Morning Glory : A Chile Dawn

When she first married my grandfather, Guadalupe Ocampo rose every morning before 5 a.m. to cook for him.

She’d just turned 18; he was in his early 30s. “Everybody used to think he was my dad,” Grandma now jokingly says. “They’d ask me, ‘Where’s your father?’ ”

If she’d had her way back then, she would have never gotten married so young. But her father insisted. Her father and my grandfather were friends--her father liked the fact that Grandpa had a good job and that he could keep my grandmother away from other boys.

“I remember the day I got married,” she says. “I told myself, ‘Well, just remember you had no choice in the matter--this is something you had to do.’ I wanted to engrave that in my mind so I wouldn’t have any regrets about what I’d done.”

What my grandmother’s father seemed to like most about Grandpa is that he was willing to help out at the family blacksmith shop. Her father would save up most of the day’s jobs, and then, a few minutes before Grandpa was supposed to come home from work, he’d build the fire and pretend he’d been working for hours and needed a break. Grandpa was an easy mark for him.

Every morning, my grandfather would leave the house in East L.A. at 5:30 a.m. to work at a foundry in Vernon. It was Grandma’s job to feed him breakfast and pack a lunch before he got out the door, and she had to work fast. “I used to get up at the last minute,” she says. “A quarter to 5.” She’d make tortillas, fry some beans, some eggs.

Often, she’d fill a tortilla with chorizo and potatoes. But he didn’t always take tacos to work; sometimes his lunch would be leftovers from dinner. She’d pack the food in Pyrex bowls and he’d warm the food by setting the dishes on the huge furnace at work.

“I was always making something different,” she says. “I used to spend three or four hours a day cooking, which I liked. I’d listen to Elena Salinas on the radio--she had a Mexican program and used to give the best recipes.”

Not long after they were married, my grandparents started a family and moved to a tiny, but brand-new home in Pico Rivera. “For $50, we got a small house and a big lot,” she says.

By this time, she was faster in the kitchen. Her reward: She got to sleep an extra 15 minutes every morning.

After she’d send my grandfather off to work, she’d wrap some of the food she’d just made into a tortilla for each of the kids and bring them a pre-breakfast snack in bed.

“We’d always wake up to the smell of tortillas,” my mother remembers. It’s a ritual she loved--and passed down. Even as a single working mom, she’d occasionally awaken me and my sister with an egg-and-bacon burrito, the aroma of frying bacon forever a part of my waking-hour dreams.

These days, when my family gets together, it’s almost always for breakfast. Grandpa has passed away, but I always imagine that with our huge late-morning meals we’re paying homage to his appetite--he was a rail-thin man capable of eating a breakfast for three.

Every Christmas morning we have eggs, tamales, Mexican sweet bread, chorizo, bacon or ham, beans, rice and often a batch of my grandmother’s nopales (strips of cactus stewed with pork and red chile). This past Easter Grandma showed up with a new dish: beans fried with bacon and topped with green salsa, melted cheese and bits of chicharrones (pork skins). It’s the base for the breakfast menu that follows.

“Oh,” my grandmother says every time we get together, “I just don’t cook the way I used to anymore.” It’s true, she doesn’t cook as often as she once did. And for herself, she uses canola oil instead of lard and keeps her meals light.

“But when we get together,” she whispers in my ear so no one hears, “that’s when I splurge.”

MENU

Watermelon Agua Fresca

Eggs With Rajas

Spicy Beans With Chicharrones

Chorizo

Oven-Baked Tortilla Chips

Pan Dulce

In the summer, few things could be easier to make than Watermelon Agua Fresca. During the height of the season, when watermelons are at their sweetest, you really only have to puree the fruit and pour it over ice. Of course, you can’t always depend on the sweetness of watermelons. Sometimes a little sugar is required--but taste first and add slowly.

WATERMELON AGUA FRESCA

8 cups watermelon, without rind, seeded (if not seedless), cut into chunks

Simple Syrup

Puree watermelon in blender until smooth. Strain through sieve. Taste for sweetness. If needed, add 6 tablespoons Simple Syrup, 1 tablespoon per serving. Taste again. If needed, add remaining syrup.

Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. Serve over ice. Makes about 6 cups, or 6 servings.

Each serving contains about:

132 calories; 4 mg sodium; 0 cholesterol; 1 gram fat; 32 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram protein; 0.64 gram fiber.

Simple Syrup

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

Bring sugar and water to boil in small saucepan, then simmer 5 more minutes. Makes about 1/2 cup.

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One of my favorite things to eat is rajas, strips of roasted Poblano chiles sauteed with onions and often with a little Mexican crema. They make terrific taco fillings; some restaurants serve them as a vegetable side dish. Here, they’re served over fried eggs, a variation of sorts on huevos rancheros.

EGGS WITH RAJAS

1 pound Poblano chiles

1/2 pound sweet red peppers

6 tablespoons oil

2 medium onions, thinly sliced

1 teaspoon salt, about

2/3 to 3/4 cup Mexican crema or creme fraiche

12 eggs

Butter

Place chiles on open flame of stove top or on grill over high heat. Let skin blister and char on all sides. Place charred chiles in plastic food bag, then wrap bag in kitchen towel. Repeat with sweet red peppers. Let sweat about 20 minutes. When ready, peel chiles and peppers. Remove and discard stems, core and seeds. Cut flesh into strips.

Heat oil in large skillet. Add onions and cook until translucent, about 3 minutes. Add chiles, sweet red peppers and salt. Cover pan and cook, shaking occasionally, about 8 minutes. Add crema, cover pan and cook over low heat until crema thickens and is partially absorbed by chiles, about 7 minutes. Removed from heat and set aside.

Heat butter to coat medium-sized skillet pan. Add eggs and fry to desired degree of doneness. Place 2 eggs on each plate and top with rajas. Makes 6 servings.

Each serving contains about:

376 calories; 557 mg sodium; 440 mg cholesterol; 29 grams fat; 15 grams carbohydrates; 16 grams protein; 1.99 grams fiber.

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There are really two meal’s worth of eating here. The Cooked Beans, soupy and fresh from the pot, are wonderful just plain, or topped with crumbled cheese and spicy salsa. Just remember to save half for frying the next day. Chicharrones, fried pork skins, can be made fresh, but in my family, we usually buy them at a Mexican deli or meat shop like East L.A.’s Cinco Puntos. The same goes for pan dulce, Mexican sweet bread, which is always bought from a Mexican bakery--preferably, the same morning you plan to eat it.

SPICY BEANS WITH CHICHARRONES

1 ham hock, reserved from Cooked Beans

10 strips bacon

3 1/2 to 4 cups Cooked Beans, with about 1 cup cooking liquid

1/4 to 1/2 cup Salsa Verde

1/2 cup queso ranchero or Monterey Jack cheese, crumbled

1/4 pound chicharrones, cut into small pieces to make about 1 cup

Remove meat from cooked ham hock and shred to get about 1/4 cup. Set aside.

Cook bacon in large skillet until crisp. Remove bacon from pan and set on paper towels to drain, leaving about 1/3 cup drippings in skillet. Crumble bacon into small pieces and set aside.

Add beans, without cooking liquid, to drippings in skillet and mash to make rough puree. As beans start to cook, add cooking liquid little at time to moisten. Add more as beans absorb liquid. Stir in shredded ham and crumbled bacon. Beans should be creamy with some shine. Do not overcook. If beans look dry, add more cooking liquid.

Place beans in small casserole dish. Top center of beans with Salsa Verde. Cover remaining outer rim of beans with queso ranchero. Place in 350-degree oven about 5 minutes to melt cheese. Remove from oven and place chicharrones pieces around edge of casserole. Makes 6 servings.

Each serving, including 4 cups Cooked Beans, contains about:

536 calories; 589 mg sodium; 50 mg cholesterol; 24 grams fat; 52 grams carbohydrates; 29 grams protein; 4.9 grams fiber.

Cooked Beans

1 pound pinto beans

12 to 14 cups hot water

1/2 onion

2 bay leaves

1 ham hock

1 to 2 cloves garlic

Rinse beans and pick through to remove any stones or shriveled beans. Place beans in pot and cover with hot water. Add onion, bay leaves, ham hock and garlic and bring to boil. As soon as beans come to boil, lower heat and barely simmer, covered, until just tender, but not soft, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Do not stir during cooking.

Add salt and simmer another 30 minutes. There should be plenty soupy liquid. Makes 8 cups, or 10 to 12 servings.

Each of 10 servings contains about:

202 calories; 247 mg sodium; 14 mg cholesterol; 3 grams fat; 29 grams carbohydrates; 14 grams protein; 2.75 grams fiber.

Salsa Verde

8 Anaheim chiles

1 pound (about 12) tomatillos, papery husks removed

1/2 onion, quartered

2 medium cloves garlic

4 sprigs cilantro

Salt, pepper

Place chiles on open flame of stove top or on grill over high heat. Let skin blister and char on all sides. Place charred chiles in plastic food bag, then wrap bag in kitchen towel. Repeat with tomatillos. Let sweat about 20 minutes. When ready, peel chiles and tomatillos. Remove and discard stems, core and seeds.

Place tomatillos, onion, garlic and cilantro in blender and process to make rough puree. Add chiles and process few turns to get chunky puree. Makes 2 1/2 cups.

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Making breakfast with my mother almost always means frying chorizo. Even when bacon or ham or some other breakfast sausage shows up on the table, a batch of chorizo is cooked up too. When I was a kid, my mom would get the chorizo started--she had the best job, squeezing the sausage from its casing. But I’d get to watch over the sizzling chorizo. Standing over the stove, with her old wood-handled spoon held tight in my fist, I’d break up the sausage and wait for the moment I could begin degreasing. I’d tilt the pan and spoon the brick-red grease into an empty can. The chorizo was done when there was little grease left to spoon and the meat had cooked into crumbly, crisp bits. At that point, my mother would take a look, turn off the heat and start frying eggs.

CHORIZO

1 pound chorizo

Remove chorizo meat from casings and place in large skillet. Cook over medium-high heat, crumbling meat with spoon, until meat cooks through with some crisp bits. As meat cooks, tilt pan occasionally and remove grease with spoon and discard. Makes 6 servings.

Each serving contains about:

258 calories; 700 mg sodium; 50 mg cholesterol; 22 grams fat; 1 gram carbohydrates; 14 grams protein; 0 fiber.

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Sometimes, in addition to warmed tortillas, my grandmother makes tortilla chips to go with her beans. They’re easy to make fresh--and taste a lot better than anything you can buy in a bag. She just cuts the tortillas into pieces, like a pie, then adds a smear of butter or oil and cooks them in the oven until they crisp up. You can deep-fry the tortilla pieces too, but the oven method seems to bring out the nuttiness of the corn--plus it saves you a lot of clean-up and, of course, it’s a good way to cut some of the fat.

OVEN-BAKED TORTILLA CHIPS

12 corn tortillas

1 tablespoon softened butter or oil

Salt

Brush tortillas on 1 side with softened butter. Cut tortillas, spoke-fashion, into 8 pieces. Place tortilla pieces buttered-side up on baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees until toasted, about 20 minutes. Season to taste with salt. Makes 6 servings.

Each serving contains about:

167 calories; 389 mg sodium; 5 mg cholesterol; 6 grams fat; 24 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams protein; 0 fiber.

Food styling by Donna Deane and Mayi Brady