The Magic of the Mexican Diet

The diet of Mexico is as varied as any other country. Tortillas are the mainstay of the Mexican diet it is an unleavened flat bread like the lefse of Norway, the pita bread of the Middle East, crepes of France and so on.

The taco is considered to be the sandwich of Mexico...just as anything placed between two slices of bread here is considered a sandwich. Each taco shell should contain about a tablespoon of piping-hot filling, over which is sprinkled grated cheese. The remainder of the shell is filled with finely shredded lettuce...or you may add shredded cabbage mixed with mayonnaise...or both, if you enjoy them "Dagwood-style."

Just as Americans are accustomed to filling two pieces of bread with everything we like; so, too, may tacos be filled with anything. The variety of fillings used is limited only by ingenuity and imagination. Ways of making tacos are to roll the filling in the tortilla, and place toothpicks in them so that they will not come unrolled. Or you may place the filling in the tortilla and simply fold it over, securing the edges together with a toothpick and simply heat it on a hot griddle.

To serve the rolled taco, you place them on a plate, side by side, and pour a sauce over them. The sauce usually consists of green chili, tomatoes, onion and garlic.

Tacos de Rajas (Tacos with Peppers)

2 medium size onions
1/2 cup shortening
1 small can sweet peppers
3 large tomatoes
1/2 cup sour cream
2 oz. grated cheese
6 tortillas

Cut peppers into strips. Slice onions and fry in 2 tablespoons of shortening. Add peppers and tomatoes to the fried onions and fry 5 minutes longer. Add sour cream, your favorite cheese and salt. Dry this mixture over a very low heat for 2 minutes. (Fill the tortillas with this mixture.)

Tacos Poblanos (Puebla-Style Tacos)

2 Mexican sausages, chopped
2 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
4 raw eggs, slightly beaten
12 tortillas
1 (4 oz) can sweet chili peppers
1/4 cup milk
3 oz. cheese, sliced
3 large tomatoes, peeled, chopped and drained
1 large onion, chopped

It is best in this recipe to prepare the sauce first. The sauce must be piping hot but never boiling. Boiling cheese makes it curdle and will ruin the sauce. Prepare the sauce by melting the cheese with the milk. Do this slowly, to prevent boiling. When they have blended thoroughly, add the 3 large tomatoes. Add the minced onion ahd can of cili peppers. Cook together until tender, but be sure it does not boil. A double-boiler is a safe-guard against this sticking to the bottom and saves a lot of stirring. Cover the cheese sauce while preparing the meat filling.

To make the meat filling, fry the sausages for a few minutes, moving them about with a spoon; then drain off the grease and add both the chopped, hard-boiled eggs and the beaten eggs. Stir well. Do not overcook.
Immediately place this filling in a warm tortilla; roll or fold over and place on a plate. Cover with the prepared cheese sauce. You may sprinkle some very finely shredded lettuce over the top of this taco if you care to. Serve at once.

Enchiladas: In Mexico a twelve course dinner can be served consisting, literally of, "everything from soup to sherbet". The enchilada is served as the 11th course, just before the frozen dessert. It is said that the enchilada sharpens the appetite for the frozen dessert. Enchiladas are one of the easiest-to-make Mexican dishes. The basic recipe may be varied in many ways to produce economical and nourishing dishes. It can be stacked like hot cakes, rolled, or folded.

Enchiladas de Queso (Enchiladas with Cheese)

12 tortillas, warmed
4 fried eggs (optional)
1 lb shredded cheese of your choice
1 large onion, chopped
1 large can enchilada sauce, heated

Place one tortilla on a plate, sprinkling generously with shredded-cheese and chopped onion. Roll the cheese and onion in the tortilla or fold tortilla. You may also use ground or shredded cooked meats, poultry or beans as a filling. Three filled tortillas are considered a good serving. When enchiladas are arranged on the plate, pour enchilada sauce over the top and sprinkle again with chopped onions and cheese. If wanted, a fried egg may be placed on the top and given more enchilada sauce.

Enchiladas de Pollo (Enchiladas with Chicken)

1 cup cooked, chopped chicken
6 large tomatoes, peeled and mashed
1 onion, chopped
2 small green peppers, chopped
1 cup lard or shortening
2 eggs, lightly beaten
12 tortillas
1 Tb raisins, scalded and chopped
1 Tb almonds, blanched and chopped
1 Tb chopped black olives
1 onion, sliced
Radishes, Lettuce, Salt and pepper to taste

Mix chicken, raisins, almonds and olives. First dip tortilla in egg; on each put chicken mixture, roll, fasten and fry in hot lard or shortening. Make the sauce by frying tomatoes, onions, peppers, salt and pepper in remaining hot fat. Garnish with slices of onion, radishes and lettuce. Serve sauce over enchiladas.

Enchiladas de Chorizo (Enchiladas with Smoked Sausage)

20 tortillas
1 cup of red chili sauce
14 oz. can of tomato puree
1 egg, well beaten
3 oz Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup lard or shortening
1 1/2 cup diced, cooked potatoes
1/4 lb country-smoked sausage, diced or chorizo sausage
1/2 head lettuce
8 radishes
1 Tb salt

Use the standard recipe for preparing enchiladas, make a sauce of chili, tomato, milk, egg, salt, 1/2 of the cheese, bringing to a simmer. In a separate skillet fry the sausage; drain off excess grease. Add and fry cooked potatoes and 1 ounce of the cheese together, mixing well. This is the filling of the enchiladas. Fill enchiladas, pour sauce over. Garnish with lettuce and radishes.

Tamales: are usually reserved for special occasions--because they are somewhat difficult to prepare and require considerable time to cook. But on special occasions when tamales are served, it occupies the most important place on the menu. It is customary to serve them in large pots, which are kept hot, and the celebrants make many visits to the tamale container, eating them out of their hands with their drinks. It is distinctly buffet style.

Some tamales are stuffed with meats and some are sweet, being stuffed with raisins, almonds, dates, strawberries and so on. The sweet tamales are usually smaller.

Tamales:

3/4 lb beef
3/4 lb pork
1 pint hot or mild chili sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
2 lbs. corn meal
1 pint meat stock
1/2 lb shortening or lard
1 oz comino
1 clove minced garlic
Tamale shucks or parchment paper

First Step: Place meat in a large soup kettle, with water to cover, and allow to simmer slosly until the meat falls away from the bones. (This should be done the day before).

Second Step: Remove the broth from the meat and save. Pull the meat into shreds. Then add the chili sauce, garlic and comino. Remember to taste the mixture and make it a little hotter with pepper heat than you would ordinarily like, since some of the heat will soak into the masa of the tamale.

Third Step: Pour the corn meal into a large bowl and mix the lard or other shortening you are using into it. The mixture will be very oily even though it is still in a dry state. Add the broth you removed from the meat to the mixture and it will then be about the consistency of soft butter.

Fourth Step: Place the tamale shucks or 5x8 parchment paper sheets on a large plae and cover then with a little cooking oil. (This is to prevent the masafrom sticking to the paper.)

Fifth Step: Take one sheet of the paper at a time into your left hand and on 2/3 of the paper, spread the masa mixture with a knife, just like you would spread butter on bread, about 1/8 of an inch thick.

Sixth Step: Place some of the cooked meat into the center of the masa and roll this (like a cigarette), folding back the 1/3 portion of the paper which does not have masa on it.

Seventh Step: As you roll the tamales, put them into a large kettle which has a false bottom about 1 1/2 inches from the bottom. (If you don't have this type of kettle, use anything that will fit inside another kettle but be sure it is perforated and put something under it so it will hold the tamales away from the kettle bottom. This is to prevent burning). Lay the tamales on the perforated rack in the kettle in a circle, leaving a hole in the center.

Eighth Step: Now, put enough water into the kettle to reach the metal rack. Then place on the stove with a tight lid and steam the tamales until you can open the paper from one of them and see that the masa is thoroughly cooked. This usually takes about 45 minutes after the water in the kettle reaches boiling point.

This tamale recipe makes 12 tamales. If corn shucks are obtainable, use them in place of parchment paper, but be sure to soak them in water for two or three hours before using. Corn shucks are used exactly as the parchment paper, except that two or three shucks are used, letting each shuck overlap so the tamale is the desired size.

Pastel de Tamal-(Tamale Pie)

1 cup chopped tomatoes
2 cups boiled beef, chopped
1/2 cup ripe, chopped olives
2 Tb red chili sauce
1/2 cup meat stock
4 Tb chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tb bacon drippings
1 tsp ajonjoli (buy in herb aisle)
1 pinch cilantro

Brown onions and garlic in bacon drippings; add other ingredients and simmer for 20 minutes. Meanwhile prepare the mush.

Mush--prepare mush by stirring 2 cups of corn masa (meal with life germ) and 2 tsp salt slowly into 5 cups of boiling water. Add 1 Tb lard and cool slowly for 15 minutes. Stir frequently. Line sides and bottom of baking dish with mush...about 1/2 inch thick. Pour meat sauce into it and cover with remainder of mush. Bake in 300 degree oven for about 1 hour, or until done.

Tamales de Almendra (Almond Tamales)

3/4 cup butter
1 1/8 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups almonds, blanched and ground
1 cup milk
4 cups masa
3/4 cup rice flour
1 tsp baking powder
Leaves of corn, soaked for 2 hours

Cream butter until fluffy; add sugar and almonds which have been mixed with the milk. Sift flours and baking powder together. Blend the two mixtures well. Wash corn leaves thoroughly before soaking. On each leaf wpread a layer of the mixture, about 1/8 of an inch thick...like good thick butter. In the center place a Tbsp of the filling. Roll in tamale form, folding over the ends of the corn leaves, so the filling doesn't drop out. Cook in pressure cooker at 15 lbs pressure for 1 hour.

Filling:
5 egg yolks, beaten
1 cup sugar
2 Tb flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 pint scalded milk

Mix all ingredients; cook over low heat, stirring constantly. (About 25 minutes, or until the bottom of the pan can be seen). Remove from heat and cool before filling tamales.

Beans: As far back as antiquity goes, beans (frijoles) have been known to the people of Mexico, although no one in Europe had ever seen or heard of beans until after the Spaniards invaded Mexico. It is interesting that beans, almost as much as the quest for gold, encouraged the settlement of the New World. Beans helped establish trade between the Old World and the New, and on the long, hard voyages, the sailors who carried them to the Old World discovered that they could subsist, almost entirely, on beans!

In Mexico beans are a basic food, and the methods of preparing them are little changed. No Mexican meal is complete without frijoles, in one form or another. The Mexicans are most practical in their preparation of these delicious beans. Long ago, they learned that by cooking and storing them in a special way, their beans would remain sweet and tasty for several days. Beans are cooked without any seasoning, in a large clay pot, called an Olla, where they bubble for a whold day. Then the beans, in the same pot, are stored by putting them down in damp earth, covered over. (Hmmmm....just like kim chee in Korea!)

When the beans are served from the pot, the day they are cooked, they are known as Frijoles de Olla. When reheated, they are called according to the recipe in which they are used. When reheated a small amount of fat is put into a skillet then the beans are added. As the beans warm up, the cook stirs and scrapes and mashes them. It is very hard to heat a cold bean through in a hurry. The results of all this effort surpasses mashed potatoes. When salted and seasoned to taste, this is truly a dish for Kings! When the beans are done, the people simply gather around the pan in which the beans have been reheated, and scoop out some of the mixture onto a tortilla, roll it up and feast! (Hmmm...just like in the Middle Eastern diet!)

Frijoles (Beans)

2 cups beans (Dry)
1/3 lb salt pork
1 pinch oregano

Pick beans over carefully, wash and soak overnight. Drain and cover with fresh cold water. Boil slowly about four hours. Then add the pork and seasoning. Continue boiling until very tender. Boil slowly; add just enough boiling water from time to time to keep the beans well covered. It is best to boil them 6 to 8 hours.

Frijoles Con Chili (Beans with Chili)--Mash and heat cooked beans in a large iron skillet, using 2 Tb of lard to prevent sticking. When well mashed and bubbling, add enough of the liquid (or hot water) to allow simmering for one hour. Just before serving add enough grated cheese to top well. Serve with red chili sauce.

These recipes are just a smattering of the Mexican diet. We're talking about diet as a way of eating versus thinking of a diet as a way to weight loss. The basic way of eating (dieting) featuring a starch (the tortilla), protein (beans, meats or cheese) and vegetables (lettuce, tomatos, olives) are an excellent way of eating. As with any other diet; moderation is the key. Eat less and exercise more!