New Series on Home Cooks: Lupe, “la de Nayo”

This article was originally published on February 4, 2011.

Today  I will start a series  cooks who I’ve met along the way and who have given me many of the recipes I serve in my restaurant and feature in my cookbooks.

Besides my mother, my earliest cooking teacher was Lupe, la de Nayo (in Mexico, we often refer to a married woman by calling her la de so-and-so).  She was the wife of our ranch foreman and, to the delight of our family, my sisters and me practically lived at their home. In the afternoon, we’d forage for pitayas, the fruit of a ground-hugging thorny cactus) or manzanitas (a berry that grows on shrubs and is mostly pit but, oh, so delicious). When the capulines (a sort of wild cherry) ripened we would ride out on horses and pick them. We kids used to eat so many we really got sick. Acorns were another favorite — we enjoyed eating even the worms, which you feel making this squeeching when you bite into them!

Lupe is also a great ranch cook, and I learned her recipes. She was giving me instructions once on how dark to toast the flour for a roux we were making and she said, Hasta que este del color de una cucaracha — until it is the color of a cockroach! I think about it every time every I toast flour and always strive to get that particular color.

She’d make queso de rancho (hoop cheese) in square wooden molds lined with muslin and asadero (a mozzarella-type cheese) I’ve never been able to duplicate with the pasteurized milk available even at the best farmer’s markets.  She sun-dried roasted green chiles and calabacitas (zucchini) cut in long strips being careful to bring them in every evening so they wouldn’t get wet with the dew.  By late fall the cheese had aged sufficiently and she make a delicious stew with the sun-dried chiles and squash.

They eventually moved to a nearby town with no phones or short wave radios and we’d make surprise visits.   On one occasion, she was mortified that she had nothing but chiles, corn masa and cheese on hand to make us a meal and announced that she would have to make ordinary enchiladas. But proudly said that she would not puree the chiles in the blender.  Rather she’d remove th pulp by rubbing the chiles between her hands so that her essence would imbue the dish and that would be her gift to me.

Lupe used to make this simple but irresistible dish with potatoes and fresh green chiles. It’s a good filling for burritos with freshly made flour tortillas — which makes a great portable lunch.