Meeting 'El Ratón Pérez'

When a Hispanic child begins to loose his or her baby teeth, 'El Ratón Pérez', yes,  a mouse steps in. 

His job is similar to that of the Tooth Fairy: He will replace a tiny tooth, which has been placed under a pillow, with a gift; frequently, it is money.

The Latin rodent is not the Hispanic version of the Tooth Fairy. It would be impossible to imagine señor Pérez with a pair of golden wings and a magic wand. This sort of cultural melding is addressed by René Colato Lainez in his book in English, “The Tooth Fairy meets El Ratón Pérez,” which is about this character from childhood.

The intellectual paternity of Ratón Pérez has been conferred to Luis Coloma Roldán, a Spanish priest, writer and journalist who in the late nineteenth century wrote a story for King Alfonso XIII – when Alfonso was just 8 years old. 

The book begins: “The boy king Buby I placed his tooth I under the pillow, as is customary, and waited impatiently for the arrival of the little mouse. He had fallen asleep when a light touch woke him.”

However, some literary experts have suggested that the image of the mouse appeared before the story by Coloma Roldán in 1877, in the book “Stories, prayers, riddles and popular sayings” by Cecilia Francisca Bohl de Faber, whose pseudonym was Fernán Caballero. In the work, Pérez the mouse was married to a little rat named Presumida (“Conceited”).

The character was portrayed in a movie in 2006 directed by Juan Pablo Buscarini and titled “Pérez, the Little Mouse of Your Dreams.” The film, with 3-D animation techniques, portrayed the children’s character in a melodrama with other rodents who are rivals and kidnap Pérez to keep him from his job of collecting teeth.

Today, Hispanic children wait for Ratón Pérez, who according to the legend, arrives wearing a straw hat, sunglasses and gold shoes and with a red knapsack on his back, and then replaces teeth with gifts.

 

Did you know?

The original manuscript of Luís Coloma Roldán lies in the vault of the library of the Royal Palace in Madrid, Spain.

The Madrid City Council paid tribute to the rodent, installing a commemorative plaque at 8 Arenal Street in Madrid, the location that Coloma Roldán used as the mouse’s home, and including the following text: “Ratón Pérez lived here in a cookie box, according to the story that father Coloma wrote for the child King Alfonso XIII.”

Taking a Siesta

Have you ever felt that lethargy between 1 and 3 in the afternoon? If so, you are not alone. That sleepiness, which cannot overcome even by a cup of Colombian café, has a remedy that was given to us by the Spanish conquistadors: a siesta … a nap.

No doubt, it is an endangered species, and it is virtually unknown to Americans.

The siesta if for some a symbol of laziness, especially in a world that spins at a million miles per hours and where almost everything is operating 24 hours a day.

Did you know?

The word siesta is form the Latin “sexta” for “sixth hour”, meaning six hours after sunrise, or midday.

Photo by Juan Miret

Understanding guacamole: sauce of the gods

Can you imagine some beef tacos smothered in guacamole? Or better yet, dipping some crispy golden tacos into such a green dip, which sometimes hides a burst of spiciness arising from serrano chiles.

Anyway, guacamole has become an ideal sauce for much of the Mexican cuisine.

“Avocado, tomato, onion, salt, cilantro and serrano chile.” Those ingredients and in that order are what Emiliano Gutiérrez, owner of a Mexican restaurant in East Tulsa, says are the elements of what he calls classic guacamole. “Now if you want a version of the original recipe, you can turn the guacamole into a sauce. That one has avocado, serrano chiles, lemon and salt.”

Gutiérrez, a native of Nogales, Mexico, says there cannot be grilled beef without guacamole. “It will be something else; but if you don’t accompany it that way, then you are missing a good part of the dish,” he said as he revealed a few secrets about his sauce.

“If you leave the pit on the plate, it maintains its color longer. Of course, lemon can help out, but it adds a bit of acidity,” he said, adding that “the most important thing is to prepare it when it is going to be used. It should be fresh, and if you have a molcajete, that’s much better.”

Claudia García provides guacamole to six taco vendors in East Tulsa. “My recipe has no avocado, but it is the best guacamole,” said the cook, who is originally from Puebla, Mexico. “This guacamole is based on tomatillos and poblano chiles.”

García’s version takes a little more time than traditional guacamole, but the advantage is that it lasts longer, especially because it doesn’t undergo the oxidation that is typical of avocado.

García says the tomatillos are roasted with the peppers. “Then they are ground.” The flavor arises with the addition of onions, garlic, cilantro, lemon, salt and pepper.

But since tastes vary like day and night, Silvia Leal stepped outside the box and created a recipe for guacamole with crab. “It’s from the family,” said Leal, a cook at a restaurant in Plaza Santa Cecilia in east Tulsa. “It is very tasty because aside from the crab, it has mayonnaise, red pepper and crushed tortilla chips.” Perhaps because she is originally from the coastal city of Acapulco, in Mexico, she added seafood to the classic salsa. “It tastes better like that.”

Sandra Duarte, Leal’s helper, said that in her native state of Jalisco in Mexico, the pacholas, an unusual breaded and fried steak, is served with guacamole. “But with habanero chile,” she said. “So it will be spicy and tasty.”

With avocado, with tomatillos or even with crab, guacamole is already part of the universal cuisine; it is without doubt, a delicious appetizer. It was with good reason, according to pre-Hispanic mythology, that Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god, offered the recipe for guacamole to the Toltecs, who spread it throughout the American territory.

How does one select the perfect avocado?

Since this fruit – yes, technically it is a fruit, although it is not sweet – is at the heart of guacamole, knowing how to choose them is critical.

Bonifacio Hernández, a cook at the Morelos grocery store in southwest of Tulsa, says the fruit should be “at its mature stage, not too green and not too ripe.” To find out, “it must be squeezed. If it is too soft, it is overripe.”

Did you know?

The word guacamole is from the Nahuatl language, derived from the word ahuacatl, meaning avocado, and molli, meaning mole or sauce. The avocado had an erotic significance for the Aztecs, so much so that women could not pick them, because they represented testicles.

Photos by Juan Miret

Splattering flavors: Mancha Manteles, a style of cooking

Hispanic cuisine gives the name “tablecloth stainer” to those dishes whose flavor creates such an extraordinary ecstasy in the diner that it results in spattering of sauce and juice upon anything in the vicinity, including clothes and the tablecloth.

These mancha manteles or stainers of tablecloths are more than just recipes, they are “a style of cooking.

A real mancha manteles should cover three of the senses and thus please our memory; thus the sumptuous dish should fully satisfy one’s sight, smell and – obviously – taste.

Others, perhaps more purists as to the way one should cook a “tablecloth stainer,” turn to complicated dishes.

That is how Héctor Zagal Arreguín tells it in an article published in 2010 in the Mexican magazine “Istmo.” 

A mancha manteles “borrows the fruits from the chile en nogada (chiles in walnut sauce) and absorbs them into its reddish and spicy sauce,” he says. “Pieces of pork swim about unbothered around pieces of apple and pear. I do not know if, as in the case of mole, it was nuns who were the wise creators of the mancha manteles, or if it was due to patriotic maidens, as in the case of the chiles en nogada – green, white and red, the national colors.”

Zagal Arreguín is emphatic when explaining that the food is not a plain meal. Mexican and Hispanic cuisine is not a sea of destructive flavors composed of chili, mixed in with beans and tortillas, but a way of seeing life. It is a challenge to the courtly rules that come to us from the Spanish colony and that is why today we have our tablecloth-staining meals.

We have them because our kitchen is a hearth full of eccentricities and explosion of flavors, where staining a tablecloth with a food is a compliment to tasty cooking. “Among the griddles and pans lies the secret word of Mexican cuisine: mancha manteles,” says Zagal Arreguín.

Reviving the mancha manteles

In 2010, when Mexico was celebrating its 200 years of independence and 100 years of since its revolution, the Cloister of Sor Juana put out a call seeking people to reinvent a Mexican recipe for use in the celebratory menu.

A Mexican culinary group known as Lienzo Culinario decided to participate in the category of soups with a mancha manteles version, a stew based on chiles and beef, with a deep chocolate flavor, served with white and yellow sweet potatoes, and garnished with fried plantains and julienne strips of fried yellow sweet potato and ancho chile.

The inspiration for this soup comes from the timeless mancha manteles and has a bibliographic reference in the recipes of Doña Dominga de Guzman, a Mexican housewife who for 50 years collected her family’s recipes.

Photo by Juan Miret

The universal remedy, right?

Flu or cold? Vicks VapoRub. Muscle pain? Vicks VapoRub. Headache? Vicks VapoRub. Cough? Vicks VapoRub. Insect bite? Vicks VapoRub. And the list goes one, because for most Hispanic, that topical ointment of eucalyptus, menthol and camphor is a sort of divine elixir. It is the panacea for many problems and pains.

Many may remember la abuelita rubbing Vicks VapoRub, with its unmistakable odor, on the chest of her nietos.

Others add a few teaspoons of the ointment in hot water, so that the patient might inhale the medicinal aromas. And of course, there were always a back massage to ease the muscle aches brought on by a cold.

Some people, being more daring, followed rituals to stop a cough. Such a magical cure penetrated via the feel, which had to be rubbed with Vicks VapoRub, then socks were slipped on, followed by sleep. Some say that this allows one to enjoy a peaceful night without coughing.

This miraculous jar of salve will continue to be found in the Hispanic first-aid kits ... because it is the universal remedy, right?

Important note

This article provides general information and it not intended to be a medical guide. Any kind type of treatment should be prescribed by a specialist.

The ‘Nopal’ Cactus: symbol of Mexican cuisine

The pleasurable mole poblano, the irreplaceable tortillas and the universally enjoyed pico de gallo salsa are just a tiny sampling of Mexican cuisine, which in 2010 was included by UNESCO on the list of the Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

That explosion of strong, intense and spicy flavors is unequivocal proof of cultural blending and the mixture of pre-Hispanic traditions with those of the Spanish colony. But where Mexico has broken the mold – or perhaps the pot – is in the use of nopales, a type of cactus also known as prickly pear and in Spanish as cactus, tuna o chumbera.

It seems almost an absurd ingredient for cooking – but for the culinary creativity of the Mexicans, who have made the cactus a plant of life, with almost mythological roots, given that when it dries, it generates a new one. The nopal even appears as a symbol in Mexico’s national emblem.

Tips for cooking nopales

Ideally it is best to boil the nopales in a copper pot, adding, in addition to water, salt to taste. Cooking takes about 10 minutes after the first boil, or until they are tender. They are then drained and rinsed with cold water.

If a copper pot is not handy, then a pinch of baking soda should be added when it boils.

To keep a slimy texture from developing on the nopalitos while boiling, add the skins of a couple of green tomatoes.

To slice nopales into julienne slices, first cut in half vertically, then slice those halves horizontally.

Discovering the fruits and vegetables from our homelands

Jicama, passion fruit, soursop, cassava and papaya – these are just a small representation of the vast world of fruits and vegetables that are favorites within Hispanic cuisine. “When I was child, my treat was jicama with salt, lemon and a lot of chile,” said Carmen Salas, a native of Merida, Mexico , who is in charge of the fruit and vegetable section of a market in East Tulsa, Oklahoma. “It is the Mexican turnip and it can be eaten raw, roasted or fried.”

Salas describes the taste as sweet. “If you want to lose weight, the best thing is jicama juice.”

Alexandra Cepeda, who is Colombian, says passion fruit is the “queen of fruits.” The taste “is between acid and sweet,” she said while shopping in South Tulsa in a market carrying Latin American products. “There is nothing better for desserts than a touch of passion fruit. “

Although the fruit is of South American origin, Cepeda said the best ones are found in the Asian markets. “They have the best selection. They have them in several colors, but I only eat the yellow ones.”

While the exterior of the soursop does not make it look appetizing, that thorn-like covering  hides sweet flesh inside. “In my town they call it zapote de viejas,” said Cesar Perez, a native of the state of Michoacán , Mexico , who was in a market in East Tulsa . “The tree has a very bad smell, but the fruit is very tasty.”

Cassava, which is loaded with carbohydrates, gives rise to the popular tapioca and other types of flour. Manuel González, a native of Zacatecas, Mexico , says the best way to eat it is “fried and with grilled meat.” González, who was choosing some vegetables in an East-side market, said: “I had never eaten it until a Dominican friend invited me to a barbecue. But I don’t like it boiled; it has to be fried.”

Papaya comes from Central America . “It is sweet, but I like when it is green,” said José Duarte, who is from the Mexican state of Guerrero and who said he wraps papaya in newspaper to let  them ripen. “My mother made a candy, and she also used the seeds, which were like pepper.”

A chef chimes in

Kimo Orozco, the head chef of a downtown hotel in Tulsa and who is originally from the Philippines, said fruits and vegetables from the Hispanic kitchen “have the ability to change an entire dish, as if by magic,” He said many people think that the mango, pineapple or banana “are the only Hispanic fruits, and that tomatillo is the only vegetable that Hispanics eat. They are wrong. We can spend all day talking about the great variety that exists in Latin America .”