Friday the 13th we took one day off from Mexican food, although not deliberately. As dinner time approached, I realized that I was too tired to cook, and nothing in the refrigerator or freezer looked appetizing, so we decided to head out to one of the many neighborhood happy hours. For under $30 we were able to each enjoy a couple of drinks, share an order of kobe beef sliders (tiny little hamburgers), an order of swimmers (tiny little salmon sandwiches) and some steamed clams. The whole experience was made better by the fact that one of my Spanish students waited on us.
But back to Mexican food - and we were by Saturday. While we were out grocery shopping in the morning I found some fresh bolillos (hard French rolls) so decided they could be used for tortas at lunch time. Our tortas were made from a slightly toasted bolillo, melted cheese, leftover chicken fajita meat, sliced avocados, sliced tomatoes and pickled jalapeño peppers. We only had mayonnaise on hand, which they often use (and love) in Mexico, but the preferred way to make a torta is with crema mexicana and even some frijoles mashed and spread onto the bolillo before piling on the other ingredients.
When I was a student in Guadalajara, Mexico between 1970 -1974, we used to buy tortas at a little neighborhood place. You could get almost any kind of meat (chicken, ham, pork, beef, tongue, etc) you wanted on your torta, and back then and there they were called lonches. They were so inexpensive back then that we used to buy and eat them as snacks!
Enough about lunch and lonches. Dinner was another treat from the past, actually a recipe I learned from that same era. ESPINAZO is a beef soup (or caldo, meaning broth) made from beef shanks or oxtails. I make my broth using the shanks, water, garlic, onion, black peppercorns, the heart of a cabbage, and a sprinkling of epazote. Later in the process, I de-fat the broth, add a puree of chile California y chile pasilla, then finally the vegetables. I used ears of corn, zucchini, carrots, and one chayote.
I hope you can see from the picture that the soup is really good! If we hadn't had the big tortas for lunch earlier in the day, we would have eaten our bowls of ESPINAZO with some rice on the side, adding it to the broth and vegetables as we ate. Last night we just squeezed a little lime juice into our soup and enjoyed it with some hot corn tortillas!
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