EatMx: Real Mexican food, at home and on the road

Green Chicken Chili, an Easy Winner

This Green Chicken Chili is a real crowd pleaser, and so easy to make.

It's from the book "Keeping It Simple" by Yasmin Fahr. And it was a big hit when Fahr appeared for a lunch, book signing and recipe demo at Melissa's Produce in Los Angeles.

The theme of the book is easy one-pot dishes to make weeknight cooking hassle-free. The recipes may be easy, but they are full of flavor and freshness. 

The chili gets its greenness from jalapeño, poblano and New Mexican Hatch chiles, also tomatillos and cilantro. Amazingly, you can make it in only half an hour, plus a few minutes of prep time. 

This is Fahr's first book, an outgrowth of a column she wrote for Serious Eats. It's a winner, if you're looking for recipes that are lively and fun, don't require a lot of skill and give you plenty of leeway to substitute ingredients.

For example, you can make the chili with bell peppers instead of poblanos and canned tomatillos instead of fresh, or even green tomatoes. If you insist on chili with beans you can add those too. 

Here is the recipe: 

30-MINUTE GREEN CHICKEN CHILI
From "Keeping It Simple" by Yasmin Fahr

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 jalapeño chiles, one seeded and diced, 1 sliced for sprinkling
2 poblano or green (bell) peppers, seeded and diced
1 can tomatillos, drained, or 6 fresh tomatillos, husked, or 6 fresh green tomatoes, roughly chopped
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 garlic cloves, grated or minced
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken thighs
2 cups low-salt chicken stock (broth)
1 (4-ounce) can mild or hot chopped green chiles, preferably Hatch
2 limes, juice of 1, 1 sliced into wedges for serving
1/2 cup cilantro, fine stems and leaves roughly chopped
1 Hass avocado, halved, pitted, peeled and sliced for serving (optional)

Heat the oil in a large flameproof casserole (Dutch oven) over medium heat until shimmering. Add the onion, jalapeño and poblano peppers, the tomatillos, salt and pepper, stirring frequently until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, cumin and oregano and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 1 minute.

Season the chicken with salt and pepper, then add to the casserole. Pour in the chicken stock and raise the heat to maintain a gentle simmer (avoid bringing to a boil). Cook until the chicken is cooked through, 10 minutes or longer. If the chicken pieces are not completely submerged, then turn them over halfway. 

Remove the chicken and place on a plate or in a shallow bowl. Use a fork and knife to shred the chicken, then add it back to the casserole along with any liquid and the chopped green chiles. Cook until the chicken is warmed through, about 2 minutes, squeeze in the lime and adjust seasoning as needed.

If desired, you can add cooked or canned white beans with the chicken and mash them against the side of the pan. 

Ladle into bowls and top with cilantro, avocado if using and the sliced jalapeño. Serve with lime wedges.

Makes 2 large servings, or 4 for sharing. 

Easy, Super Fast Tomatillo Chicken

Playing around with my new pressure cooker, I came up with this easy version of chicken in tomatillo salsa. 

It's sort of like the cilantro chicken I had one time in Ixtapa, but with more accent on tomatillos. In this recipe I used tomatillos milperos (above). These are smaller than ordinary tomatillos, imported from Mexico and easy to find at Latino markets where I live. If you can't get them, you can substitute regular tomatillos. 

Using a pressure cooker makes this dish so easy. It's done in just 9 minutes, and I'm guessing I could cut that to 8 minutes.

These are the ingredients, apart from the chicken.

This is the sautéed mixture of onion, garlic, jalapeño and tomatillos.

The chicken goes on top of the vegetables and is then cooked at high pressure. 

Here is how it looks after 9 minutes of pressure cooking. The chicken is then removed and the vegetables are pureed with a hand blender.

The seeds you notice on the chicken are the tiny seeds from the tomatillos. 

The recipe makes a lot of sauce, which is intentional, because it's so good mixed with rice. If you want more chicken and less sauce, you could add two more chicken thighs, making a total of six, as I did here, without changing the cooking time.

TOMATILLO CHICKEN

1 pound tomatillos milperos
1 tablespoon oil
1 small red onion, halved and thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small jalapeño chile, seeded, quartered lengthwise
1 cup chicken stock
1/3 cup cilantro leaves, plus additional for garnishing
Salt to taste
4 bone-in chicken thighs, skinned

Remove the papery husks of the tomatillos. Wash them, then cut each in half, or in quarters if large.

Heat the oil in the pot of a pressure cooker. Add the onion, garlic and jalapeño and saute, stirring constantly, 2 minutes. 

Add the tomatillos and saute, stirring, another minute.

Add the chicken stock and cilantro and stir to combine. Add a dash salt if wanted. If stock is salty, omit.

Place the chicken thighs on top of the vegetables. Close the pot and lock securely.

Bring to pressure over high heat. When pressure is reached, set a timer for 9 minutes. Lower the heat to a level that will maintain pressure.

After 9 minutes, turn off the heat, or remove the pot to an unheated burner if using an electric range. Do a quick release. When the pressure is gone, unlock and remove the lid, making sure it faces away from you.

Remove the chicken thighs to a plate and keep warm. With a hand blender, puree the vegetables and stock. Spoon the pureed sauce over each serving of chicken and garnish with cilantro.

Makes 4 servings. 

Achiote Paste--The Next Big Thing?

It's the next big thing. So says Pati Jinich, cookbook author and star of the PBS-TV series "Pati's Mexican Kitchen."

What is it? Achiote paste from Yucatán. Can it nudge out recent big things such as Sriracha sauce and gochujang? Maybe, at least for cooks intrigued by Mexican flavors. And travelers to Yucatán who have discovered that area's famous achiote-seasoned cochinita pibil (pork) and pollo pibil (chicken).

"The taste is so unique," says Jinich, who uses it in the recipe for Fast-Track Chicken Pibil in her new cookbook "Mexican Today" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30). "And it's my favorite color in the universe [brick red}."

For the best quality, the paste must be from Yucatán, Jinich insists.  Except if you live in Los Angeles, where you can buy excellent achiote paste from the Yucatecan restaurant Chichén Itzá in the Mercado La Paloma downtown (at right). The restaurant also sells ground annatto seeds to which you can add your own spices.

Known as recado rojo in Yucatán, achiote paste is seasoned with vinegar, garlic, oregano, allspice, cumin and black pepper, says Gilberto Cetina Jr. of Chichén Itzá. If buying commercial achiote paste, read the label. Avoid any brands that contain fillers such as cornmeal or flour.

During a whirlwind book tour, Jinich spoke and signed books at Melissa's Produce. Dishes from the book set out for sampling included two made with achiote paste:  Fast-Track Chicken Pibil and Tacos al Pastor (above). The pork filling for the tacos is seasoned with an achiote-adobo sauce that is in the book.

In Yucatán, chicken or pork pibil is always served with marinated red onions. Jinich's variation on that is red onions with cabbage and jalapeños in a marinade of citrus juices, rice vinegar and jalapeños (above).

Her chicken pibil (above) is fast track because it's made with pre-cooked chicken and simmered on top of the stove rather than cooked underground. And she leaves out the banana leaves that would line the pan and cover the chicken in Yucatán.

There, the paste is blended with sour orange juice. Jinich simulates the flavor with a blend of citrus juices and white vinegar. Here is her recipe:

FAST-TRACK CHICKEN PIBIL
From "Mexican Today" by Pati Jinich

1/2 pound ripe tomatoes
1/4 red onion
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt or to taste
2 cups chicken broth, homemade or store-bought
2 tablespoons canola or safflower oil
1/4 cup freshly squeezed grapefruit juice
1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, preferably Mexican
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cumin
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped achiote paste
6 cups shredded cooked chicken or rotisserie chicken

Preheat the broiler. Line a small baking sheet or roasting pan with foil. Place the tomatoes, onion and garlic cloves on the foil, set under the broiler, 3 to 4 inches from the heat, and broil for 4 to 5 minutes, until charred on one side. Flip over and broil for another 4 to 5 minutes, until the skin is blistered and completely charred; the tomatoes should be very soft with the juices beginning to emerge. Remove from the heat.

Once they are cool enough to handle, quarter the tomatoes and place in a blender, along with any juices in the pan. Peel the garlic cloves and add to the blender. Add the onion, salt and 1 cup of the broth and puree until completely smooth.

In a casserole or soup pot, heat the oil over medium heat until hot but not smoking. Pour in the puree, cover partially, as the sauce will sizzle and jump, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 7 to 8 minutes, until the sauce thickens and darkens considerably.

Meanwhile, combine the grapefruit juice, orange juice, lime juice, vinegar, oregano, allspice, cumin, pepper to taste, achiote paste, and the remaining 1 cup broth in the blender and puree until completely smooth.

Stir the juice mixture into the tomato sauce, bring to a simmer, and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the chicken, stir together well and cook, uncovered, until the meat has absorbed most of the sauce, about 5 minutes. The dish should be very moist but not soupy.

Serve with pickled onions and cabbage.

Makes 4 to 5 servings.

The Hatches are Here--Don't Miss Out

If you want to try Hatch chiles, you'd better move fast. These big, meaty green chiles (above) are only here for a short time. In New Mexico where they come from, people buy huge quantities during the season, then roast and store them in the freezer.

I just finished roasting 5 pounds, a nice stash to have on hand for chile verde, rajas and many other dishes.

Roasting improves the flavor. It also softens and shrinks the chiles so that I could stuff almost the entire five pounds into a single large plastic storage bag.

But I didn't freeze all of the chiles. Instead, I used a few in a chicken dish from "Melissa's Hatch Chile Cookbook," new this year from Melissa's/World Variety Produce. You can read more about the book in the story I wrote for LA Weekly's Squid Ink. Want a copy? Melissa's site tells how to get it. It's also on Amazon. 

The book is full of great ideas, and not just Mexican dishes.You can learn to make this griled corn and baby heirloom tomato salad.

Or these corn muffins, which contain Cheddar cheese.

Or grilled shrimp.

Even sandwiches.

One of my favorites is Hatch chile ice cubes. They're fun to drop into lemonade, which gets progressively hotter as the ice melts.  

The recipe I tried (above) is a handy one dish meal, combining chicken with Yukon gold potatoes, chiles, tomatoes, fresh herbs and Parmesan.

The recipe below is the way it appears in the book.  You can vary it as I did, using less chicken and more potatoes, browning the chicken separately and then placing it in a baking dish with the other ingredients. 

BAKED CHICKEN AND YUKON POTATOES
From Melissa's Hatch Chile Cookbook

1 (3-pound) fryer chicken, cut into 8 pieces
Herbed sea salt
Freshly ground rainbow peppercorns
7 tablespoons canola oil
6 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and quartered
4 Hatch chiles, roasted, peeled, stemmed and seeded
1 cup roma tomatoes, crushed
2 tablespoons Italian parsley, chopped
1 teaspoon chopped basil leaves
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Rinse the chicken pieces under cold running water and pat them dry with paper towels. Season the chicken pieces all over with the herb salt and pepper.

Set a large roasting pan on the stove over medium-high heat. Add 4 tablespoons of the canola oil and heat the pan until the oil shimmers. Carefully add the chicken pieces to the pan and sear on all sides until golden brown.

Add the potatoes and cut-up chiles to the pan, placing them in between the chicken pieces. Add the tomatoes, parsley, basil and garlic. Season with additional herb salt and pepper. Sprinkle on the cheese and drizzle the remaining 3 tablespoons of canola oil over the chicken and vegetables.

Cover and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, or until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 170 degrees.

Makes 6 servings.

How to Get a Recipe: Ride the Bus

Some people get recipes from books and magazines, others from the Internet. But I got this one while riding on a bus, L.A. Metro's line 20, which runs along Wilshire Boulevard.

Heading toward Beverly Hills, I struck up a conversation with a Salvadoran woman. She started to tell me about her pollo guisado, a chicken dish so interesting that I wanted to make it at once.

Unfortunately, I had to get off before she could give me all the details. In our hurried exchange, she couldn't think of the actual name of an ingredient she called semilla blanca (white seed).  

Studying Salvadoran cookbooks, I figured this was sesame seed. We had already eliminated such possibilities as white peppercorns. 

I had to guess at quantities and procedures, but the chicken turned out very well. The flavor was extraordinary, unlike anything I have made before.

It's so like a Mexican mole that I am including it in EatMx.com. The best part is, you can make the sauce one day, cook the chicken the next and then combine them. What could be easier than that? 

POLLO GUISADO
From an Unknown Salvadoran Woman

The Sauce:

1 pound tomatoes
3 dried California chiles
2 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon raw pepitas
1/4 cup almonds, blanched
1 1/2 teaspoons coriander seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons sesame seeds
1 teaspoon powdered chicken stock base
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/4 teaspoon anise seeds

On a griddle lightly sprayed with nonstick spray, roast the tomatoes, chiles and garlic. Remove the chiles as soon as they are softened and fragrant, about 1 1/2 minutes. Continue roasting the tomatoes and garlic until spotted with black. Separately, roast the pepitas in a covered skillet until lightly browned.

Remove the stems and rinse out the seeds from the chiles. Tear them into pieces and place in a small saucepan. Add water to cover and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and let the chiles stand until softened.

Remove the loose peel and stems or stem ends from the tomatoes. Cut them in halves or quarters if large. In a blender container, combine the tomatoes, drained chiles, garlic, pepitas, almonds, coriander seeds, sesame seeds, chicken stock base, curry powder and anise seeds. Blend 2 minutes, stopping and starting the blender several times. 

Remove the sauce to a container with a lid.  Rinse out the blender with a small amount of water, or use some of the broth, if you are cooking the chicken the same day. If preparing the sauce in advance, cover the container and refrigerate it overnight. Makes 2 cups sauce.

The Chicken:

2 pounds boneless chicken pieces
3 cups water 
1 wedge onion
1 clove garlic
Salt

Place the chicken in a Dutch oven. Add the water, onion, garlic and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, loosely covered, 30 minutes for breast meat, a little longer for dark meat. Turn off the heat and let stand in the broth until cooled. Drain off the broth and reserve. Set aside the chicken.

Place the sauce in the pan in which the chicken was cooked. Bring just to a boil. Add the chicken pieces. Simmer, loosely covered, 15 minutes, or until heated through. If the sauce has become too thick, thin with some of the broth. Reserve any remaining broth for another use. 

Serve the chicken covered with the sauce. Accompany with rice.

Makes 4 servings. 

Getting Away With--Mole!

My mole paste almost didn't get through airport check-in when I left Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo. That would have been a shame. I had tasted mole rojo so delicious at a fonda in the Zihuatanejo market that I wanted to copy it at home.

No problem. A stall in the market (above) sold the mole rojo paste, which comes from the town of Teloloapan in the state of Guerrero, where Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo is located.

I bought half a kilo and put it in my carry-on. Big mistake. The guy who examined my bag wouldn't allow the mole to go through. When I protested, I was sent out of the check-in area to confer with airline officials. They couldn't help.

In a sneaky move, I checked back in at a different counter. This time, the mole paste survived.  No need to hide it. The inspector examined it and put it back in my bag. 

Heartbreak avoided, I could now think without regret of the delicious comida corrida I had eaten at Fonda Melania in the Zihuatanejo market. The 40-peso menu (about $3) included the mole rojo with chicken, beans, rice, handmade corn tortillas and a drink, agua de limón (limeade). The menu above shows the other options. 

The big, rustic tortillas were made to order, and I could have as many as I wanted. 

Soon, a roving vendor (above) sat down at the counter, parked his candied apples and ordered the same mole. 

Teloloapan is famous for mole, and people make their own paste at home, so there must be many variations. The one I bought is spicy and not sweet. The mole at the fonda was sweeter, so perhaps the cook had seasoned it to her own taste. 

I've seen Teloloapan red mole paste in Mexican markets in Los Angeles, sold either in bulk or in containers that don't indicate what company makes it or where it is actually made. 

If you want the real thing, you can get it from Rivas Food Company in Santa Ana, which is run by a family from Teloloapan. Their paste comes in tubs of various sizes. If it's too spicy for you, Julian Rivas (above) suggests adding a little sugar.

Here is my version of the mole rojo from Zihuatanejo. It isn't sweet, but you can add sugar until it tastes the way you like it.  

POLLO EN MOLE ROJO DE TELALOAPAN
Chicken in Red Mole from Telaloapan

2 pounds chicken thighs or drumsticks, skinned and fat removed
4 cups water
1 slice onion
2 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
10 peppercorns
Salt to taste
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 cup Teloloapan red mole paste
2 cups broth 

Place the chicken in a Dutch oven. Add the water, onion, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns and salt to taste. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer 45 minutes, loosely covered. Turn off the heat and let the chicken cool in the broth.

When ready to serve, drain the chicken, reserving the broth. Set aside 2 cups broth for the mole. Save the remainder for another use such as to cook rice.

Clean the Dutch oven. Add the oil and heat.  Stir in the mole paste until smooth, then slowly add 2 cups chicken broth, stirring until smooth.  

Bring the sauce to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, 10 minutes, or until slightly thickened. Taste the sauce. If you prefer sweeter mole, add sugar. 

Add the drained chicken pieces and reheat in the sauce.

Serve the chicken and mole sauce with rice, beans if desired and hot tortillas. 

Makes 4 servings. 

Getting a Recipe in Yucatán

Before the Internet, women used to exchange recipes over the back fence.

That still happens, even without the back fence. At Cenote Xocempich in Yucatán, I took part in an outdoor exchange around a hot comal where Mayan women were making tortillas.

As they worked, they handed me fresh tortillas so hot that I could hardly hold them, the pure corn flavor and aroma so potent that I couldn't stop eating them. A few minutes later, they wouldn't taste the same. 

And so I lingered at the comal, set over a wood fire on the ground. Soon the conversation turned to what the women cook at home, dishes like achiote-seasoned chicken steamed in banana leaves, tortillas spread with pepitas (squash seeds) mixed with beans and baked and pollo (chicken) mechado.

When I asked about that last dish, María del Socorro Alcocer (at left in the photo at the top) gave me her recipe. She told me to marinate the chicken with sour orange juice and recado blanco, grilll it, then simmer it with grilled chile xcatik, onions and garlic, as in the photo above.

So simple, except at home I can't get sour oranges or recado blanco, a Yucatecan spice blend.

I solved that by going to the market in Mérida, where I bought the recado in two versions, a paste and a powder. Then I recreated the powdered mix with the ingredients that María had described, tasting my blend side by side with the real thing.

Chile xcatik wasn't a problem. It's like our pale yellow güero chiles. Sour orange juice was more difficult. I hear that people from Yucatán grow sour oranges in Los Angeles, but I haven't seen them in markets.

For the small amount that I needed, I blended orange juice with Meyer lemon juice, which is less sharply acidic than the juice of other lemons. 

Here is the recipe, with thanks to María. Taste the yellow chiles before you use them. Sometimes they are mild, but those I bought turned my pollo into one very fiery bird.   

POLLO MECHADO
From María del Socorro Alcocer 

2 pounds chicken pieces, such as thighs,  weighed after they are trimmed and the skin removed
Sour Orange Juice
Recado Blanco 
Salt
1 onion, unpeeled, quartered
4 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 or 2 xcatik (yellow) chiles
1/2 cup chicken broth

Place the washed chicken pieces in a casserole. Add the Sour Orange Juice, the Recado and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Mix well. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator at least 2 hours, turning a couple of times.

Spray a large grill pan with non-stick spray and heat over medium high heat.  When hot, add the chicken pieces. Do not crowd. If necessary, grill in 2 batches. Grill for 10 minutes, turning once.

Remove the chicken pieces and place in a Dutch oven. Prepare the onion and garlic. Check to see if the chiles are hot by cutting off a small piece and tasting. If they are mild, use both. If hot, use one, or less.

Place the onion quarters, garlic and chiles on the grill pan and grill until spotted with brown.

The garlic will be done first. Remove from the pan, slip off the skins and place in the Dutch oven.

When the chile or chiles are lightly browned, place whole in the Dutch oven.

When the onion quarters are browned, slip off the skins, cut off the stem ends and place in the Dutch oven.

Add the chicken broth and 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and cook at a gentle simmer 40 minutes.

Serve the chicken, onions and garlic with rice, spooning some of the juices onto each serving. Discard the chiles. Or if mild, add some to each serving. 

Makes 4 servings.

Sour Orange Juice

1 tablespoon Meyer lemon juice
Orange juice

Place the lemon juice in a measuring cup. Add orange juice to make 1/3 cup.

Recado Blanco

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon finely crumbled dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper

Combine the cumin, garlic powder, oregano and black pepper in a small cup. If necessary, pound the oregano in mortar so that it is pulverized.

 

Nuevo León's Pollo a la Ramos

"I don't like Mexican food," a friend said the other day. What she meant is the sort of food you get in the United States--cheesy dishes, nachos, refried beans, enchiladas loaded with red sauce, ground beef tacos in fried shells, guacamole from a store container and so on.

If she were only able to travel to Mexico, she would see wonderful food, fresh, interesting and flavored with centuries of tradition.

Take pollo a la ramos. I had never heard of this chicken dish until I went to Allende in the state of Nuevo León, where it was served at a lunch.

There's nothing identifiably Mexican about it, at least to an American--no hot peppers, red chile sauce, cheese, cilantro, tortillas or beans.  Instead, it tastes a lot like chicken cacciatore.

The name Ramos refers to a river in Nuevo León, not a person.

You can cook the chicken in a skillet on top of the stove or bake it, María Luisa Barrón Guerra told me as she wrote the recipe in my notebook (right), complete with a diagram.  María Luisa is from Monterrey, where pollo a la ramos is also popular, she said.

The oven version includes potatoes but the stove top does not, probably because the potatoes wouldn't cook as well in an open skillet.

A variation made with beef is called cortadillo norteño.  But this is only cooked on top of the stove, never in an oven.


María Luisa insisted that I not turn the chicken pieces over as they bake, but I did this anyway in order to mix the sauce ingredients more evenly. The dish may look dry as you place it in the oven, but it will form delicious juices as it cooks.

POLLO A LA RAMOS
Ramos Style Chicken, Baked Version

1 1/2 pounds chicken thighs
2 russet potatoes, about 3/4 pound
1 green bell pepper, sliced, white membrane removed
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce
Salt, pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Skin the chicken, if desired, and remove excess fat.

Peel the potatoes. Cut in thirds lengthwise, cut each third in half lengthwise, then cut crosswise into chunks.

Place the chicken in a 12x8-inch glass baking dish. Arrange the potatoes, green pepper and onion around it.

Top with the tomato sauce and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Cover the dish with foil and bake 1 hour. After 40 minutes, turn the pieces over to blend the sauce. Recover and continue to cook until done.

Serve with rice and a salad or vegetable.

Makes 4 servings.