Tribeca Yummy Mummy

Happy October, Yummies!  Happy Fall!  and Happy Soup Season!

This week in class we cooked a soup and sandwich (Croque Monsieurs a la Yummy which we will share next week) combo, and we chose to celebrate the very end of tomato season with some local heirloom tomatoes cooked into a classic favorite, Cream of Tomato soup.

Okay, you have had cream of tomato and you may think “Annggghh!” to trying another version.  This is not something you should be iffy about!  As one of the babysitters who brought her mini-chefs to class this week commented as she scraped the soup into her mouth, “I expected it to be good, but this is better than anything that I have had!”

My friends, I attribute that swoony hyperbole to the brandy that is added into this.  It’s a little trick my mom taught me, and oh my does it add a whole other layer of flavor to the soup.  Do not worry.  We’re not trying to booze up your mini-chef.  All the alcohol gets fully boiled off and leaves behind the most heavenly, rich, wonderful flavor.  That, along with the technique of roasting the tomatoes with some brown sugar to enhance their sweetness and cut through the acid, makes the best of the classic.  If you like things spicy, try my Curried Cream of Tomato, which is made in a similar way but has some Indian spices added into the mix.  I advise adding the brandy into that recipe, too.  I will have to go back and update the recipe to include even more deliciousness.

Note: For this recipe, we used fresh tomatoes, half heirloom and half Roma.  You can make this with canned tomatoes, a better choice than “fresh” after tomato season has passed, but try and find jarred whole tomatoes or tomatoes in a carton since the word on the street is that tomatoes canned in a traditional metal can leach all kinds of bad things into what you are eating.  We love the brand Bionature, but there are several very good brands that either come in glass jars or in cartons.

Dreamy Cream of Tomato Soup

• 8 c. tomato wedges, seeded (more or less)
• 1/4 c. brown sugar
• 1 t. black pepper
• 4 c. strained tomatoes or tomato juice
• 2 T. tomato paste
• 2 red onions, shredded in the food processor or finely chopped
• 1 t. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 t. ground nutmeg
• small pinch of ground cloves
• 3 T. butter
• 1 T. olive oil
• 2 c. veggie stock (if using store bought, buy Un-chicken Stock by Pacific Foods)
• 1/3 c. brandy
• 1 c. cream

1. Big Person: Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F.
2. Prepare two rimmed baking sheets with parchment or foil.
3. Because your mini-chef will not accompany you to the stove, have him or her help you measure out all the ingredients, stir the spice blend together, and generally get you all set up to make the soup.
4. Have your mini-chef arrange the tomato wedges in a single layer on each sheet and sprinkle with the brown sugar and some black pepper.
5. Place the tomatoes into the oven and roast about 35-45 minutes, till the liquid has evaporated from the sheets.
6. In a very large heavy bottomed pot, heat the butter and olive oil over medium-low heat.
7. Add the onion and the spices and cook, stirring every now and then, about 10 minutes or until the onion is very soft and translucent.
8. Add the tomatoes, the tomato paste, the stock, and the strained tomatoes, and the brandy.  Turn the heat up and bring to a boil for about 5 minutes so that all the alcohol evaporates.
9. Turn the heat down to a low simmer, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes.
10. Uncover and stir in the cream.
11. Puree the soup, preferably with an immersion blender, till completely smooth.  Season with salt and more black pepper, and cayenne if you like your soup spicy.  (With kids, it might be best to serve the cayenne on the side so that they can choose to have it spicy or note according to their own taste.)
12. Serve warm.  Enjoy!

The mustache is so incredible, so mysterious that guess what?  I forgot all about this Corner View… you know the one whose theme I chose and all?!?!?

There is, however, a reason that my brain has been incredibly forgetful and mysteriously strange of late.  Ahem.  There is a bun in the oven.  A little surprise bun, that is.  A little surprise bun that has been making his or her mama very sick.  Do you think he or she is growing a mustache in there, too?  I am afraid that we will have to wait several months to find out.

Apologies for a post so late in the day, and well, I will now beg OTLI to host next week and chose the theme for the week after next.  Next week’s theme will be ORANGE since colors seemed to be a very popular theme when Jane was asking around for themes a couple of weeks back.

Check out these other ‘staches here and there around the Corner View World:

A kitchen full of mini-chefs with freshly washed hands and faces beaming with concentration began to butter the tortillas for these chalupas, my mother Charlotte’s recipe to which I have made a few minor adjustments.  They were nearly all happy to see the beans, and they were all happy to see the rice as we put everything together inside the buttery, warm tortillas.

One little girl, a new student but an old friend, squatted shoveling the rice and beans into her mouth.  She had been so quiet during the actual making of the chalupas.  She worked steadily but very seriously, and I had been wondering whether she was enjoying herself or not.  Now, she clearly was.  Her plate filled, emptied, filled again, and emptied almost completely for a second time.

“I’ve never seen her eat this much in one sitting,” her mom commented.  Music to a chef’s (and teacher’s) ears.

Another little chef from my tiny class had claimed that he did not like the chalupas when he was trying them in front of us.  He is a very thoughtful sort of kid.  He says no to everything first to be able to have the opportunity and the time to decide what he really thinks instead of just jumping in whole hog from the start.  The next day, I received an email from his mom saying that he loved trying them at home and was even doing “the chalupa dance”.  I live for the day when that dance, or one like it, makes it to class.

Please don’t let the fact that this recipe stretches over two posts scare you into thinking  that it is complicated.  Let me reassure you that it really is not.  If you’ll notice, most of the Healthy Refried Beans recipe involves setting something up to soak or cook on its own.  The components are simple to make up in bulk, with a bit of forethought, and the chalupas, whether broken down into their components or fully assembled, freeze well and can be reheated for lunches or dinners in the middle of a chaotic week.

Charlotte’s Chalupas

For the Spanish Rice:

• 4 c. cooked rice
• 2 sweet white onions or yellow onions, shredded
• 2 c. tomatoes, seeded and chopped with the cores discarded
• optional: 1 bell yellow, red, or orange bell pepper
• optional: 1 or 2 jalapeno peppers, seeds discarded and finely minced
• 3 T. olive oil
• salt and pepper, to taste

1. Heat the olive oil in a pan over a medium heat.
2. Add the onion, and cook, stirring, until the onion is soft and golden.
3. Add the tomato and the various peppers if you are using them.
4. Cook until the liquid from the tomato has been absorbed completely.  Set aside.

The Chalupas:

• 4 c. cooked rice
• 5-6 c. refritos
• 2 c. shredded Monterey Jack, Cheddar, or mix of the two
• 16 small corn tortillas
• 1/2 c. of unsalted butter, room temperature

1. With your mini-chef, butter both sides of the tortillas with the back of a spoon.  Show them how to use a little butter to cover the entire circle (as best they can).
2. Heat a skillet on medium.  Quickly warm the tortillas on both sides.
3. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees F.
4. Have your mini-chef line two 9×11 baking dishes with parchment paper.
5. Assemble: In the middle of each tortilla, place a little beans and a little rice, and a large pinch of cheese.  Fold the tortilla in half to make a half circle or half-moon shape.  Place each half-moon into a pan.  They will most likely have to be sort of stacked in order to fit all the chalupas.
6. Place in the oven and warm for 5-10 minutes, till all the chalupas are nice and warm all the way through.
7. Enjoy!

To kick off our fourth year of cooking classes with the mini-chefs, we made a family recipe given to me by my mom.  Chalupas are sort of like soft tacos, but are made with corn tortillas that have been buttered and barely fried.  Inside, my mom puts Spanish rice, cheese, and of course refritos, or “refried beans” in English.  Even when my daughter was on her worst leg of not eating anything in her 2’s and 3’s, her Nonna could make her these chalupas or even just the rice and beans that go inside, and she would be snarfing it down happily.

In my mother, Charlotte’s, family, she has three siblings, one sister and two brothers.  They all grew up in rural New Mexico, land of rice and beans and of course amazing green (and red) chile.  Two of her siblings have owned Mexican restaurants, and the other one worked and cooked for many years in his brother’s restaurant, bringing the flavors of their home state to the table.

As a child, when we would eat at my Aunt Holly’s restaurant, my absolute favorite item on the menu was the refritos.  They were smooth and silky in my mouth, and I would often push the rice aside and just eat beans, beans, and beans and nothing else.  It must be genetic.  My mom says she starts feeling a little “off” if she hasn’t had her pinto beans each week, and her granddaughter is crazy about beans-any kind you serve her.

In my Aunt Holly’s restaurant, and really traditionally, refritos were made with lard, pork fat left over from frying your bacon, etc.  They taste amazing, of course, but my mom likes things a little lighter and more healthful as long as they still taste good.  The recipe she handed me is very much like the recipe you would find anyone in Mexico or New Mexico making, minus the lard.  She changed that to vegetable oil, and the result is different, but for eating on a weekly basis, even better.

To add in even more nutrition, I added some shredded vegetables into the beans.  We never, ever “hide” the vegetables that we have in our recipes from the mini-chefs.  They know exactly what is in every bite so that they can go home and make it taste more or less like what they have in cooking class.  They also learn that, even though we may not like certain things on their own, when they are cooked into a recipe, we do like them, maybe even love them.  That becomes part of the magic of cooking.

And, let me tell you, these kids were woofing!  So, here is the first step in putting together a platter of chalupas, making the refritos.  So simple, so inexpensive.  Double the recipe, put some of the leftover beans in your freezer, and you will have them for next week when you are suddenly having a bean craving.

Note: our recipe gives two methods of cooking the dried beans: one you make in a slow-cooker, which we find very easy and consistently produces well cooked, soft beans and a second method that only requires a large heavy pot and more vigilance if you do not have a slow-cooker available.

Healthy Refried Beans

To cook the dry beans:

• 4 cups dried pinto beans
• 2 t. salt
• a bay leaf

1. With your mini-chef, sort through the beans, removing all the pebbles or funky things so that you just have beans.
2. Soak the beans 6-8 hours in a large bowl in which they are covered with an inch of water above the bean line.
3. Drain off the soaking water.
4. If you are using a slow-cooker, you will put the beans in and again fill the slow cooker with water so that they cover the beans by about an inch, and stir in the bay leaf and salt.  All of this you can do with your Yummy’s help.  On the “low” setting, set the beans to cook for 8 hours.  If, instead you are using a pot, place the beans, water (again, covering by 1 inch), salt, and bay leaf into the pot and bring everything to a boil.  Cover and cook 2 hours, simmering, till the beans are very soft and tender.  Check the beans about an hour into the cooking to make sure that they don’t need a bit more water.  If so, add another cup or so of water and a pinch more salt.
5. When the beans are done, make sure you reserve the liquid in which they were cooked.  This is especially important if you plan on freezing them at this point.  Discard the bay leaf.

To refry the beans:

• 3 T. vegetable oil
• 2 onions, finely chopped or shredded in a food processor
• 8 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• 1 T. cumin
• optional but recommended: 1 1/2 c. total of shredded carrots, sweet potatoes, zucchini, summer squash, or parsnips
• salt and pepper, to taste

1. Heat the oil in a large heavy pan over medium heat.
2. Add the onion and cook for several minutes, stirring, till the onion is just beginning to turn golden.
3. Stir in the cumin.
4. Stir in the garlic and cook another minute or so, stirring the entire time.
5. Add about half of the beans, stir them in, and begin mashing them with the back of a ladle or a potato masher.  The right texture is definitely a matter of taste.  We like ours smooth but with a few whole beans here and there, but some Yummies will like them very much like a puree with no whole beans in sight.
6. Add the other half of the beans and mash those to your desired texture.  Stirring and mashing all the while.  If they are getting dry or crusty, stir in a little more bean cooking liquid or water to soften them up.  Once they are the right consistency, season with salt and pepper, to taste.

When I first began my cooking classes, at least the ones that were officially for the mini-chefs instead of for the mamas, we had thirteen two year olds running around, wielding-and that would definitely be the word-wooden spoons, whisks, and spatulas.  It was quite the chaotic class and a huge opportunity and crash course for me to learn about teaching very small children.

The next year, because that huge group of children then had younger siblings, including a set of natural twins, our class got even bigger.  As their teacher, I would call upon my yoga training and years of meditation to go my stillest place.  The stillest place?  It is the place where things are constantly shifting, going with the flow, adjusting to the circumstances, and it is the place from which I tried to move.  With the help of all the other mothers and many wonderful babysitters who were willing to pitch in, we got through that year and even had some fun in the process.  At the end of that year, I think we counted 25 children altogether, including newborns and four sets of twins.

After that, my classes had a cap of 8 children.  Electronically, you could not enroll for class if it had already been filled.  First come, first served.  This turned some students away, but it made for such a lovely year.  After two years of practice with a humungous class, it was smooth sailing with my classes of 6-8 students.

This year, there will be two cooking classes, and the first class, pictured above, happened already.  Somehow, because of a small mix up on my part and other various scheduling details, 12 students showed up for class yesterday.  All sets of brothers and sisters (or pairs of brothers AND pairs of sisters).  When I looked out at this crowd, I started having flashbacks.  How would I manage?

The strangest thing happened.  It was fine.  They listened.  The big kids helped the little kids.  They cooked.  They ate.  They ate some more.  They played.  It was even, dare I say it, easy.

The punch line?  Guess how many kids are signed up for my other class?  Two.  Love it that the Universe always has a twinkle in its eye….

The theme for next week’s Corner View is “The Incredible, The Mysterious Mustache”. Take a look around at these other Humor Corner Views from all over the globe: