I follow Mexican Chef Pati Jinich, as she not only shows how to cook traditional foods, but also shares food from various regions in Mexico, and makes her Mexican-influenced versions of American comfort food. I decided to pick three recent recipes of hers to try out, and limited myself to just her written ingredient list and limited recipe directions. So I did not watch her videos, nor read the more detailed blog of how to make these dishes. Let us see just how close to hers I was able to make based on the written word alone, and what I already had in my kitchen.
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Enchiladas de Suelo
This is a fresh, tasty alternative to the usual Mexican fare we usually find in our restaurants. I can say honestly that I have never had an enchilada like this one before. This dish is a regional specialty from the northern state of Sinaloa. This is an enchilada served open faced, with salad stuff on top, AND it is not a tostada.
Cebolla Encurtida (Pickled Red Onion)
Sometimes instead of longer, thinly sliced pieces, I may do a large dice so that I can have some visual variation in my plates. Tastes great just the same. (A side note: I grow Persian Limes so they appear very yellow, like lemons.)
- 1 peeled + thinly sliced red onion, place in Mason jar
- Add juice from 4 limes
- Add 1T apple cider vinegar
- Add 1t kosher salt and 1t freshly ground pepper
- Set aside in the refrigerator until needed as a topping.
Enchiladas de Suelo Sauce
I have made a version of this sauce before, and this time ran out of Ancho chilies so wound up using a few Shishito Peppers that I had on hand. While the sauce tasted fine, it turned out not as red as usual, as you can tell by the green spots in the picture above. Using Japanese chilies for a Mexican dish is usually not a good thing when cooking this dish in terms of authenticity, but my spouse loved the meal so I felt happy.
- 5 stemmed Ancho chilies
- 1 ripe, large-sized heirloom tomato
- 2 peeled garlic cloves
- Place chilies, tomato, garlic in 5C boiling water for ~6 minutes
- Remove the tomato and peel, then roughly chop + place in the blender
- Place the reconstituted chilies and garlic in the blender
- Reserve the boiling veggie water
- Add 1T white distilled vinegar to the blender,
- Then add 1T chopped shallot (or white onion is ok)
- Add 1t kosher salt and 1t freshly ground pepper
- Add 1T dried Mexican oregano
- Finally, add 1C of the cooking water (reserved remaining water from blanching)
- Puree mixture for a completely smooth sauce, keep in blender until ready to cook
Chorizo Meat + Substitutes
- Fry chopped Mexican Chorizo (removed from casing) into crispy chunks
- Turn off heat, then set the meat aside for a topping
- But pour the pureed sauce right into the still hot skillet to soak up that flavor, without turning heat back on
If you do not have Chorizo available, here is what I have done to make my own chorizo substitution. For the base protein I will use: a firm tofu (drained and cubed) or a non-flavored tempeh (cubed) or ground pork meat and will use ground beef only if I have nothing else. Then I mix the spices and herbs listed below into a rub, then sprinkle into the base and mix well. I let it marinate for a couple of hours, and then cook in a skillet until done.
The spices for the rub are listed below, I slowly add everything to a pestle and mortar and grind it all down into a fine powder (or as fine as I can, if required I may dump contents into an electric spice grinder to make the powder more fine).
- 2t ground cumin seed
- 1t ground coriander seed
- 2 ground whole cloves
- 1 crumbled, then crushed bay leaf (I remove the center structure if too hard)
- ½t ground cinnamon
- 1t oregano
- 1t dried thyme
- 1T granulated garlic
- 1t kosher salt
- 8 ground peppercorns
- 3T Ancho chile powder
- 3T apple cider vinegar
Veggies
- Add 1t salt to the left over water
- Blanch zucchini in the left-over sauce water, and set aside
- Chop lettuce
- Slice half-mooned cucumbers
- Slice red radish
- Slice 1 avocado
Plate + Serve
- Dip both sides of 6-8 corn tortillas in the skillet sauce (the number depends on how thick the sauce is, the sauce defines the number)
- Then quickly fry in another oil’d skillet, for ~10 seconds per side
- Place on a plate
- Add chorizo, lettuce, zucchini, cucumber, tomato, radish, avocado
- Add crumbled white queso fresco
- Add pickled red onion slices
- Top with the warm blender sauce and some freshly chopped Mexican oregano
Chile Relleno + Rice with Salsa Roja
While the dogs went on a walk, I roasted the Poblano peppers with the exhaust fan on high, and windows open in the kitchen and dining room to get a cross-breeze.
Again I ran out of a few things, like the white Jasmine rice, so I used up some brown Jasmine rice and added some green rice I had leftover as well to make up the 2C. (I added these to my shopping list for next time, I do not usually run out so am amazed of my oversight.) While I followed the recipe for some of the Poblano stuffing, I also had some left over chorizo from the above recipe so added that as well to help fill out the stuffing and increase the protein.
Chile Relleno
- Fire roast 6-8 poblano chiles, place in plastic bag, steam for ~5 minutes, then remove exterior skin
- Slit the naked poblano chiles and remove interior membrane and seeds
- Stuff with white cheese (I use white jack pepper cheese + mozzarella + a bit of left over feta since I had it on hand)
- Since we want to close the poblano with toothpicks to keep them closed for further cooking in the rice, do not overfill so it sticks closed
Rice
- Add 2T avocado oil to your rice pot
- Stir in 2C Jasmine white rice and mix well so the rice is coated and toasted to a brighter white color
- As soon as it smells toasty, add 1/2C diced shallot and mix well
- Once aromatic, add 4C homemade chicken broth
- Add 1t kosher salt and 1/2t freshly ground pepper
- Place the Chile Relleno’s on top of the rice, bring to a simmer, cover and reduce the heat to low, cooking ~20 minutes
- Turn off the heat and let the rice continue to steam
If you cannot close the Poblano peppers due to overstuffing, wait till the rice is above the water line and slip them in quickly to steam. If open the concern is that the contents may fall into the rice, then you have a casserole! So I would wait until there was a more solid foundation to hold the peppers up, yet still enough cooking time to cook the stuffing.
Salsa Roja
- Boil 2q water (used for blanching)
- Add 2# ripe Roma tomato to the boiling water
- Add 2 peeled garlic clove for 4 minutes
- Then remove the veggies and place garlic in the blender, reserve the water
- Peel the tomato and add to the blender
- To make the sauce redder add powdered tomato or some tomato paste
- Place 1/2 peeled, roughly chopped yellow onion to a blender
- Add a chili if you want to increase flavor (e.g., chiles di árbol)
- Add 1t kosher salt kosher salt + 1t freshly ground pepper
- Puree mixture for a completely smooth sauce
- Then add 2T red chili powder to deepen color
- Then in a pot heat ~1T oil, swirl the oil around to coat the bottom of the pan
- Once hot pour the pureed sauce into the skillet to fry ~1-2 minutes and deepen its flavor and color
Plate + Serve
- Place some rice on the plate
- Add the Chile Relleno (remove the tooth pick)
- Top both with a bit of the sauce
- Top with a bit of cotija cheese
- Top with a bit of crema
Mac-n-cheese Mexicano
When I roasted the Poblano’s yesterday, I also did the three I needed for today’s dish. Now I know I have everythong I need, at least I think so, so lets start cooking.
Pasta
- Boil 4C water with 2t salt to a boil in a large pot
- Add 1# elbow (or pasta of your choice) and cook ~10 minutes
- Drain
- Put back into the pot, off heat but with lid on to retain warmth.
Veggies
- Heat 3T avocado oil in a skillet
- Sauté 1C diced yellow onion until translucent
- Add 1C sweet corn kernels
- Add 1 chopped zucchini until soft, but not thoroughly cooked
- Add a pinch of salt
- Put veggies into a greased, oven-proof pot or dish with the pasta and mix
Poblano Chile
- Fire roast 3 large poblano chiles, place in plastic bag, steam for ~5 minutes, then remove exterior skin
- I did not remove seeds nor membranes as I wanted the bit of heat these peppers have, to go right into the sauce
- But I did remove the cap + stem
- Slice
Blend Sauce
- Place chopped poblanos in a blender with 3C milk and puree smooth.
- Strain into a bowl and push with wooden spoon to get all the liquid
- Dump the remaining poblano remnants
- In a large saucepan, heat 3T unsalted butter until it bubbles
- Then add 6T AP flour and mix, continuously to make a roux slightly brown in color
- Add poblano-milk mix, 3/4t kosher salt and 1/4t freshly ground pepper
- ~10 minutes later it should be thick
- Add 3C Monterey Peppered Jack Cheese
- Add 1C pecorino Romano cheese
- Add 1T psyllium husks
- Mix well so it is all incorporated and remove from heat
Bake the Dish
- Oven set to 400F
- Add the poblano sauce to the baking dish with pasta
- Add the cooked veggies
- Toss to mix
- Top with cheese
- Bake ~25 minutes
- Looking for crispy edges and slightly browned cheese topping.
What a Cook Does
This post shows, using the real life experience of cooking only from a written recipe, what a cook actually does, and what makes the craft an art as well.
First it helps cooks to start with a real recipe, and then go about trying to approximate that recipe using the ingredients we have on hand. Assuming we have the majority of the ingredients available to us, for instance if I did not have poblanos or tomatoes I would have to go to the store given how critical these items are to the dishes above. So knowing which ingredients are critical to the dish, and which you can play with, is a skill learned early.
Second, cooks have learned to properly substitute when we do not have, or run out of ingredients. I ran out of Jasmine rice for instance, so did a mix of what I had and it turned out great. I mixed the green rice with brown Jasmine rice, because I know that many, but not all by far, dishes in Mexico have the red-white-green combo of colors. The dish presented reasonably well as a result, although one of the poblano’s had some unexpected broth in it (see photo above) and my plating became a bit runny.
Third, cooks influence the original dish with our own flavor palate so that it becomes uniquely ours. For instance, I often prefer feta cheese to cotija cheese, choosing a saltier version of feta when cooking Mexican food in particular. Another thing I do is mix up the peppers for the flavor I like, so I added Shishito peppers with the Poblanos and they were very complimentary.
Fourth, if cooks do not have some important ingredient, we tend to make our own. In this case, I did not have chorizo, so I made my own. Was mine as good as getting some from the store? Probably not, but the texture was good, protein was added to the dish, and it tasted really good as itself. For making my chorizo version I mixed the limited amount of ground meat I had on hand, with some crumbled firm tofu to get the texture I wanted, and marinated it all together. What this did was increase the amount of ”chorizo” I had on hand so I could have good sized portions on each tortilla.
Fifth, cooks always try to improve on the dish by increasing its nutrition, flavor, color or fiber. So I might add some psyllium husks or hemp hearts or flax meal to a pasta sauce or dish. Or I might mix meat with tofu, like I mention above.
Over all I think I did okay, but would definitely eat her food over mine, if I had that choice. Try it and see what you create for dinner.
—Patty
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