Be the First on Your Block to do the Molcajete
By Don Adams © Don Adams 2004

Guys, here’s one you can pull off and look extremely cool while doing it. At some point you’ll break down and buy a molcajete. That’s the little round gray bowl made of lava rock. The little rock that comes with it is called la piedra del molcajete. They’re the Mexican cook’s mortar and pestle. Most folks use them for decoration but you’re gonna move up a step and actually use it for it’s intended purpose.

First you need to season your molcajete. Here’s how. Set it on the patio floor or somewhere else that’s really sturdy. Take your piedra in one hand and with the other drop a half-cup or so of rice into the molcajete. Now start grindin’ the rice. Go ‘til it’s good and gray. Throw it out. Go get a cold Modelo. Call your bride over to show her what to do. She’ll need to repeat this process ten or twelve times or until the rice stays white after the grindin’s done. You need to go next door to make sure that whatever your neighbor Juanito is doing is being done correctly. It should be safe to come back home in a couple of hours.

When you get back you’ll need to take a handful of salt and a big clove of garlic and toss ‘em into the molcajete and work them in for a few minutes. There are about 5 or 6 million ways to do this particular task. Many folks substitute corn (maiz) for the rice. Take a shortcut and you may end up with gritty salsa. And don’t scrub that thing when you think it needs cleaning. A bit of water and a rag will get it as clean as it needs to be.

Now you’re ready to fix a feast. Invite the neighbors. Invite whoever has the say over whether you get initiated into the Grupo Misticos de Gringo Charros or whichever other bunch you’re tryin’ to hook up with, and anyone else that looks like they’d enjoy havin’ to put up with you for a couple of hours in exchange for a decent meal and free drinks. Ready to go? Here’s your menu. First, we’ll set out two pre-dinner nibblies for those who can’t shoot the breeze without a mouthful of food. We’ll be heavy into avocados tonight and we’ll start with a good guacamole, and a simple little pico de gallo from the recipe my friend Married Bill uses. For dippers we’ll just buy whichever ready-made tortilla chips you like. No need in slavin’ over a pot of bubblin´ hog fat just to fry a few tortilla bits.

Next, the main meal will be grilled steak with dollops of the salsa you’ll prepare in your molcajete, a cold black bean side dish, nopalito salad, grilled onions, and tortillas. Then we’ll finish off with an avocado dessert.

It’s time for you to get to work. Your bride should have gotten down the bean pot, the ceramic olla, last night and put a couple of liters of water in it. Then she should have sorted and de-rocked a kilo or so of black beans. Sure they’re more associated with Cuba, but they’ll be great. Rinse ‘em and throw ‘em in the pot.

Now that they’re sufficiently soaked they need to be set on the fire. Boil ‘em in the same water they soaked in. She needs to do this on a gas burner outside the house in steamier climates because they’re gonna be cookin’ for at least an hour and you don’t need the heat and discomfort. Have her get the fire goin’. When the water gets to a good rollin’ boil, she needs to cut the heat and let ‘em simmer for about an hour or so. If the water level drops too far, your bride can add HOT water to the pot. Hot only, because cold water might toughen the beans and we don’t wanna risk it.

Now, after an hour, or whenever the beans start softenin’ up, it’s time to get ‘em off the heat. After they cool a bit you’ll need to suggest that Sweetbuns drain the beans and put them in the fridge to chill. Set out the bean juice for the dog. It won’t upset his system a bit, ‘cause if he’s like Pirata, he passes gas all day anyway.

While she’s waitin’ for the beans to cook you may as well have your bride get the dessert ready. This one is super simple. Dulce de Aguacate. An avocado sweet.

Get some nice big ripe avocados. Next you’ll need a liter or so of freshly squeezed orange juice. Or squozen, if you prefer. How much you need depends on how many avocados you’re planning to use. Here’s the really hard part. Sugar. You’ll need to play it by taste bud on this one.

Dig out the meat of the avocados and drop it in the blender. Add some orange juice and two or three spoons of sugar.

Experiment a bit ‘til you hit it just right. It’s different every time. You’ll want to end up with something light green, sweet, with the consistency of a good custard. When you’ve attained that degree of perfection it’s time to have your helper spoon the mix into some really neat individual serving vessels. Jelly jars or your shaving mug collection just will not do. Stick everything into the fridge to chill. When she gets ready to serve, just twist a lime slice and arrange it against the mint leaf you’ve artfully placed near the rim.

Now you should already have a whole mess of porterhouses layin’ out for at least an hour before you’re ready to toss ‘em on the grill. They need to be at room temperature before you lay ’em up there to cook. It’s also preferable to have them as free of cat nibbles and paw prints as possible, so cover ‘em up. This has never happened at my house, but I’ve heard stories…

You’ll also need to ask your lovely bride to cut the roots off two or three small onions per person for however many you managed to coerce into comin’ tonight. Make sure she cleans away the dry outer layers, and trims the blades to about an inch or so from the bulb. Lay ‘em aside ‘til later.

One last little piece of prep work and you’re good to go. The light of your life needs to get the iron skillet out and heat up 6 or 7 chiles serrano , five or six Roma tomatoes, and eight or ten tomatillos, until they soften and wilt enough for easy peeling. Let her peel ‘em all. Keep ‘em separated, at room temperature, in small individual dishes.

Clean a couple of cloves of garlic and set ‘em aside, along with a small coarsely chopped onion. And a handful of chopped fresh cilantro leaves needs to go into a dish now. Lay the garlic on top of the cilantro if you want to, but everything else needs to be held separately. These are the ingredients for your steak salsa.

Make sure your bride gets a plate, a bean bowl, and a small salad bowl ready for each guest. And a tray or cart for the molcajete and all the salsa ingredients. Later on I’ll tell you what to do with all this, but now all you need to know is that the ingredients should be at room temperature when you’re ready to use them.

Let’s go ahead and prepare the salad since we want it refrigerated. Take the sliced nopalitos that you bought this morning at the tianguis and boil them until they barely begin to soften and wilt, about thirty minutes or so. Drain them and toss them into a bowl and mix in chopped tomato, long strings of onion, and some chopped fresh cilantro leaves. Put it all in the fridge to chill and blend. You’ll serve it cold, in individual bowls, with half a limón placed on top so your guests can flavor it as they wish. Drop a lime half on top of each serving of beans, too.

Here’s the recipe, but don’t make this guacamole until just before the guests arrive since it has a tendency to turn brown if it sits for a while. Refrigeration doesn’t retard the oxidization, and besides, it shouldn’t be served cold anyway. For years I’ve heard the tired old story about saving the seeds when you make guacamole so you can drop them back into the completed mixture to retard oxidation. Seemingly honest individuals have sworn to me that this actually works, but I’ve never seen a noticeable difference.

Anyway, back to the bidness at hand. Sweetcheeks should slice several avocados (adjust the proportions in all these recipes to accommodate your guest list) in half lengthways. Pop the seed out and then scoop out the meat, leaving the skin intact. Set the skin aside because it’ll be used in just a minute. In the bowl you’ve dropped the meat into, add just a bit of minced tomato, minced cilantro leaves, finely chopped scallion greens, just a touch of minced or crushed garlic, a bit of salt, and begin to blend the ingredients with a fork, making sure you leave it just a bit lumpy. As you’re mixing, drizzle on a bit of lime juice, just enough to add a mild flavor. You don’t want too much of any of these ingredients, because you want the flavor of the avocado to prevail.

Now it’s time to stuff the skins with this mixture. Garnish each boat with a tiny wedge of the smallest Roma tomato you can find, along with a small sprig of parsley. Arrange them all on a tray lined with shredded lettuce, and a goodly number of lime halves (some folks like to squeeze a bit more juice on) and you’ve created a tasty work of art. You’re definitely in bidness now. On to the pico de gallo!

I do a mean variation of this mix, but Married Bill has a recipe that I really like, so with his kind permission, here it comes. After all ingredients are combined, you should have a relatively equal show of the colors of the Mexican flag—red, white, and green. Before you start, keep this in mind: you’re going to be working with jalapeños. You’ll want to remove all the seeds as well as the pith. After you do, be careful not to rub your eyes or other tender areas for about a month. As an alternative you might wear rubber gloves or get your sweet lovin’ partner to do the prep work. If you do, don’t let her touch any of your tender parts for about a month. And use green jalapeños. They also come in yellow and red.

Here we go. This is going to be scooped up with some of those tortilla chips, so chop all the ingredients into small bits, but don’t mince them. They need a little bulk in order to hold their flavor, as well as the right texture. Again, adjust the volume to fit the crowd, but use the following as a guide: one large tomato, one large onion, two or three jalapeños sans seeds and pith, two small arbol chilies (chiles de arbol) with seeds and pith, enough cilantro to balance the color, and just enough lime juice squeezed over the mix to moisten it all. Mix it all together in a bowl and set it aside until you’re ready to offer it up. If you have an extra, very large molcajete it will make a cool serving dish.

Oops! One more tiny detail. Tonight your margarita recipe cannot have as a part of the instructions, “take a can of frozen limeade concentrate” or “add Jose Cuervo Margarita Mix”. Better make sure the little lady squeezes up a pitcher or two of lime juice and gets it in the fridge. And have Herradura brand tequila, or another premium brand made with 100% blue agave on hand. It doesn’t matter if your guests are all gringos, don’t serve that Cuervo to people you’re trying to impress.

Now everyone I know, or know of, claims to possess the secret formula for the perfect margarita. I don’t have a dog in that particular fight since I believe the correct way to drink tequila is straight up and lonesome. That lime juice is better suited for pies, limonada, wound disinfectant, and squeezing over any cooked fish and all street food.

Here’s one of many “true original” formulas, this one supposedly invented by the writer and silver pounder William Spratling back in the late ‘20´s at Berta’s Cantina in Taxco. The story, told by Spratling, is that after a long horseback ride he and John Dos Passos stopped by Berta’s for a refreshing drink. Spratling had Berta prepare a limonada for his friend and instructed her to add a generous shot of tequila to the juice. As simple things often do, the drink, originally named a “Berta”, became popular among the upper crust of Mexico City and was re-named the “margarita” (daisy) to divert attention from its plebian country birth. Evidently, at that time John Dos Passos had not yet become John Dos Passos. So I guess that anything other than an “original” recipe should actually be identified as the personal creation of whoever modifies the drink—making it Leon’s margarita or Wolfgang’s margarita and so forth.

There are other versions of how the drink came to be so here’s another one for you. Some claim the drink came into existence in Palm Springs back in the forties where a bunch of hard drinkin’ Hollywood types spent their upright hours sluggin’ down straight tequila. An anonymous bartender, obviously a Nervous Nellie, felt, or perhaps saw, that the brew was a bit much for the fragile damsels. That sweet soul then took it upon himself to cut the power a bit by adding lime juice and salt.

If you believe that one I’ve got a prize breeding steer I’d like to give you an opportunity to invest in. If you’re not from the country, get a farmer or rancher to ‘splain this to you. And if you want more margarita stories you can go to http://www.mexicanwave.com/food/drink/margarita.asp. A good source of information about tequila is Tequila ­ The Book by Ann and Larry Walker. It’s put out by Chronicle Books in San Francisco and you can get your local bookseller to order it for you. You’ll find plenty of good recipes in there, too.

Okay, for the present we’re all set. I’ll give you cooking instructions for the steaks when the time comes but right now you need to have Love Blossom sprinkle them with Worcestershire Sauce, sea salt, and freshly ground pepper. Coarse. Trust me on this one. You’ve just eliminated the need for flavored wood chips and any other yuppie or pseudo-range-cowboy-cook pretensions and added tons of flavor to a damn fine piece of meat.

You’ll probably need to lie down and rest for a bit before the guests arrive, because you still have plenty to do later on. But first you need to instruct Sugar Babe on what to do with the beans. She’ll need to get some Roma tomatoes and a red onion and chop them into small chunks. Then finely chop a handful or so of cilantro leaves. It’s a pain to pull them off the stems but what else does she have to do? Just get her to deliver up all the prepared ingredients so you can mix them together in a large serving dish. Now cover it and return the dish to the fridge until time to serve.

Go lie down.

Your better half could help out by makin’ sure the grill is clean and that a prep table is set up close by. You’re also going to need a very large platter for the steaks. Also, she’ll need to check to make sure there’s plenty of beer iced down in that washtub she set up over there in the shade. It’s the least she can do to ease your burden. This is a team effort, after all.

Following your nap and shower it’s time to meet and greet. Time now for the bride to just mingle and take it easy, but first she needs to make sure all the fixin’s are around the grill and that the margaritas are whipped up nice and fresh. Remind her to put the tortillas that she bought this morning on to heat.

It’s time for you, big fella, to put your shoulder back to the wheel. You need to go ahead and get the steaks on the grill. Rub each one down with a generous coating of olive oil. Sprinkle on a little more salt, grind on a little more pepper and cook everydamn one of ‘em medium rare. ¡No mas! Toss those onions up around the edges of the grill and dab on just a bit of oil mixed with the juice that seeped from the steaks while they were resting. They’ll roast up just fine. Leave Honeybuns at the grill with instructions to cook the steaks about 5 minutes on each side and turn them 2 or 3 times to cook them all the way through. Some purists in Texas say a steak should only be turned once. If you decide to grill these that way, blame them for the mess you make.

Wash your hands and head inside to mix and mingle for a few minutes and then get everyone seated. After suckin’ down Mama’s margaritas or a whole passel of those cold cervezas, most of your guests should be half in the bag by now, so you could probably get by with serving Alpo patties—but don’t risk it, there might be a ringer in that mob of sots. Place a bowl of beans and a bowl of salad by each plate that has a big springy bed of shredded greens in the middle of it. Put a warmer of tortillas in the middle of the table and make sure a big platter is sittin’ beside the grill.

It’s Showtime!

Your assistant should have delivered all the salsa ingredients and implements to the dining table. You’re on, Big Guy! Position that molcajete where you can comfortably work with it and begin the magic. Explain that your great-great-great-great-grandmother was an Aztec noble, a member of a tiny band that escaped Cortes’ destruction of the One World and lived undiscovered and undisturbed until your great-great-great-great-grandfather stumbled across them as he searched for the Treasure of the Sierra Madres. Perhaps some of your dinner guests have heard of the movie of his exploits. You’ll need to explain that Hollywood took a few liberties with the script.

Anyway you can explain that this is her secret royal salsa recipe to spoon onto the steaks from cattle rustled from the nearby ranchos.

Go to it. Toss the serranos, the onion and the garlic into the molcajete and use the tejolote to crush and blend them. A small wooden spoon will help with the mixin’ and blendin’. Now, with a flourish, begin to add the other ingredients one at a time. Tomatoes, grind lightly. Tomatillos, grind lightly. Cilantro, grind it good.

The bride should be deliverin’ up the steak-filled platter about now. She should have let them rest for about ten minutes or so to make your slicin’ chore a bit easier. Slice each steak into thin strips. Not all of this meat will be eaten tonight, so when the plates are taken away, be sure to mark each one. You’ll feel better if you can decide which will be safe for you to re-heat for dinners the rest of the week, and which should be fed to Bowser. Now you’ll make the rounds, artfully arranging several strips of medium-rare beef on the bed of greens on each plate, and placing two or three of the roasted onions on each plate. As soon as all are served, pick up the molcajete and carry it around so that each person can scoop a big dollop of salsa onto their steak. No Heinz, no A-1, nada except your great-great-great-grandmother’s recipe.

And no pan blanco, either. Hot tortillas. And at this point you’re going to offer up a different drink, something lighter and tangier. This recipe is from the magazine, 100% Tequila, that you can access at http://www.100tequila.com (no % in the web address). Even though the focus is on tequila, it’s very eclectic and artistic with articles to interest most everyone.

So here we go. Serve this drink in a pilsner glass or a tall Collins glass. Okay, use water tumblers if you need to, or jelly jars. Again modify the recipe to fit the crowd. Set this one up beforehand and keep it in pitchers in the fridge. For each drink you need to pour a large glass of cold mineral water, minus three shot glassfuls, into the blender. Add a shot of freshly-squeezed lime juice and two shots of a good tequila. Toss in half a handful of parsley, slap on the lid and hit the power switch. Blend, strain, and pour.

Most of the conversation now will be centered around your culinary prowess, and after the dessert, you’re a shoo-in for President of the Dog Pound.

Now it’s time for the wife to pitch in and do her part. You’ve had a busy day, buckaroo, and it’s only fair that she clean up this mess after all you’ve been through. Get some rest, for heaven’s sake. You’re only human!

For other great recipes go to http://www.mexconnect.com. Or buy any book by Diana Kennedy or Skip Bayliss. If you think French cooking is wonderful just wait until you get a plateful of real Mexican food. You ain’t gonna find those dishes at Taco Bell. And if for some odd reason you’re not a carnivore, you might want to check out The Best 125 Meatless Mexican Dishes by Susann Geiskopf-Hadler and Mindy Toomay. Despite the lack of meat many of these recipes are quite delicious.

Now that you know how some folks, and maybe someday you yourselves, spend their days, let’s look at what kind of housing will be available to you.