Stay Creatively Hungry: Vegan Chilé Relleños w/Spanish Quinoa

I don’t know if I’m the only one, but I wonder where in me do memories live. Not just moment memories, but muscle memory too. Like how you know how to ride a bike, or do the running man and kid n’ play long after the fun of it all. Or even how I still know bits and pieces of The Greatest Love of All in sign language, something I learned in fourth grade for an assembly. And, I can sing hundreds of songs from my life. So many songs have nested in me that when I hear them, I smell or taste or feel inside me what use to be.

It’s like every little piece of me got something stored. And what doesn’t have something, is getting something every day.

I make cornbread so much; got Granma’s stuffing and Big Mama’s Macaroni and Cheese, and PaPa’s Sweet Potato Pie so deep down inside me a recipe feels unnatural. Like I’m putting on airs in my own kitchen. I just pull the stuff out and my hands know what to do, how to feel. Where they should go next.

Writing, on the novel or poetry, often feels like that to me. When I’m doing it right. I don’t follow a path or set of instructions, I just know a bit about what I need to get down and go. Sometimes the words are deeper in me and I have to be patient. Still. Once and a while they come floating around or running through me and I have to be fast to catch them.

When they say you need to do something everyday, or for some large amount of hours in order to truly master something, what they’re saying is you need to bury the art of it, the action of it, the truth of it for you down inside. Your bones and muscles have to learn it, not just your head. You’ve got to find some space inside of you for your passions to take root if you ever expect it to bring fruit.

I must be honest and admit that I struggle grossly with confidence. Everything is never ‘something’ enough. I want more. I push harder. And ‘something’ is always so slippery, slimy. One second I can catch it, know what it is and aim for it, and then the next few minutes it’s a puff of smoke I can barely see and surely can’t catch.

Confidence is a tricky thing when you are creative—too little and you never get past ‘gonna’, never move past go, but too much and you go too fast and crash on your own ‘I am’s’. There needs to be enough belief and will that you dare to begin and stay going, but never so much that you stop pushing yourself for a little more.

In the kitchen, my confidence is balanced. I trust that I know when and where to add nutmeg, freshly ground, or how many wrist shakes of pepper to add. I can smell when the cornbread is done, unseen, and can feel when a pound of bread dough is ready to rest. But I never think I don’t have room to grow, to try new techniques and challenge myself.

There was never a wavering or wondering if I was going to cook, and it didn’t matter if I liked it. At about nine Mama started me cooking alongside her, and soon, I took over. She was one of those I got to be in the ‘mood’ cooks, which meant I always had to be in the mood. Almost instantly, I learned to love my time in the kitchen.

Once, I made scrambled eggs and was so full of confidence, I put every single seasoning my mother had in the cabinet inside. Onion and garlic powder, cinnamon, seasoning salt, white salt, pepper, lemon pepper—it all went inside turning my eggs soil brown and nasty. After that, I figured if I never made anything that nasty, I was a good cook.

I never had a choice about being a writer, too. I would hide in the bathroom and ‘talk’ things out to myself, writing out questions and answers in the air. If gifted birthday money, I’d spend all ten or twenty dollars buying Lisa Frank notebooks and pens. Constantly, I asked Mama for diaries, though I barely wrote in any of them. I was a serious reader, and knowing what beautiful words looked liked and sounded like on a page, I never thought my own beautiful.

So I hoarded notebooks and diaries, sentences and words.

Cooking pushes me towards confidence. Like pulling words from the sky, I pull herbs and vegetables and textures from my cabinets and try. I’m a woefully slow cook, enjoying the process of it all; I take my time. Never do I worry about a recipe failing. There are always ‘do overs’ if a meal fails. Another day to try again, smarter, knowing what doesn’t work.

Writing and creating is like cooking in that you can always go it again. Just like you can round out a salty edge with a bit of sugar, and you can brighten with citrus, you can use words to round and brighten and sweeten. There is always an opportunity to write more, to move the words and sentences around till they form something worthy.

When I started making this recipe for chilé relleños, I had all this know-how. I’d seen my suegra make it enough to know the process; the only curve ball would be veganizing it. And E, he’d even helped his mother over the years, doing random steps as she directed him. Two of us against a recipe, me with years of cooking experience, and him with enough; surely, we thought we could finish it all in a few hours. Surely.

But no. What we didn’t realize is that we lacked my suegra’s muscle memory, the memory and know of making chilé relleños honed over many meals. We bumped and scooted around each other, dropping peppers into the fire and tearing the chilés wider than needed. We had no memory.

What is important; however, is that we started building the memory. We started going and were hungry enough to get to the end.

You have to treat every word, every sentence, every painting, every meal, every photo or sculpture, all the short stories and poems like your first. You have to stay hungry for better.

“Treat my first like my last and my last like my first, and my thirst is the same as when I came.”

                                            -My 1st Song, Jay-Z    

Vegan Chilé Rellaños

6-8 Poblano Chilés* (can be substituted with large bell peppers, I used sweet reds also)

2 C. Bisquick (or another vegan baking mix, you could make your own also)

2 tsp. Cumin

2 tsp. Coriander

1 tsp. Salt (more or less depending on taste)

1 C. Vegan milk

2 Vegan “Eggs” (Ener-G egg is my go to brand)

Flour for dusting

Oil to shallow fry.

Filling:

Daiya Cheese Shreds (or any ‘cheese’ you prefer)

Spanish Quinoa & Carrot Filling:

2 C. of cooked Quinoa

2 Carrots, shredded and steamed

1 tsp. Salt (more or less depending on taste)

1-2 tsp. cumin

1-2 tsp. Coriander

½ tsp. Oregano

¼ C. of tomato sauce or paste

Juice of half a lime

Directions:

Quinoa filling:

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl, stir to combine. Add more or less of spices according to preferences.

Chillés Rellaños:

1. Wash peppers well, dry them.
2. Char the peppers. This can be done a few different ways. First, you can toast them in a hot skillet, preferably cast iron. Or, you can put them in a cast iron skillet and toast them in the oven. Finally, you can hold them over an open flame, turning the pepper with metal tongs and letting the skin char and blister. Whatever method you choose, char and blister all of the skin. After you char a pepper, quickly, put it into a closed container (or large zip top baggy) to sweat. The key here is to move quickly and to get the hot pepper into a closed area so that the residual heat will steam and sweat the blistered skin off. You’ll have to open and add in more peppers as you go along, just make sure to do it quickly. Letting some of the steam out from time to time is important, because a lid can blow with a lot of steam pressure. True story.
3. Once all the peppers are charred and steaming for about 10 minutes. Peel the charred skin off. I found this easier under lightly running water, but E didn’t. Get all of the outer skin off. This is where it becomes important that you charred all the skin, and let it sweat for a good while.
4. While the peppers are peeled, mix your batter and start heating up your oil. Whisk together all the dry ingredients, make a well in the center, and add in the wet. Mix until combined, but do not over blend. The batter should resemble a thick pancake batter. Set aside.
5. Stuff the peppers. After the outer skin is peeled, make a small slit alongside one of the chilé folds and clean out the seeds and seed pod (if you like it spicy, leave a few seeds inside like my suegra. Fill with cheese, quinoa, or cheese and quinoa. Careful not to over stuff. If need be, use a toothpick to pin the opening close.
6. Once the peppers are stuffed, dredge the moist chilés in the flour to evenly coat. Then dip them in the batter, making sure to coat all sides.
7. Fry. Test the oil by dropping in a pinch of batter. If it floats, sizzles, but does not burn quickly, the oil is ready. If it sinks to the bottom, it needs more heat. If it browns quickly, turn the heat down. Place one battered pepper in at a time; fry on the first side until golden brown (about 2-3 minutes, depending on your oil temperature), then turn over and repeat. Make sure to turn the pepper sideways, if needed, to fry the sides also.
8. Place cooked chilés in a warm oven while the others cook.

*Note: When purchasing your chilés, try and purchase large, flat ones. The more rounded and cylinder they are, the harder it is to fry all sides. Mr. told me this secret. 

Serve with Spanish rice, frijoles, vegan sour cream, guacamole, and a garnish of fresh tomatoes.

Peace and Love,

Kiandra