Chronicles of Whistling Duck Cottage
Week Four — Breakfast in the Morning, Breakfast in the Evening — It Was a Good Day
Week Twenty-Nine of 52-Week Writing Challenge
Easy like a Sunday morning. But, easy Sunday mornings are a rarity for me. I am usually heading off to work by 10 AM but today work will wait until afternoon. A rainstorm just passed, leaving foliage glistening in the early sunlight. A morning like this begs for easy, cries for writing and reading time, whispers “Don’t hurry, don’t worry.” Yes, office work will wait.
My daughter’s work schedule yesterday started early, meaning my husband and I prepared breakfast for her and the grandkids, something we haven’t done in several weeks. The choice of what was to be served was left up to the children— they chose torta fritas, an Argentinian breakfast food that is not healthy but oh-so-good. Somewhat like doughnuts, torta fritas should not be consumed daily but are fine for a special treat. Torta frita translates to fried cake or fried bread.
What better way to prepare a Saturday breakfast than to start the preparations on Friday night? Torta frita dough needs some sitting-time so our Friday “date night” was in the kitchen!
This is another recipe passed down to my husband from his mother. She did not cook by measurements but by pinches and dabs and handfuls and so does he. I do my best to adapt to calculable amounts.
Torta fritas start with flour. After using Gold Medal flour for years, my husband took my suggestion and switched to King Arthur. Not a huge difference but enough that we feel the more expensive brand is worth the cost. He noticed that anything he makes with King Arthur flour is lighter and fluffier.
Of course, he simply poured flour into the bowl until he thought it was enough to make 10 to 12 torta fritas. I did not bother to remove the flour from the bowl and measure it by cups because the amount he poured was just about half the bag — 2 lbs. I figured that was a close-enough measurement.
In a separate bowl or measuring cup, mix 1 tbsp of salt with 2 cups of warm water. You won’t use all of it but have it ready to use as much as needed. As with all flour-based recipes, the air temperature and humidity can affect the final product. The key is to adjust your ingredients to the environment to reach a certain consistency.
While preparing the dough and forming the tortas, have 1/2 cup of Crisco melting in a pan over medium heat.
Make a hole in your flour and drop one egg in it.
Mix the egg into the flour by hand. Slowly add the warm water — not all of it — just a little at a time — constantly mixing with your hand. It is hard to say how much to add since the goal is to reach a certain consistency. At this point in the process, he had added about 1 cup of the warm salty water. Then add the melted Crisco, continuing to mix slowly with your hand.
You may have to add more of the warm water at this point.
You want your dough to reach this consistency — moist but firm enough to form a ball. It should have an stretchy, elastic feel. Do not knead at this stage. Just get to this consistency, form a ball, and place it in a dark space for one hour — we used a shelf in our china cabinet but any cupboard with a door will work. After an hour, place in refrigerator overnight.
The next morning, take the dough ball out of refrigerator and let sit for a least an hour. You want the dough to be close to room temperature so it is easier to handle. When you are ready to work with the dough, place 2 cups of Crisco in a medium-sized pot over medium-high heat. Keep an eye on the oil while you are working with the dough — turn it down to medium if it starts smoking.
Place the dough on a clean, floured surface.
Use your hands to roll the ball of dough into a log shape. Then cut the log into pieces. The first end piece should be small — this one will be used to test the hot oil before cooking the rest.
Take each piece separately and use a rolling pin or floured smooth glass to roll out to about this thickness:
Use your hands to flour each piece and work it into a round shape and size like this:
Tear a small hole in the center of each piece of dough. Set each piece on the floured surface while preparing the others.
Place the smallest torta piece in the hot oil to test it. The oil should sizzle around the torta, turning it golden brown in a few seconds.
Now you are ready to fry each torta piece — one at a time — on both sides. Remove one, add another.
My husband insists that we have one pan specifically for torta fritas. It is old and scratched but, like his mother’s, he claims that one specially-designated pan is seasoned perfectly and has no odors from other foods to affect the taste of the dough.
Have a bowl lined with paper towels ready. He uses kitchen tongs to handle the hot tortas. Hold a fried torta over the pan to let oil drain off of it, then place in the bowl, and sprinkle with sugar. The one above is the kind we prefer but any sugar will do. Serve the torta fritas warm for breakfast but cold leftover torta fritas also make a delicious snack later in the day.
In Argentina, mate cosido is the preferred beverage with torta fritas.
From Wikipedia:
Mate cocido (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmate koˈsiðo], boiled mate; Portuguese: chá mate, IPA: [ˈʃa ˈmati], mate tea; Guarani: kojoi, IPA: [koˈɟoi] ) (or just cocido like in Corrientes Province) is an infusion typical of Southern Cone cuisine (mostly consumed in Southern Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay). It is traditionally prepared by boiling yerba mate in water, then strained and served in cups. It is a bitter tasting beverage, similar to mate but milder, with the same stimulating and nutritional properties. It is also sold in tea-bags, so it can be prepared like tea.
This is the yerba mate we use for mate cosido but there are usually several other brands available in Latin markets. Some chain grocery stores are also beginning to carry yerba mate and, of course, you can order online.
To make 2 large cups of mate cosido, put 2 cups of cold water in a saucepan and add 4 large spoons of yerba mate. Again, this measurement is far from exact. My husband used a soup spoon. And, again, he has a saucepan reserved only for mate cosido, which we have for breakfast two to three times a week.
The yerba leaves will float on the top. Warm over medium-high heat until the liquid begins to boil. Do not let it boil! As soon as boiling bubbles appear, remove the saucepan from the heat.
Quickly add about an 1/8 cup of cold water. The cold water will settle many of the yerba leaves to the bottom of the pan. Let stand for about five minutes. Pour into cups through a strainer. He serves mate cosido with sugar (about 2 teaspoons) and milk (2 or 3 tablespoons) per cup but adjust to your taste.
This cup of mate cosido was for my granddaughter and has more milk in it than we use. Traditionally, mate cosido is served in metal cups such as the one in front of my husband in the next photo. Since my daughter requested coffee, I drank a cup with her and left the mate cosido for my husband and the grandkids, who had 2 small cups.
A delicious breakfast of torta fritas and mate cosido — yum!
The children enjoyed the torta fritas and mate cosido but were disappointed that they did not get to participate in the breakfast preparations. So, we prepared another breakfast treat of buñuelos in the afternoon, eating some as a late day treat, letting the children take some home for their Sunday breakfast, and leaving a few for ourselves to enjoy this morning.
From Wikipedia:
They typically consist of a simple, wheat-based yeast dough, often flavored with anise*, that is thinly rolled, cut or shaped into individual pieces, then fried and finished off with a sweet topping. Buñuelos may be filled with a variety of things, sweet or savory. They can be round in ball shapes or disc shaped. In Latin America, buñuelos are seen as a symbol of good luck.
- My husband and his mother never use anise. He thinks this is done mostly in Spain.
Heat one cup of oil — we use the one below — in a skillet over medium heat.
Prepare zest from one lemon:
Put about 3 cups of flour in a bowl. Add the lemon zest, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and one teaspoon of baking powder. Stir to mix.
Add 4 eggs.
Stir in about 2 cups of milk and 1/4 cup of water, but don’t pour the liquids in all at once. Add a little milk, stir, add a little water, stir, add more milk, stir, etc. Again, you want to reach a certain consistency. You may not need to use all the milk. As with the torta fritas, the heat and humidity in the air will affect how the flour reacts to the liquids. Stir and judge. Then, add more as needed. You want a consistency that is much moister than the torta frita dough. You are not going to roll out this dough so it should not be thick enough or dry enough to form a ball. The consistency you want is similar to a very thick cake batter:
Some sort of fruit is usually added to buñuelos. My husband’s mother used either raisins or apple. For the first time, he made buñuelos with apple. Some recipes call for the apple to be grated but he followed his mother’s tradition and cut up small chunks of one third of an apple. Slowly stir them into the batter. You can also had a tablespoon of cinnamon.
As with the torta fritas, line a bowl with paper towels to have ready for the fried buñuelos.
Drop the batter by spoonfuls into the hot oil. Cook until golden brown.
Drain and place in on the paper towels in the bowl. For the apple buñuelos, we sprinkled with a cinnamon-sugar mixture. For raisin buñuelos, we use only sugar.
In between breakfast and cooking buñuelos, the children and I made a trip to the countryside outside of our city, an area where I lived for 23 years. I drove them around the small town near my old home, showing them the empty lot where the first house I purchased once stood —that was back in 1975, a date that is hard for them to comprehend.
We also drove by the house of my previous husband’s grandmother where my first husband and I lived when we first married. That house was built in 1910 and is still occupied, but by whom I don’t know. Next door is the house where his great-aunt and great-uncle lived — both long deceased — and which was built in 1905 by husband’s great grandfather. Last I heard, it is owned the great-grandson of my husband’s great-aunt and great-uncle. There is a lot of family history on that one block of real estate!
We visited the cemetery where most of my former husband’s family is buried and which is now the resting place of my former neighbor, Beth, who died of cancer last Sunday. Most of the flower arrangements on her grave were blown over by a recent storm. The children and I set the flowers upright, cleaned up tree debris, and added a our contribution of a plant with bright yellow blooms.
Next we drove from the small town to the rural road where I once lived. The town had a changed a great deal since I left nearly fourteen years ago but not the countryside — everything looked about the same.
We drove by my former home — the one my husband and I built in 1983, doing much of the labor ourselves. I sold it after his death in 2007, the year my grandson was born. The young couple who purchased it soon split up and the bank took possession of the house and the three acres surrounding it. For years, it sat neglected and sad, slowly being swallowed by vines and weeds. Two years ago, a Realtor bought it at auction, then renovated and sold it to another young couple. The rescued house looks happy now.
Our last stop was to visit my deceased neighbor’s husband, Ed. I wrote about his wife dying here:
I chose to not attend her funeral, and I know it was the right choice. Instead, a later visit with Ed seemed appropriate, and it was. He appreciated the diversion and enjoyed the children’s stories and laughter. We chatted for over an hour, ending with a tour of his wife’s flower gardens. I was perplexed when I read in her obituary that she loved gardening. The Beth I knew did not like yard work at all. But, as is often the case, her interests changed with age and retirement. She spent the last couple years of her life gardening, creating and nurturing life while various cancers were slowly and secretly stealing hers.
We drove home in a heavy thunderstorm, stopping for lunch to wait out the rain. Soon after arriving home, the rain ceased, allowing my granddaughter to walk our oldest dog down to the lake.
Soon after, we began our late afternoon cooking session, while the neighborhood ducks swam in a light drizzle.
