Home  »  Perfume de Gardenias

Perfume de Gardenias

Tagged with:                 

This is going to be a very unsatisfactory but romantic story.  Why unsatisfactory?  Because I can’t name names.  The main characters, and I don’t use the world loosely, are long time customers of mine, people of character,  who are very private and they wouldn’t want their names used.  At least,  that’s my  sense of them.

Soon after I  opened Zarela restaurant 22 years ago today, September 28, 1987, a very reserved, meticulously and quite formally  dressed gentleman started  coming in for an early dinner with a little boy who always wore shorts of grey flannel, with a navy blue blazer, navy blue ot checkered knee high socks and loafers. He must’ve been 7 years old or so and every time I saw him I’d think to myself: “Poor kid!  I bet he’d love to be wearing torn jeans, a tee shirt and maybe a baseball cap backwards.”  And I thought that for years,  until much time passed and I discovered that he actually liked to dress that way,  or so his parents told me. We had gradually developed a friendship  through their little  Damien, who I had befriended and became close  to as I watched him grow into a sociable, affable,  good-looking young man, equally at home in black tie or blue jeans.   He confirmed it.

Sometimes the whole family would come in together but they were so engrossed in what their daughter had to say  that I seldom would go to the table.  So I’ve only gotten to know her in the last 5 years or so and I have discovered that we share a passion for cooking and that she is cut very much in her mother’s mold.

The mother is  an imposing, dramatic,  formidable woman, whose manner sometimes reminds of my mother which is why I like her so much.  It is easy to see why after 35 years her husband still finds her fascinating and why his eyes sparkle when he tells of their courtship and their dates at Trader Vic’s where they shared a drink called a  Scorpion that came in a gigantic glass with two straws and a gardenia.

This weekend we were invited to their daughter’s  engagement party and the smell of gardenias filled their palatial home, and suddenly I was transported to Union Square in San Francisco where my mother bought me my first gardenia.   She was about to drop me off at Dominican Convent, a ritzy  boarding school then located in San Rafael in Marin County that I would attend for the next two years and that has had a profound effect on my life. I put the gardenia on my pillow the first night there and went to sleep and woke up to  its intoxicating aroma.

If ever there is an argument for single-sex boarding schools Dominican (now San Domenic0)  is it even if they don’t have the same programs now that they had in my time: charm classes with John Robert Powers, weekends in  Bolinas, writing in italics, Filipino cooks.)  At Dominican they let you flourish as an individual and fomented whatever special talents you had. I keep up with them and they still do.

Like many teenage Mexicans of the time, my first perfume was Je Reviens but on my 15th birhday or thereabouts I asked for and got the overpowering, cloying perfume Jungle Gardenia that  Elizabeth Taylor supposedly  wore and it became my favorite too. I shudder to think of it now.

But gardenias are still  one of my favorite flowers and it seems that in every square in Mexico and at every stop light people have them for sale in season. So along with a satisfying corn on the cob and a tamarind popsicle those are my first purchases when I go back home.

But if you really want to luxuriate in their aroma visit the Hotel Fortin de las Flores in the city of the same name in Veracruz where the pool is filled with gardenias and they serve one of the best sopa aztecas anywhere.  (recipe to follow soon.) I must confess that the hotel may now only be a memory because i tried to find a link to it and could not. in any case here is their recipe for Sopa Azteca or Sopa de Tortilla.

Recipe: Sopa Azteca or Sopa de Tortilla

Summary: The central northern town of Fortín de las Flores, about 5 miles west of Orizaba, is a huge center of commercial flower-growing. On one trip we reached the hotel of the same name on a bright morning to find the shiny black songbirds called tordos whistling and trilling like mockingbirds amid the beautiful planted courtyards and around the swimming pool filled with hundreds of gardenias like floral ice floes. People come from all over the world and spend many winter weeks in this picturesque place and if you should ever find yourself there by all means try the hotel’s rich-flavored soup with a medley of toppings including crisp-fried tortilla strips.

Ingredients

  • 1 large whole chicken breast, with skin and ribs 2 small to medium-sized white onions
  • 4 garlic cloves (leave 2 unpeeled)
  • 2 teaspoons salt, or to taste
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 6 commercial corn tortillas, cut into 1/2-inch strips
  • 2 large ripe tomatoes (about 1 pound total)
  • 1 small leek, halved lengthwise, trimmed and thoroughly cleaned of sand
  • 6 – 8 fresh epazote sprigs or 3 tablespoons crumbled dried epazote
  • 2 jalapeño chiles
  • 2 avocados (a Mexican type like Hass)
  • 8 ounces queso blanco or white cheddar cheese, cut into bite-sized dice
  • 1/4 cup Mexican-style crema or crème fraîche

Instructions

  1. Place the chicken breast in a medium-sized saucepan with about half of a small onion (preferably unpeeled), 2 unpeeled garlic cloves, and the salt. Add about 6 cups water, or enough to cover by about 2 inches. Bring to a boil over high heat, quickly reduce the heat to maintain a low rolling boil, and skim off any froth that rises to the top. Cook, partly covered, for about 20 minutes, or until the meat is just tender. Remove the chicken breast, let cool until you can handle it, and pull the meat into fine shreds. Set aside.
  2. Strain the broth (discarding the solids) and set aside; you should have about 5 – 6 cups.
  3. In a medium-sized skillet, heat the oil to rippling over medium-high heat. Fry the tortilla strips, a handful at a time, until golden, about 2 minutes per batch. As they are done, lift out to drain on paper towels.
  4. Strain about 2 tablespoons of the oil into a medium-sized Dutch oven or stockpot; discard the rest. Set aside the tortilla strips and strained oil while you prepare the stock enrichment.
  5. Roast and peel the tomatoes.
  6. Coarsely chop 1 garlic clove and half of the onion; purée in a blender with the tomatoes.
  7. Finely chop the leek along with the remaining whole onion and garlic, and cook, stirring often, for 3 minutes.
  8. Add the tomato purée and cook, over medium heat, for 15 minutes, or until little crater-like holes appear on the hot surface and the fat begins to separate.
  9. While the mixture cooks, remove the tops and seeds from the chiles and slice into thin rings. Leave 2 epazote sprigs whole and strip the leaves off the rest; peel and dice the avocado.
  10. When the tomato mixture has reached the right stage, add the whole epazote sprigs and sliced chiles. Stir in the reserved chicken stock. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, and let cook, partly covered, 15 minutes longer.
  11. Distribute the shredded chicken breast among 4 – 6 soup bowls. Add the fried tortilla strips, epazote leaves, diced avocado, diced cheese, and crema; pour about 1 cup of the hot soup over each serving.

Number of servings (yield): 6

Meal type: lunch

Culinary tradition: Mexican

Copyright © Zarela Martinez.
Recipe by on.
Microformatting by hRecipe.

There is a wonderful Latin song called Perfume de Gardenia that you can download here

Tagged with:                 
Advertisement