* – Experiments in my New World Kitchen and Garden

Roasting Fresh Green Chiles

Roasting chiles is a very typical part of cooking Mexican food. A lot of recipes will call for chiles roasted and peeled, assuming this is part of your repertoire. If you have a gas range, you can char them directly on a burner. I’m a somewhat forgetful cook and the results can be nasty if you’re not paying attention.

Cristina at Mexico Cooks! likes to use a preheated cast iron skillet. I think this is a fine idea but pre-heating adds to the time so I prefer to use a plain old comal.

I turn the chiles as they char, not worrying too much about all the missed nooks and crannies.

After the chiles has been roasted on all sides, it’s time to bring out the Big Guns. The Bernzamatic torch was cheap and the bottles of gas are easy to find. Using tongs, I place each chile in the path of the fire and really go to town, leaving each inch of pepper skin charred and black. It’s fun, I have to admit.

Most recipes will tell you to put the charred chiles in a plastic bag to “sweat” them and make the peels slide off but I have a weird feeling about hot chiles in plastic bags so I prefer to sweat them in a paper bag or in a large bowl with a plate covering it. Remember, this is a feeling, not a fact, so so as you like.

After letting the chiles rest for about 20 minutes, you can take them out and the skins should just slide off. Sometimes they’re a little stubborn and you can use a knife to scrape them. A few bits of charred skin are nice so you don’t have to be obsessive about it.

The chiles are juicy so I like to hold them over a bowl and squeeze a bit and let all that chile love ooze out. I’ve seen some chefs rinse the chile under the tap but it strikes me that some of the flavor is going right down the sink.

So pull out the insides, scrape the outsides and you have a beautiful roasted chile.

Discard the seeds and skins.

Now you can fry strips of the chile in oil with garlic and onion rings. If you are careful and leave the chile whole, you can cut a slit in the side and clean it out as best you can and then fill it with gorgeous things like cheese or shrimp. You can also make a fine soup by blending the chiles with chicken stock.

Please note that many of Rick Bayless’ recipes have you broil them in an oven and Mexican chef Ricardo Muñoz Zurita deep-fries his when he has hundreds to do. I find the very best chiles come from the grill when the coals are on their last legs.

Lazy Breakfast at Rancho Gordo

I posted this photo on our Facebook page and it got a huge response so I think I’ll add it here as well. This was making breakfast on Sunday morning for me and my 14 year old son.

Left to right, it’s a pot of previously cooked beans and nopales, straight from the henhouse fresg eggs (mine with Oregano Indio, thank you!), heirloom corn tortillas (Rancho Gordo brand, natch), a pot of espresso and hot milk for the espresso, with a piece of canela infusing it’s goodness, along with a few spoonfuls of piloncillo.

The 1950s Wedgewood stove is a thing of beauty and there’s a whole network of fanatics so finding parts is relatively easy.

The night before I had roasted a manzano pepper (also known as Peron), a large tomato, some thick onion slices, and three cloves of garlic on a clay comal, but you could also use a metal comal or cast iron skillet. I blended these with a little salt and 1/2 a cup of water and then fried the sauce in a few spoonfuls of olive oil. It was finished off with some Oregano Indio. It was incredibly hot.

Remember if you’re using one of these peppers, the black seeds aren’t edible and you should either plant a pepper bush or throw them out.

Beans (brown teparies), nopales and some of the searingly hot but delicious salsa.

More Eggs and Beans

I’ve recently moved and the new place has a hen house. I’ve missed having fresh eggs but now that’s all behind me. I’m hoping I can stick to the six hens I have. Last time it was 17 and a rooster and I was practically throwing the eggs at anyone who would hold still.

This morning I cooked some Mexican fresh sausage and when it was ready, I added some of our De Arbol black beans and heated them through.

I whisked the eggs with our Oregano Indio and then scrambled them on a low heat. I’m really learning that the secret is low and slow, otherwise you get a funky broken up omelet and that’s nothing to be proud of.

When the eggs were nearly cooked, I added the sausage/bean mixture and then crumbled some queso fresco over the whole thing.

So what is it about eggs and beans. I love them!
You could easily make this more Italian by using Italian sausage and any farmers cheese. I’ll stick with my version and a good heirloom corn tortilla.

Don’t Forget the Sangrita

Yes, yes, I know. Many sangritas are not tomato based. It might even be true that the best ones have no tomatoes. I once told some fellow gringo travelers how I was planning on making a sangrita from the “mature” tomatoes I didn’t sell at the farmers market and they looked at me in horror: Sangrita has no tomatoes! Of course, every sangrita I had after that was tomato-based. And delicious.

On Sunday I had friends over and with Sunday being Sunday, I was running late. No time to make an authentic or unauthentic sangrita! So I cheated and took a 2 quart jar of tomato juice and added an entire bottle of Rio Fuego Very Hot Sauce, and the juice of one lime and mixed it together and served it as sangrita with our tequila shots. I’ll be honest, it couldn’t have been better, but next time I may try adding the juice of an orange as well.

For a smokier drink, try our Felicidad sauce. For a flavorful but mild drink, use La Paloma.

(Modified from a September 2007 post)

Quinoa and Black Bean Salad

This was great, if I do say so myself.

About one cup cooked black beans
About two cups cooked quinoa (I mixed white and red)
1 finely cubed, peeled carrot
1 finely chopped stem of celery
1 small bunch chopped cilantro
1 cup cooked corn

Dressed with
Olive oil, Banana vinegar, scant teaspoon of ground cumin, oregano indio, salt, pepper, minced garlic

Let’s eat al fresco tonight!

Beans with Poblano Chiles (Step by Step)

One of my favorite way to eat beans is with roasted poblano chiles. I think green bell peppers are ok but you really can’t compare them to a big, meaty poblano. Bells might have a thick skin but they’re watery and bland. Poblanos are juicy and versatile and they go well with beans, making them my ideal pepper.

Here in California, a lot of fresh poblanos are marked as “Pasilla” peppers. I think it’s a Norteño thing but I might be wrong. Most of Mexico knows this chile as a poblano. I think you should, too.

The chile is almost never eaten without roasting and removing the skin first. I’ve done it a million times and I think I can do it in my sleep, but I do know it’s an odd technique so I’ll fill you in on how I do it.

If you have just one or two peppers, it’s very easy to roast them straight on the fire on a gas oven. If you have a lot, or an electric range, you can roast them in a comal, as in the photo above, or a well-heated cast iron skillet. At first I discounted this method but really, it’s nice not to have to keep a close watch. You have to rotate the chiles and turn them as they char but you don’t have to hoover as you would over an open flame.

This method will leave a lot of un-blistered skin so I use my Bernzomatic torch with a can of gas. I obsessively fill in all the green gaps with blistering, unforgiving heat. When the entire chile is charred and blistered, you are done.

A lot of instructions will have you place the chiles in a plastic bag and let them sweat. I find the idea of sweating in plastic unpleasant, and I’m betting the chiles do, too. I opt for a mixing bowl with a plate on top if I have just a few or a big old grocery store paper bag for a batch. Let them rest about 15 minutes, covered and undisturbed.

I’ve seen Diana Kennedy pull the whole skin off with one stroke using just her fingers. I can almost do this, but not quite. I end up using my trusty kitchen knife to separate and remove the skin. Sometimes it’s whole, often it’s in sections.

You also want to remove the seeds inside. For our needs, you can be sloppy and just cut and remove them. If you’re making chiles rellenos. you want to find a weak section in the side, make a slit with your knife and remove the seeds from there. We just want the chile “meat” for this recipe so you chop the top off and remove the seed head and all the seeds. You can scrape with the dull end of your knife to move any stray seeds.

I’ve seen recipes suggest you rinse the chile in cold water. I’m sure there are situations where you want a super clean chile and this makes sense but I can’t believe you’re not sending flavor down the sink. A few char marks or seeds aren’t going to harm things and they may even help.You also will find that there are some lovely juices that collect as they chile cools down. Save them!

Now you can take the chiles and fry them with oil, onion, garlic and Mexican oregano and you have beautiful rajas of poblano chile to enjoy. Classically they are a great match for eggs or you can take some strips and some cheese as a stuffing for tamales. I’ve fried them with olive oil, garlic and onion and pureed them as a sauce for pasta. It’s pretty unlimited what you can do.

Now let’s take some homemade beans and put them to good use. I used Good Mother Stallard for this recipe but any bean that doesn’t fall apart will be fine, just a little different. I made the beans in my glorious new micacious clay bean pot from Mica Pottery by Jan. I’ll write more about this amazing pot later but for now let me just say: WOW!

When all the ingredients are calm and happy, you just add some of the rajas to a bowl of beans and call it a day. If you are the indulgent sort, you could add a dollop of heavy cream or yogurt. I am the indulgent type, to be sure, but I really just love the beans like this. And if you care, it’s vegan.

Quelites (or Lamb’s Quarters)

Here in Napa we have a Sunday flea market. I’ve passed it many times but this last weekend I decided to actually go and it’s a wild market. It’s about 95% Mexican and it reminds me of a very well-organized tianguis. There are computer parts, auto tires, work boots, but most importantly there is food. A lot of it is the type of thing you’d see in a well-stocked Mexican grocer but a little digging revealed quelites and papalo, two greens I’ve never seen in a store.

Technically, queliltes can be any edible green but normally it refers to what we call lamb’s quarters. They really are delicious and I’m sure they’re also very healthy but I don’t have any information on that. You find them growing wild sometimes and you also see a purple type in the seed catalogues.

Papalo, or papaloquelite, is a very strong green that’s almost a succulent. It’s required for a cemita, the famous sandwich from Puebla but it’s also nice chopped up on grilled meats. It’s very strong and it almost tastes like gasoline and mint. Sounds fine, doesn’t it?

But back to the quelites, I wasn’t quite sure how to cook them although I do remember Rick Bayless writing that they take longer than you’d think to cook. I pulled off the more tender greens from the thicker stems and then rinsed them. They were pretty muddy. I then sauteed onion and garlic in olive oil and when soft, I added the wet lamb’s quarters. As the liquid cooked off, I also added a few spoonfuls of chicken stock and a large spoonful of a guajillo chile sauce I’d made earlier in the weekend. With just a little salt, they were incredible. Just as a vegetable they were fine. The stock and chile sauce weren’t necessary.

The next night for dinner, I reheated some of the queliltes and added some previously cooked Sangre de Toro beans. These are fast becoming a new favorite and they were great with the greens.

Now, you know I’m obsessed with corn tortillas but I had a pack of flour tortillas from La Palma. There are very thick and crude and not the type of thing I normally go for, but I had them, along with some Oaxacan string cheese and the next thing you know I have a sort of quelites quesadilla. I folded it over so the cheese would melt and then sliced it up. I was rather happy as I ate away.

Of course corn tortillas without the cheese would also make a nice little taco.

I love reinventing leftovers so for breakfast I was determined to have more. I ground a couple of very hot but flavorful dried chiltepin peppers in my mini molcajete.

The ground pepper when into some scrambled eggs, along with the quelites and it was a great, robust breakfast. I love spicy food in the morning when I have strong, sugared coffee as well. The combination of the warm, sweet milky coffee and the intense heat from chiles is fun for me.

There are just a few more spoonfuls left and it dawns on me this might make a nice sauce for rigatoni if I can thin it out with a little more chile sauce.

A Recipe for Borlotti from an Italiana

A million years ago, I had a wonderful Italian teacher named Gloria. She was very funny and yet a little reserved. I think my interest in Italian pop music amused and confused her. Well, it turns out she’s still funny and a little reserved and I know my interest in beans amuses and confuses. She sent me an email with her take on Borlotti/Cranberry beans as a side dish and it’s sounds simple and very good.

Gloria is now a noted artist and you can see her work at her website.

A suggestion for a side dish – Just disregard if you already have it in your cook books….

        Season a couple of cups of cooked beans ( I use Borlotti because I’m Italian and that’s what I would use back home..but any large, meaty bean would do) with:

    1 shallot, very thinly sliced
    1 anice bulb (fennel) sliced on a mandolin, center core removed, green “fronds” reserved for garnish
    2 plump garlic cloves, thinly sliced
    a generous drizzle of the best olive oil you can afford (Steven Singer/Michel Boynton had some super good ones…)
    champagne vinegar to taste
    juice and grated rind of one Meyer lemon
    salt and pepper to taste
    a sprinkle of toasted pumpkin seeds

It’s better if it’s prepared an hour or two before a meal so the flavors will mingle. It can be used as a side dish or a lunch entree, accompanied by a slice of MY rustic, many grains, bread and a glass of rich red wine…

…and just for old times sake, I thought I share a photo of my days in Liguria back in the early 1980s. Oh, to have an actual neck again……..

Great Marinade for Chicken

This may sound a little weird but in a mortar I placed:

1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup Stivalet Banana Vinegar
1 tablespoon Oregano Indio
1 scant teaspoon Rancho Gordo Vanilla extract
salt
2 cloved chopped garlic

I pounded away until I had a thick sauce and then slathered this on chicken parts. After a long marinade, I cooked them in an Italian mattone on the gas stove but you could easily grill or bake the chicken pieces.

Even the picky eater in our family loved it. In case you care, those are green beans, red rice and a bowl full of simple Good Mother Stallard beans to complete the meal. The banana vinegar and vanilla give it a vague tropical feel but it’s subtle and not too cute. I think any more vanilla would be nasty and cloying.

I love looking for ways to use this incredible vinegar. I’m told the actual fruit is somewhere between a banana and a plantain. Traveling in the tropics, you realize how limited our typical banana is in comparison to all the varieties out there.

Each taste sends me back to Veracruz, Mexico, where I first tasted the stuff. I think I need to find my passport soon as I’m getting itchy just looking at these old photos.

Squash in Chile Sauce

I’ve been so boring these days, working and sleeping and not much else. I did have one good dish, however.

A simple soup of chicken stock and pureed chiles with chunks of squash, cooked in the soup base. I could do this again and I think I will. It was inspired by a trip to Cuicatlan, Oaxaca, where they like squash a lot. Mostly in Mexico they prize the seeds but in this area they like the squash flesh and I can see why.