All About Jane's Ranch

Palace of the Blue Butterfly | Episode 14

If you live in California, you’re bound to have some little grocery store that looks like the one on the left. This is my top mercadito for all the special things I need for Mexican cooking— tamarindo, nopales, all kinds of dried chiles and those lovely little dried hibiscus flowers called flores de jamaica in Spanish.

After a cold rainy spring, summer is finally here in the Sierras, and I’m going to give you a great recipe for a drink called agua de jamaica, the perfect tart/sweet refreshment for sipping on hot, dry days with a book in your hand and the fan turning back and forth as you read.

The first time I had agua de jamaica was in Oaxaca. We’d been roaming the markets in the sweltering spring heat. I was looking for an all white huipil and falda from Mitla—the one that Lili wears at the birthday party she throws. The picture on the right even LOOKS hot, doesn’t it?

Dave had been a really good sport, lugging my purchases around, but I could tell he was done.

When he suggested a drink in the cool of the sheltered patio at the ex-convento de Santa Catalina, now the Camino Real Hotel, I said sure.

Well, Dave ordered a beer, but that would have put me to sleep for the rest of the day. I didn’t want the ubiquitous Coca-cola they always offer, so one of the waiters suggested agua de jamaica.

It arrived at my table—an amazing garnet red color— in one of those hand-blown glasses that are the color of sea water. On top they’d placed a beautiful peach colored hibiscus flower. If you live in the south where those things grow, you could add that little touch.

Anyway, here’s Rick Bayless’s version of this delicious beverage.

Rick Bayless’s Agua de Jamaica

Ingredients:

2 cups dried jamaica flowers
1 1/4 cups sugar

Directions:

In a medium non-reactive saucepan, bring 1 1/2 quarts of water to a boil. Add the “Flowers” and sugar. Stir for a minute or so, while the liquid returns to a boil and the sugar dissolves. Cover and let steep for an hour, but no more than two.

Pour the mixture through a strainer into a large pyrex bowl, pressing on the “flowers” to extract as much
liquid as possible. Stir in three cups of water and chill in a glass pitcher, one that won’t stain!

Enjoy your summer!

     Episode 14 - click and listen

Palace of the Blue Butterfly | Episode 13

I don’t know where you’ll be when you read this, but I’m going hiking, and, if we can finish all the chores around here, we’re planning to car camp. Yes, by a river. I just want to be sitting on a rock, reading a book, listening to the rush of a waterfall as it tumbles over granite into a blue-green pool.

What am I reading? Well, it’s almost summer, and since the book group just hefted Anna Karenina, mentally and physically (Best. Novel. Ever.), we’re reading something lighter, or maybe darker — Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. But hey — look at what the critics say about it.

“Raymond Chandler was one of the finest prose writers of the 20th century. He wrote like an angel.” Literary Times

“Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner.” The Boston Book Review

“Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never been the same since.” Paul Auster

Anyway, it’ll be a great read on a rock in the sun or by the campsite at night with the light of the kerosene lamp. Can’t wait. And for this expedition, I’m making a great vegetarian chili.

Here’s the recipe.

JANE’S RANCH CAMPFIRE CHILI

Ingredients:

6 cups of Rick Bayless’s homemade pinto beans (recipe follows)
3 TBS. vegetable oil
3 onions chopped
1 diced carrot (must be diced small. You want the sweetness and a little crunch, but not hunks of carrot)
2 diced SWEET red peppers( not hot!)
4 cloves garlic minced
28 oz can diced tomatoes
1 chopped chipotle chili in adobo
2 tsps. dried cumin
1/2 Gebhardt’s chili powder
1 cup diced green chilis
salt to taste
dash of sherry or cider vinegar
cayenne to taste
sour cream, cilantro, chopped onion, cheese, flour tortillas

Instructions:

Saute onion in vegetable oil until translucent. Add carrot, followed by red pepper and saute until tender but not mushy. Add garlic and saute until fragrant, but do not let it brown. Add the rest of the ingredients EXCEPT vinegar and cayenne. Simmer for fifteen minutes. Add the cooked beans and simmer another ten minutes or so.

Taste for salt and heat. Add the cayenne, a small amount at a time, until you reach the level of heat you want. Follow with a splash of vinegar. Sometimes I skip this and serve the chili with a wedge of lime because it’s pretty.

Add chopped raw onion, grated cheddar cheese, cilantro, sour cream to the bowls as you like. Serve chili with warm flour tortillas and cold beer.

So I’ll pack the cooler with the above, plus blue corn pancake mix for breakfast. All that’s needed is the red checked tablecloth, a mason jar for some wildflowers and a couple of oil lamps. Plus a table with a view of the King’s River.

Just me and my guy. Heaven.

Rick Bayless’s Frijoles de Olla

Ingredients:
1 lb. pinto beans
vegetable oil
1 large onion
1 clove garlic

Instructions:
Soak beans overnight in 7 cups of water. Discard water.
Saute onions in large dutch oven for ten minutes. Let them get a little brown.
Add garlic and saute until fragrant.
Add beans and 6 cups of water.
Cook until tender.
Add salt to taste only after the beans are done.

Spring. Finally.

I’ve thrown open all the windows. The hyacinths are in full glory in the window boxes, and when the breeze blows, the scent fills the house.

When that happens, I simply have to stop what I’m doing and just inhale.

Even though my pots of Tulipa Abba are in splendid bloom on the porch, it can still get cold at night. Soup is a great way to take the early spring chill off.

I’m giving you a recipe to try for Sopa Tarasca.

Two reasons why:

One, it’s the soup I was served on the terrace of the Villa Montana in Morelia the day I started writing this novel. Two, it’s exactly the soup I imagined Fatima serving Lili in Episode Two of Palace of the Blue Butterfly, the one she served in the rustic, clay bowls.

Actually, this isn’t my recipe. It belongs to Pati Jinich, the chef on Pati’s Mexican Table, a new cooking show on PBS. This show is just one more reason funds to PBS should not be cut!

Here’s a little clip:

The music is enough to turn me into a salsera. “Give me your chocolate, give me your sweet, brown sugar, give me hot coffee, give me your heart.” Pretty much sums up the things I want in life right there!

So go to Pati’s site, look up soups and then find the blog post “About a soup and a book“. I do have one suggestion though. You’ve got to make your own beans. Period. Canned beans taste like soap and metal. Yuck! Plus there’s the whole BPA thing.

I’m sure you could find some great bean recipes from Diana Kennedy. She’s a fascinating woman, and a wonderful cook, really one of the first people to put Mexican cooking on the English speaking map. Sometime I would love to study Mexican cooking with her in Michoacan. She used to give classes in her home.

Or, you could check out Rick Bayless’s site. He’s one of my heroes. Dave took me out to dinner at Topolobampo in Chicago once, and it was a super thrill!

Anyway, make yourself the soup, grab a cold Corona and a wedge of lime. Pop your earbuds in and listen to Episode Three. Things are about to get way more complicated!