Like Water for Chocolate

This month in Fandom Foodies, Megan from The Hungry Bookworm is hosting #MagicalRealFood, a recipe link-up celebrating the food from the magical realism genre. Magical realism can be defined as stories where “a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe”. Examples include Chocolat, Pan’s Labyrinth, and The Life of Pi. For today’s post, though, I’m going to feature a modern novel in the style of magical realism’s Latin American, turn-of-the-century origins. I’m going to recreate the Oxtail Soup recipe from Laura Esquivel’s best-seller Like Water for Chocolate.

Click here to skip to the recipe for Oxtail Soup from Like Water for Chocolate!

Laura’s Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies details the story of Tita De la Garza – a young woman born and raised in a kitchen during the time around the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917. When her mother, Mama Elena, refuses to let her marry her boyfriend, citing a tradition of the youngest daughter to stay and take care of her till her death, Tita’s emotions begin to bleed into the food she cooks.

The way Tita’s food changes the people and world around her gives her a voice to rebel against tradition and her mother’s tyranny. In her Rose Petal Quail sears a passion so hot that it sets clothing and walls on fire. The cake she bakes for her sister and ex-boyfriend’s wedding stirs up a sense of intense, nauseating grief in all who taste it. Each chapter begins with a list of ingredients and the steps flow through the text of the story, where we grind through the figurative and literal spices of Tita’s life. You can say this story is a part cookbook, part fairy tale, part coming of age story, and part Mexican soap opera.

A Taste of Bittersweet Memories

“Soups can cure any illness, whether physical or mental.”

The recipe I chose to make from this novel was the Oxtail Soup from chapter seven. After Tita suffers a mental breakdown, it is a bowl of oxtail soup from her sister that brings her back to her senses. When she takes a sip of the soup, she relives her times with Nacha, the woman who raised her and taught her how to cook. It is a bittersweet memory with the smells of “chocolate atole, cumin, garlic, and onion.” She notes “how good it was to have a long talk with Nacha. Just like old times, when Nacha was still alive, and they had so often made ox-tail soup together.”

When Tita serves the soup to Mama Elena, she spits it out after a single sip. She cites it as “nasty and bitter” and insists it taken away immediately. Now some critics believe it is Tita’s subconscious hatred for Elena or Elena’s disgust with being at Tita’s mercy that causes the flavor. I theorize that Elena becomes unsettled with the loving memories that return after she has suppressed them for so long. She becomes so sour about having lost the love of her life that the recollection is more distasteful than comforting.

Soups can cure any illness. But in this case, they do little good when the patient refuses to take her medicine.

“Stirred in Until the Flavors Meld”

The book details the main ingredients of this soup as oxtails, onion, garlic, tomatoes, string beans, potatoes, and chiles moritas. While the recipe from the book is pretty straightforward, I decided to take a few liberties for the sake of ease and flavor. I’m not going to lie, figuring out this out was a pain in the proverbial donkey. However, I think you will have a much easier time than I did if you follow the instructions I’ve developed below.

My first struggle was that I cooked the oxtail too quickly when you need it low and slow to have it melt off the bone. I recommend you use an electric pressure or slow cooker for this part of the process. Patience is crucial and will yield the best results. Understand you will need four hours for the pressure cooker and eight for the crockpot. I’ve managed to find oxtail in specialty and regular supermarkets, but both Asian and Hispanic supermarkets also carry them pre-sliced.

Finding ingredients for this recipe, luckily, was pretty easy for me. Golden potatoes are a staple of Mexican cuisine and sold in grocery stores everywhere. I decided to use canned crushed San Marzano tomatoes to get the most robust flavor and also to reduce prep time.

Chiles morita are actually a little easier to find than one would think — the dried pods are smoked jalapenos like chipotle peppers but are, in my opinion, more fruity and flavorful. You can find them in Mexican grocery stores, or you can order them online. Seriously, consider it and add a leftover pepper or two to your next pot of chili. Dried peppers sort of last forever.

I decided to also divert from the recipe a bit to encompass the flavors in Tita’s memory of Nacha. That’s why I also included a bit of ground cumin and a few squares of baking chocolate. The cumin helps meld the flavors together with an earthy, warming note and the chocolate does the same, but also thickens the broth. Keep in mind that fat is a flavor carrier. When you add fat, like chocolate, to a dish, it marries and helps balance the flavors with each other.

So here it is, a dish to cure you of colds and cold nights. If you liked this dish and wanted to find more recipes from the magical realism genre, check out The Hungry Bookworm’s recipe link-up, here: #MagicalRealFood.

recipe

A Whiff of Onion…

Oxtail Soup from Like Water for Chocolate

Serves 6-8
Equipment: Stovetop, large skillet and electric pressure cooker (or slow cooker and stockpot), chef’s knife, cutting board, food processor.

Ingredients:

2-2.5 lbs oxtails, skinned and sliced into 2-3 inch-thick pieces
2 cloves garlic
1 large yellow onion
2 large golden potatoes, diced
1/2 pound string beans
14.5 oz can crushed tomatoes
4 dried chili morita pods
1 teaspoon ground cumin
3 squares baking chocolate
kosher salt

Instructions:

Slice open the chile pods and scoop out the seeds. Wash your hands to prevent spreading the chili oil.
Heat the dry skillet (or stockpot) on medium-high over the stovetop. Add the chilies to dry roast about 30-60 seconds on each side. Remove the chiles with tongs and place them in the pot of your pressure or slow cooker.
Pat the oxtails dry with paper towels then season liberally on both sides with kosher salt. Heat oil in the skillet (or stockpot) then add the oxtails when hot. Brown, the meat 2-3 minutes on each side, then add to the cooker pot.
Peel the one garlic cloves and smash it with the flat of your blade on the cutting board. Peel and halve the onion. Cut each half into inch-thick chunks. Add the smashed clove and one of the onion chunks to the cooker pot and pour in water to cover. Season with 2-3 pinches of kosher salt.
Cover and secure the cooker lid and cook on low 4 hours in a pressure cooker, 8 hours in the crockpot.
Start prepping your other ingredients. Trim the ends of the string beans and slice diagonally into inch-long pieces. Large dice the potatoes. Peel the remaining garlic clove and mince it and the onion in the food processor.
Heat the skillet (or stockpot) with oil over medium-high heat on the stovetop. Add the minced onion and garlic when hot. Cook with a pinch of kosher salt, often stirring, until translucent.
Stir in the potatoes, beans, and tomatoes and reduce the heat to medium-low to let the flavors mingle. Season with another pinch of kosher salt. Let cook ten minutes while you prepare the broth.
Carefully remove the meat from the pot and set to the side to cool. Mince one of the chilies and return to the pot. Remove the remaining whole chilies and onion wedge with tongs and discard.
If using an electric pressure cooker: Scrape the contents of the skillet gradually into the pot of stock to prevent splashback. Replace and secure the lid to cook on high for 10 minutes. Release the pressure valve when done, remove the lid stir in the cumin and chocolate squares until fully melted and incorporated. Add kosher salt to taste.
If using a crockpot: Pour the stock from the crock pot carefully into the stockpot to prevent splashback. Turn the heat to medium-low and cover the pot to simmer for another 30 minutes, stirring intermittently. When finished, turn off the heat and stir in the cumin and chocolate until fully melted and incorporated. Add kosher salt to taste.
At this point, the meat should have cooled enough to pull off the bone and add to the broth. For a more rustic look, you can keep the meat on the bone and add pieces to already poured bowls of soup.
Serve with freshly baked rolls