Every Step You Take by Jock Soto Page A

Mom’s absence I cooked a huge dinner featuring what I dubbed Enchiladas à la Cortez and told Pop the meal was in honor of his newfound biological father. He seemed pleased.
    A little later he turned to me and asked me if I liked the way he had styled his hair. It was sort of curly looking, greased up with some new gel he had discovered. The question made me feel odd, as if I were somehow becoming a replacement for my mother. But I just nodded yes, and served him another helping of Enchiladas à la Cortez.
    Later, as he was driving me to the airport, Pop turned to me again and said he was really proud of me and happy we’d spent this time together. I told him I felt the same way. It seems sad that it has taken until Pop is in his seventies and I am in my midforties for us to begin to trust in our love for each other—but then, I tell myself, when it comes to finding fathers, better late than never.

In Celebration of Finding Fathers
    O NE OF MY father’s favorite meals, one I often make when I am visiting him out west, is an enchilada dish my mother taught me. After Pop made his fateful trip to Puerto Rico and went digging for his “roots,” I renamed the dish Enchiladas à la Cortez—in honor of my father’s finding his real father. Originally this recipe involved frying the tortillas first and then rolling them into enchiladas. I always love a shortcut, so I decided to save time (and calories) by skipping the frying and rolling steps, and instead layering the tortillas with the meat sauce to make a casserole. I love this easier version of the traditional recipe—and so does my father, José Anthony Soto à la Cortez.
Enchiladas à la Cortez
    ______
    SERVES 8
    2 tablespoons vegetable oil
    3 pounds ground sirloin
    1 large onion, chopped
    2 jalapeño peppers, diced
    4 10-ounce cans enchilada sauce
    1 10¾-ounce can condensed cream of mushroom soup
    Salt and pepper
    6 cups grated cheddar cheese
    24 6-inch corn tortillas
    Get a large skillet nice and hot. Add the vegetable oil and then add the ground sirloin. Brown the meat for 5 minutes. Add the onion and jalapeños, and cook for about 5 minutes over high heat. Add the enchilada sauce and the cream of mushroom soup, and add salt and pepper to taste; simmer gently for about 20 minutes, covered.
    During this time you can shred your cheese—or to make life easier you could just buy shredded cheese—and preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
    When your meat sauce is ready, turn off the heat and prepare your assembly line. Ladle a cup of sauce onto the bottom of a large casserole dish. Layer tortillas to cover the sauce and add a layer of cheese. Repeat the sauce-tortilla-cheese layering, ending with sauce and cheese.
    Cover the casserole dish tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. Then remove the foil and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes, so that the cheese gets bubbly and a little golden brown—but not burned.
    Remove the casserole from the oven and let it sit for about 10 minutes before serving with white rice—and a salad if you like.

C HAPTER F IVE
    ______
Saturday Nights and Sunday Picnics in Paradise Valley
    The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt .
    â€”M AX L ERNER
    I n the documentary about me, my mother says, “Jock was dancing in my tummy, before he was even born.” After reading her account of my birth I realize that her remark may have been a polite reference to the week of contractions and four days of painful labor she endured before I finally arrived in the Indian Medical Center in Gallup, New Mexico, one hundred miles from the reservation where she and my father were living. Mom and Pop picked my first name from a pamphlet of names (“of Hebrew origin,” my mother notes rather oddly) that was lying around the hospital, and decided that my father’s middle name could do double duty as