: July 24, 2011

Rachel Ray 30-Minute Meals 2 by Rachel Ray
Published by: Lake Isle Press, Inc.
ISBN: 1-891105-10-8
Recipe: Spanish Beef and Rice on top of Spicy Chopped Salad with Tortillas – p. 138-139

People, how cosmic is this: the day I decided to finally make a Rachel Ray recipe, she makes an appearance on the Food Network Star. It’s like I subconsciously planned this because until the FNS aired, I had completely forgotten that she would be on that episode.

When I first started watching the Food Network, our Rachel was a rising star. And, believe it or don’t, there just wasn’t that much programming (or at least it seemed to me) on the Food Network at that time, at least not anything like there is now. There are so many new shows popping up that even I can’t keep track.

At any rate, when she was first on, I liked her. She had lots of energy, lots of humor and recipes that could be made in 30 minutes. Loved it! But then the bloom fell off the rose for a while (as it did with Paula Deen) and I tuned out. Too many silly words like “stoup” for soup/stew kept cropping up, and that danged EVOO even made the dictionary. Enough, already! But of course, Rachel kept on going. Now she has an empire with her shows, cookbooks, cookware, a magazine and her own talk show. We can all thank (or blame, depending on how you look at it) Oprah for that one. She took a liking to Rachel and there was no turning back. So note to Oprah: my friends tell me I am absolutely hilarious, I’m a decent cook with a fantastic cook book collection and I’m half Sicilian. Call me!

At any rate, as conflicted as I feel about Rachel (although I do subscribe to her magazine), her cookbooks have a wide variety of recipes. And I needed a wide variety because I was getting together with a group of friends and one of the friends does not eat dairy. And we were supposed to bring Tex-Mex food. I know--you were like me, right, thinking cheese and sour cream and whatnot. So rather than succumb to making salsa, I went on the hunt.

After looking through my four Rachel Ray cookbooks (well, one is sort of a cookbook – it’s her $40 a Day book), I found a perfect recipe that contained not one drop of dairy AND it was darned tasty to boot. Like really tasty. Like I had to tell myself to quit nibbling prior to this party or there wouldn’t be any left.

The beauty of these two recipes is that each one can stand on its own. You can make the Spanish Beef and Rice and call it a day or you can just make the salad. But if you make the rice, then know that Rachel intends for half of it to be used for a Stuffed Chili recipe on p. 139. I could have easily cut down the rice mixture as I did not intend to make the other recipe (although it sounded good).

As to the salad, my palate does not tolerate a lot of heat and given that I was serving this to others, I cut way back on the amount of chilies she used. In fact, I used one, fresh jalapeno and that was that. I opened a can of green chilies but decided that was too much heat. I thought the one jalapeno I used was perfect, but if you’re sure you can stand the heat, fire away!

One more note before I go: the group of friends I got together with is comprised of four other attorneys and me, who worked together on a legal work project that was so bad we dubbed it “The Gulag.” Over time, instead of referring to ourselves as The Gulagees, we became “The G’s.”

One of our mates, nicknamed Tex, was back from Texas, where she now lives, for a short visit and a fellow G, nicknamed TEA, held a Tex-Mex picnic in Tex’s honor in her back yard. Actually, that should have been a “Don’t Mex with Tex” party as this little lady has been busy rounding up, I kid you not, rattlesnakes from some of her neighbors’ yards. Take that, snake! (There is no amount of money in the world that will get me near a snake, much less a rattler. She's a better woman that I, that Tex!)

Anyway, it was great to be all back together again. We email each other constantly (almost always starting the email with "G's..." and have some of the most hilarious war stories ever. One of these days, we’re going to get those suckers published but in the meantime, I have the blog and you have two really good recipes. (Or, as Rachel would say, two really "delish" recipes!) Enjoy!

Spanish Beef and Rice (warning: serves 8!)
2 cups beef stock
1 and ¾ cups water
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups white enriched rice (Note: I looked up “enriched rice” but really couldn’t figure out what the difference was. I used “regular” white rice and it was fine.)
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil (once around the pan)
1 & 2/3 pounds ground sirloin
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 green bell pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
2 cups tomato sauce
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons ground cumin (2/3 palmful)
¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (a couple of handfuls)

Bring beef stock, water, and butter to a full boil in a medium-size pot. Add rice, reduce heat and cover pot. Cook 20 minutes, until rice is tender and liquid absorbed.

Heat a large, deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil and beef and season with salt and pepper. Brown meat, 2 or 3 minutes. Add onion, garlic, bell pepper and Worcestershire. Cook 5 to 7 minutes, until veggies are just tender. Add tomato sauce, cloves, cumin, and parsley. Bring up to a bubble, then reduce heat to low.

Combine cooked rice with meat mixture and serve with Spicy Chopped Salad with Tortillas and taco dressing. (Ann’s Note: If you make the entire batch, reserve half of the beef and rice for the stuffed pepper recipe – Double-Duty Dinner: Stuffed Chilies with Beef, Rice, Spinach, and Cheese, p. 139)

Spicy Chopped Salad with Tortillas – makes 4 servings
2 hearts romaine lettuce, chopped
3 tablespoons canned or jarred slice jalapenos, drained (Ann’s warning: this would have made this salad spicy, all right! I used one, fresh jalapeno and it was fine.)
3 tablespoons salad olives, Manzanilla with pimento, drained
1 vine-ripened tomato, seeded and chopped
½ red onion, chopped
1 cup broken tortilla chips (any variety)
2 tablespoons jarred taco sauce
The juice of 1 lime
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro or fresh flat-leaf parsley (Ann’s Note: some people do not like cilantro and since I had the fresh flat-leaf parsley on hand, I used that).
¼ cup olive oil (eyeball it)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Combine first five ingredients in a bowl, and toss with tortilla chip pieces. In a second bowl, combine taco sauce, lime juice and cilantro or parsley. Whisk in olive oil in a slow stream until dressing is well combined. Toss salad with dressing to coat ingredients evenly, and serve.

"The Beautiful You" by Mary Kay (cosmetics) consultants & "A Taste of Texas" - Cheese Spoon Bread and Spanish Pork Chops

Date I made these recipes: December 14, 2008

“The Beautiful You” Cookbook – a collection of personal recipes from Mary Kay consultants and directors by Mary Kay
Published by: Mary Kay Consultants/Communicative Arts Group
© 1980
Recipe: Cheese Spoon Bread submitted by Connie Hyde – p.32

A Taste of Texas – A Cookbook, edited by Jane Trahey; compiled for Neiman-Marcus by Marihelen McDuff
Published by: Random House
© 1949
Recipe: Spanish Pork Chops submitted by Mrs. Byron Nelson; Fairway Ranch, Roanoke, Texas– p. 125

People, every once in a while, I get lucky and get someone to work with who is a real panic. This year, it is Sarah F. who just brightens up my day on this miserable project I’ve been working on for the last seven months.

Prior to this gig, who knew that banquet tables, otherwise reserved for uh, banquets, could be used as a workspace? Without going into the gory details, Sarah, I and nineteen other attorneys have been working on a litigation project for a law firm and we sit two to a banquet table on an otherwise empty floor of the building in which the firm is located. Our table partners changed frequently due to the constant rearrangement of the deck chairs by “management” (the attorneys on staff at the firm) and eventually Sarah ended up sitting at a table behind me, initially with Mike as a seat partner but then with Sue.

So anyway, Sarah is a hoot and a half. She’s originally from Texas and therefore was unaware of some Minnesota’s famous State Fair personalities, namely, Princess Kay of the Milky Way. Princess Kay is the fake name of the princess named by the Dairy Association to represent the association at the fair and at other events. “PK” and her court have their likenesses sculpted in butter each year by a butter sculptor in a large refrigerated windowed-booth (that rotates) in the Dairy Building. PK and court sit in this booth for hours in a snowmobile suit and then afterwards they usually bring their likeness home to be stored forevermore (or until the first big corn roast—I’m not kidding) in the family freezer. You have to be there. Anyway, Sarah screwed up the name and called her Mary Kay of the Milky Way, to which Mike, her tablemate, chimed in “Can I interest you in some dairy-based makeup products?” I laughed on and off for at least half the day.

But people, what are the odds of this—two weeks before the famous Mary Kay of the Milky Way comment, I was surfing Old Cookbooks.com (http://www.oldcookbooks.com/) and there it was—“The Beautiful You” Cookbook, written in 1980 by a group of Mary Kay consultants! And so I put that on my “buy” list for a future date but after Sarah’s comments I just had purchase it right then and there and so that’s how one of the recipes came to end up on this blog (Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics is from Texas – how fitting!).

So anyway, even though she’s been living her quite some time, Sarah still longs for the openness of Texas (whereas my motto in life – honest to god -- is “Nature is not your friend) and one day talked about squirrel hunting with her daddy and then she moved on to the squirrels in her yard and then mentioned that she even had “huffing squirrels.”

Well, it’s not for nothing that I am the daughter of a wildlife biologist and so I thought she was talking about a new breed of squirrels. But no, she told the tale of how the squirrels in her yard chewed through her gas cap and got high by “huffing” (sniffing) the fumes.

Well, my table-mate, Jen, and I started laughing and then riffed about this new gang of squirrels, complete with acorn tattoos, small leather jackets and cigs hanging out of their mouths hanging out around her yard and we were all quite entertained.

But then I started thinking about these squirrels and wondering how the hell they got the gas cap off her car when there’s usually a metal plate over it and she said (in her best Texas accent) “Oh my God, no! Can you imagine? I can just see rounding the corner in my car with a damned squirrel hanging off it. No, I was talking about my lawnmower gas cap (who knew?)! But at the price of gas these days, I’d shoot those ‘sums’ of bitches before I’d let them get at my gas again.”

My stomach still hurts from that one. The other day to add to the hilarity, she brought in a photo of a squirrel from her yard to which she added, via Paint, a jacket, eye patch, acorn tattoo and a sign that said “Born to Huff.” We about died.

Now don’t be disappointed but there weren’t any squirrel recipes in the other cookbook I used, A Taste of Texas, nor, to my surprise, were there a lot of beef recipes (I guess the Texas saying “all hat, no cattle” is really true– hahaha!) so I made do with a pork chop recipe.

Both recipes were really good so y’all get ready to do some fine eat’n. And as to Miss Sarah, if you live in St. Paul, be on alert for those huffing squirrels. They’re probably hanging off one of those Mary Kay pink Cadillacs as we speak!

Cheese Spoon Bread – serves 6
1 cup cornmeal
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. dry mustard
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
3 cups milk, scalded
1 cup Cheddar cheese, grated
6 eggs, beaten

Mix cornmeal, salt, dry mustard and pepper together. Add to milk and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens.

Let’s pause here a minute so I can tell you about my latest near-kitchen disaster: people, to be clear, the recipe calls for 3 cups of milk and 1 cup of cornmeal, but I misread it as 3 cups milk, 3 cups cornmeal. And this is how I ended up with a huge glob that most certainly could not be stirred! And here I just went and had my reading glasses adjusted!

Add cheese and continue to cook and stir until the cheese melts, about two or three minutes. Add to the eggs and mix thoroughly.

Pour into buttered baking dish and bake at 350 for 45 minutes, until light and puffy and browned.

Spanish Pork Chops – serves 4
1 onion, sliced
1 green pepper, sliced
3 potatoes, sliced
3 carrots, sliced
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon red pepper
10 ½ ounce can condensed tomato soup

Brown pork chops in own fat. Place in Dutch oven or roaster. Cover with slices of onion, pepper, potatoes, carrots, salt, red pepper and tomato soup. Cover and bake at 350 for one hour.

"Stirring Prose - Cooking with Texas Authors" - Molly Ivins's Composed Salad of Sausage and Orzo with Fresh Peas and MIxed Greens

Date I made this recipe: June 28, 2008
Stirring Prose – Cooking with Texas Authors by Deborah Douglas
Published by: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 0-089096-829-2 © 1998
Recipe: Molly Ivins’s Composed Salad of Sausage and Orzo with Fresh Peas and Mixed Greens – p. 130-131

I miss Molly Ivins.

In case you don't know who she was, she was a political writer, some might say satirist, and nobody wrote about politics, particularly the antics of the Texas Legislature (“The Lege”), like she did. To her, it was almost a sport to report on local doings in Austin, the state capital, and as to the national scene, why she was darned near an Olympian. The only thing funnier than her pen was the droll way she talked about politics on the talk show circuit. She should have been a comedienne. (To see some of Molly's finest, check out this link to her quotes: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/molly_ivins.htm)

I hate to say, but one of my favorite pieces that Molly wrote had to do with a member of “The Lege” who lobbied hard against smokestack cleanup back in the 1980's saying that there was nothing wrong with Texas air. After telling the story, Molly inserted a footnote at the bottom of the page telling us that the gentleman eventually died from lung cancer. I shouldn’t have laughed out loud at that but the way Molly wrote, you couldn’t help but see the irony of life.

It’s not for nothing that the name of one of Molly’s most popular books is Molly Ivins Can’t Say That… Can She? She has The Dallas Times Herald to thank for that one. After Molly said of Texas Representative James M. Collins “If his IQ slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.,” readers bombarded the newspaper with letters prompting The Dallas Times Herald to start a publicity campaign called “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That…Can She?” that ultimately became the book of the same name. After that, Molly was a national star.

Besides being witty as all get-out, Molly spent some time in Minneapolis as a writer for the then-named Minneapolis Tribune. You’ve got to admire a Texan for wanting to be part of the Chosen Frozen even if it was only for a short period of time.

Sadly, Molly died from breast cancer in January 2007 and it was while I was spending time this week with one of my best friends who is battling ovarian cancer that I thought of her again. I intended to make this recipe after Molly died but given that it was a summer salad, I back-burned it (pun intended) for another day. My friend with cancer has just now started eating again after months of eating through a feeding tube and so I hope she prepares this recipe and thinks of Molly (we both loved her writing) and of the hilarious antics of the Texas “Lege,” particularly as we are gunning for the finish line on this next election. Although most of us are exhausted by the year-long quest for the top job, Molly would have literally and figuratively eaten it up. She is missed.

Molly Ivins’s Composed Salad of Sausage and Orzo with Fresh Peas and Mixed Greens (no serving size noted but I cut this recipe in half)
2 cups orzo (about 12 ounces)
2 cups shelled fresh green peas (about 2 lbs. in the pod) (I used frozen)
1 large garlic clove, mined
½ cup pine nuts
12 sweet Italian sausages (about 2 lobs)
¼ cup dry red wine
½ cup chopped scallions
2 T. Dijon-styled mustard
1 ½ tsp salt
½ cup plus 1 ½ T olive oil
4 bunches of lamb’s lettuce (mache), about ½ lb.
8 small radicchio leaves, torn into pieces
2 T. red wine vinegar
1 T. mayonnaise
¾ tsp. freshly ground pepper
2 Belgian endives, cut into thin strips
2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
Note: the author indicates that this is a flexible recipe so if you don’t like sausage, don’t use it, if you want lima beans instead of peas, go for it, and if you can’t find the lettuces listed (and I couldn’t), substitute.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil over high heat. Stir in the orzo and cook until the pasta is tender but still firm, about 10 minutes. Drain and rinse under cold running water; drain well.

Scatter the pine nuts over a small baking sheet and toast in the oven until golden brown, about 10 minutes. (Author’s note: 10 minutes on a heavy sheet; on a think cookie sheet they burn easily).

Steam the peas over boiling water until just tender, about 6 minutes. Rinse under cold running water; drain well.

Prick the sausages all over with a fork. In a large skillet, cook the sausages over moderately high heat (medium), turning, until browned, about 10 minutes. Pour off all of the fat. Add the garlic and wine to the skillet. Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. (Ann’s note: although I cut the recipe in half, half the amount of wine would have been too little and would have simmered off too quickly so add just a touch more until your pan is coated.) Remove the sausages. Degrease the juice in the pan and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the vinegar, mustard, mayonnaise, 1 teaspoon of the salt, and ½ teaspoon of the pepper. Gradually whisk in 1/3 cup of the olive oil and the reserved pan juices, until well blended. Add to the orzo and stir to coat.

In a large bowl, toss together the lamb’s lettuce, Belgian endives, and radicchio. Drizzle the lemon juice and the remaining 1 ½ tablespoons olive oil over the salad. Season with the remaining ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper and toss.

Place a portion of the greens on each plate, top with a portion of the orzo mixture and arrange 2 sausages, sliced if you like, over the top of the salads.