Like Water For Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel

[Abra]

Wow, that was quite a flight of fancy you went on there, back in 2004. It makes me want to try to dig up my copy and check your facts!

Just from your synopsis of the oxtail dish, I'd toast the chiles in a dry pan, then soak them, then probably puree in the blender with a bit of broth, then fry that paste, just as you would for mole. But I haven't seen the recipe, so that could be not the right advice at all.

[SethG]

I was afraid the soup would be a bust, but it came out very nicely. The recipe calls for two oxtails-- I used two crappy oxtail packages from the Key Food, after I came up empty at two real butchers. I almost gave up before buying the oxtails, since the price wasn't exactly in line with the peasant cooking I had in mind, but then I just figured WTF. Might as well go with it.

Esquivel says to "cook" the oxtails in a little more water than you normally would. I put them in an eight quart stock pot and added about three quarts of water. This started to look low after a while, so I added probably another quart. I also added a couple of ice cube-sized chunks of frozen veal stock. I would've added more if I had any more, and the ones I had probably weren't enough to add much to the flavor of the soup. Esquivel also says to throw in a chunk of onion, a clove of garlic, and salt and pepper. I brought this pot to a simmer and let it go at a low simmer for about two hours, frequently skimming fat off the top, until the oxtail bone chunks were tender enough for me to pull them out and shred a lot of the meat off of them into the pot.

Then, as Esquivel instructs, I softened a chopped onion and two chopped cloves of garlic in some oil until soft, and then added two cubed potatoes, four chopped tomatoes and about half a pound of green beans, and sauteed it all together just for a minute or two to let the flavors meld. But before I added the potatoes/beans/tomatoes, I added three softened, seeded, and finely chopped chipotle chiles (dried) and let them meld in for a couple minutes. Esquivel doesn't say what to do with the chiles, and I might have tried it Abra's way if I'd had more time. But I think this way worked out well.

Then Esquivel says to just put the potato/bean/tomato mixture into the pot with the oxtails and simmer it all together for half an hour. And it's done.

Nice. Light, beefy soup, made hearty by the vegetables, and medium spiciness from the chiles. It'll probably taste even better tonight. It was good with some sourdough bread right out of the oven, although that isn't exactly Mexican, I know.

[juliachildish]

I saw this thread and I couldn't help posting a warning: do NOT try to make the wedding cake! I attempted it for a high school project some years ago and it was a complete disaster! I was already very interested in cooking by then, and was far from a novice baker, so I can only attribute it to the absurd recipe. I mean, 17 eggs? Come on. The other recipes in the book may work, but this turned out hardly edible-just one big eggy mass, and I can only believe that it was just another element of magic realism.

If anyone attempts it and succeeds, I'll be very humbled, but I just don't see how it can be done without severe modifications to the recipe.