Candied Pumpkin

So I know it's been too long since I last updated this thing. I've cooked things and baked things, I just haven't had the time to write about them or go through the photos. Perhaps some unrealistic day I won't have too many things to do or be too drained to post.

I set up a little photo session for my color photo class last night for my second project, symbolism being the theme. The theme of my project is of course the best holiday day to ever exist: Halloween. So, I made a Jack 'O Lantern.

You don't have to make a Jack 'O Lantern in order to make candied pumpkin, but considering there is absolutely no way this little spirit-warder would last until the actual Holiday, in the words of the lovely Alma Caravarin, "If it's not eternal, might as well eat it right now with unmeasurable amounts of sugar."

Ingredients
1 medium pumpkin
2-3 large OR 5-6 small cones of piloncillo*
*According to babylon.com, pilloncillo is "Brown, unrefined cane sugar found in cone-shaped pieces used to sweeten coffee and desserts." Can be found at your local Mexican market.

Ever since I can remember, Eva and my Abuelita have candied our Jack 'O Lanterns after Halloween. Can you say, "Ultimate Decoration"? You can't eat a Christmas tree, therefore Halloween > Christmas.

1. To begin, clean out the pumpkin like you would a Jack 'O Lantern. 
If you don't know how to do that, we probably shouldn't be associated. Or at least learn how to immediately so that I never find out.
2. Cut up the pumpkin into three-to-four inch rectangles and put them into a large pot with the piloncillo. Fill the pot with water and boil until the pumpkin is very soft, stirring occasionally.

Serve warm or cold, with or without a bit of milk: fat-free, because anything else is gross.

You're gonna be eating a face!

Baked Pork Ribs, Potatoes and Scallions in Butter and Herbs

- For Ashley

Baked Pork Ribs

3 lbs. pork loin back ribs

Rub

*Barbecue Sauce (see recipe below)

Rub

¾ c. light brown sugar

1 tbs. paprika

1 tbs. garlic salt

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

2. Peel off membrane on under side of ribs by scoring the tapering end with a knife, forming a pocket, and then slowly peeling the skin back and off the bones.

I don’t get terribly queasy, but peeling this stuff off is kind of gross. It’s like peeling back the skin of an eyeball. Or a…PLACENTA. Actually, I don’t really know what it’s like to do those things. But it reminds me of stories my Abuelita sometimes tells me – you know, the murdering of various beasts and pets to make food. And THAT reminds of a story from my eldest aunt’s childhood. She used to have a little goat because she would not drink cow’s milk. It would follow her around like a dog. One day it fell off a cliff. Why it fell off a cliff is not clear. My grandmother merely dismisses it as a thing that goats often do.

3. Mix together the ingredients to the rub, and apply it to all sides of the ribs.

4. Lay the ribs on two sheets of foil, meat-side down. Lay another two sheets atop the ribs and crimp the edges together, forming a package.

5. Place package on a baking sheet and bake for two to 2 ½ hours, or until meat starts to shrink away from the edges of the bone.

If you would like to have saucier, more savory ribs, continue with the following steps, using the provided barbecue sauce recipe. I made the sauce, but kept it on the side. The ribs are awesome without the sauce, but just as awesome (different, yes) with.

… 6. Remove the ribs from the oven and heat the broiler. Cut the ribs into pieces with portions of two or three ribs.

7.  Arrange them on the broiler, bone-side up, and brush on the barbecue sauce. Broil for one or two minutes, until the sauce is cooked and bubbling.

8. Flip them over so that they are meat-side up and repeat, one to two minutes.

*Barbecue Sauce

4 oz. tomato sauce

1 – 6 oz. can tomato paste

¼ c. minced onion

3 tbs. brown sugar

2 tbs. vinegar

2 tbs. olive oil

2 tbs. maple syrup

3 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tbs. soy sauce

1 tsp. cayenne pepper

salt and black pepper to taste

1. Cook the onions and garlic in the olive oil until the onions are opaque.

2. Add the remaining ingredients and allow them to simmer for about 20 minutes.

I love the color of this sauce – a deep, bloody, heart’s red. It is a bit thick, and was coming out with too strong a tomato flavor, but some adjusting with the sugar, syrup and vinegar took care of that.

Potatoes and Scallions in Butter and Herbs

1 lb. red potatoes, cut into ½ inch pieces

1 - bunch scallions

¼ c. onions

½ c. butter, softened

2 cloves garlic

1 tsp. salt, divided

1 tsp. each: parsley, chives, thyme, basil, marjoram

salt and black pepper to taste

1. Place potatoes in a saucepan, cover with water and add ½ tsp. salt. Bring to a boil. Simmer over medium heat for two minutes and strain.

I always think of red potatoes as the little old hag-men of the potato family. They are weary looking, and bright red or dusty brick. They have spots that make them seem as though the earth from which they grew only birthed them grudgingly, those poor little red potatoes that we dice so unpityingly.

2. Drain and let stand for two minutes.

3. Heat butter in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Saute garlic and onion. Stir in salt.

Butter! I don’t know what it is about butter that enchants me. It can’t be the benevolent Pocahontas on Land ‘O Lakes. It can be sweet, it can be salt; it can be brown, herbed, clear and clover. There is no true replacement for it, like happiness and like sadness. Perhaps butter gets its wonder from irony. I'm glad for butter, and the fact that I don’t have to churn my own. The closest to Amish I want to get are Jill’s wicked dance-moves.

4. Reduce heat to medium and sauté potatoes for 20 minutes, or until soft and browned.

5. Seventeen minutes in, add the scallions – cook for about 3 minutes.

6. Add herbs and cook an additional 30 seconds. Pepper to taste.

So this meal was pretty successful. The little additions were baked beans and a salad, courtesy of Ashley. Also some garlic bread from Mi Pueblo down the street.

The reason I didn’t use the barbecue sauce directly on the ribs was simply due to the fact that the ribs were really very good without it, and the cooking time was perfect – they literally fell off the bone. They were not dry or tough, but soft and moist…(haha).

An earthy brown, sweet with brown sugar that pools along the ridges of rib bone – these ribs work with the sauce on the side, like fire to earth. The cayenne pepper and vinegar are bites in the sauce, but the maple syrup is the wood that feeds that slight flame of spice. Overall, I enjoyed making it and eating it (like most-everything edible).

Introductions

Hello.

I am Mo. That name means many things to many people; I would hope that mostly they are positive things. A number of those people have had the pleasure or dismay of tasting various creations and concoctions of mine. I like cooking for people, and baking. Food can also be many things to many people. It is nutrition, it is pleasure, it is why you need to go on a diet (though who in their right mind would exile food from their life?). Food, for me, is also a means of expression. We can make bad food for bad company, we can make food so wonderful and full of heart that anyone who tastes it will be immediately spellbound.

I grew up around food. Pretty much anyone alive has, really, but that isn't what I meant. Sopas, tortillas, chile, tamales, rice, beans, savory stews of rice and chicken, warm Mexican bread with coffee after dinner. Being a first/second-generation Mexican American with a grandmother who loves to feed people definitely has its perks. It is not the satisfaction after having eaten, however, that has made food such a magical thing for me. It is memory. I remember the turkeys at Thanksgiving, each one stuffed with not only breadcrumbs and sage sausages, but also the laughter of my Aunt Eva, and the shrieking of my cousins as they rampage through my grandmother's house. I remember my Abuelita's menudo, because I will only eat her menudo.

I am a magazine journalism major with an additional taste for design and layout. I can say I thoroughly enjoy it, and have had wonderful experiences at San Jose State University, working with professors and students to produce publications that reflect our dreams and aspirations.

I am also minoring in Complementary and Alternative Health Practices. It was the niche I thought I might enjoy. The classes I have taken in order to complete the minor have crushed that idea wholly and utterly, save the wonderful classes 'Magic, Science and Religion' and 'Body, Mind, Spirit' with professor Mira Amiras.

THAT is what I sought. That is what I want to learn. I do not much care for case studies and the scientific disproving of healing traditions older than western civilization. There is a power in those traditions. A power that not only exists within the practice, but a power summoned by the people wishing to witness its wonder. It is interactive. One calls, the other answers.

And so I wondered: where are the witches and sorcerers and healers of our times? Where are these cottages and small, dark rooms, lost in forests that have names older than the first cities - rooms filled with smoke, the smells of strange herbs, bones, boiling pots of water and dark.

Then I remembered two such people that I know of. My two most precious little sorceresses, who with their magic can make any day brighter and any person warm and comforted. They do not live in a forest. Their house is on a nondescript corner, across the street from a park and too close to Highway 101. The hills watching over their town usually wreathed in fog and cloud, burning gold and pink and mauve when the sun sets.

Often you can smell the sea in any one of the rooms in their home, if the windows are open - except the kitchen. That is where the magic is kept. That is where the smoke and Mexican herbs and boiling chile smells are. This, I remembered, was true magic: the placing of your heart into something greater than you, the baking of warm bread or tortillas for the people you love. There are still secrets in kitchens, small, dark things that must be learned, watched and shaped. My Abuelita and Aunt Evangelina are two keepers of such secrets.

So this blog will be shaped, hopefully in my own kitchen with my own important people.