molcajete

Hot-ass chile piquín salsa

June 12, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

My only knowledge of chile piquín prior to Saturday was that it was sold two ways in Mexico City: as a wrinkly, small red chile, or in powder form. (The powder is often used in spicy cocktails here.)

Last Saturday, a stand at Mercado Medellín had little bags of fresh piquín — small, green pea-sized chiles with rounded tips. I stopped and stared. “Es chile piquín?” I asked the vendor. She said yes and gave me a quick recipe: “Los asas, y los muelas con limón y sal.” You toast them, then grind them with lime and salt.

Seriously — how good did that sound? Especially with this heat we’ve been having. So I bought a bag, not really knowing what they tasted like.

When I got to my friend Liz’s house, site of cooking activities for the afternoon, I popped one in my mouth. My brain yelled “FIRE!” so I spit it out. Oh my god. It was like chewing on a raw habanero, or what I imagine that to be like. Toasting them would reduce the heat a little bit, so I forged ahead with my salsa.

Fresh chile piquín, after I brought it home

I toasted garlic, tomatillos and chiles on the comal, then ground everything in the molcajete with some coarse sea salt and a little water. I ended with a squeeze of lime juice, and then dipped my spoon in to taste.

The result was a firecracker: right on the line between acid and sweet, with a hum of citrus from the lime. And the heat packed a double-wallop — it hit your tongue, then softened, then came back as a warm rush inside your mouth. I was addicted immediately.

“Try the salsa!” I told Erik, Liz’s husband. He did and coughed and turn red. I kept telling Crayton to try it, and he put a few drops on his tostada. That was enough for him.

I, meanwhile, kept spooning little teaspoons on my tostada and then wiping my damp forehead.

Fresh chile piquín salsa
Makes about 1/2 to 3/4 cup

Note: I’ve been making a lot of salsas in the blender lately, and there’s a huge flavor difference in making one in the molcajete. If you’ve got a molcajete, please use it. I promise you won’t be grinding very long — I spent maybe 10 minutes.

Ingredients

1 medium garlic clove, skin on
2 medium-sized tomate verde (I’m referring to the larger variety of tomatillo sold in Mexico; if you can only find the small ones, use three or four)
1 tablespoon fresh chile piquín
Juice of 1/2 lime
Sea salt

To serve:
Tortillas or tostadas
Avocado

Directions

Heat a comal or nonstick skillet on medium-high. Place tomate in the center of the comal and the garlic at the edge, so it doesn’t burn. Toast both until soft and blackened in spots. Remove to a small bowl.

Lower the flame slightly and add the chile piquín to the comal. Move quickly with a spatula or heat-proof cooking utensil; anything plastic will melt, because a hot comal is a beast. (Mine heats my kitchen in the winter.) The chiles should blacken in less than a minute. If they start popping all over the place, lower the flame and stir them vigorously. Remove to the molcajete when done.

Peel the garlic and place in the molcajete with your chiles. Add about 1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground sea salt. (I’m referring to the kind that goes in your salt grinder, the big kernels of salt.) Grind everything together with about a tablespoon of water. When you’ve got a thick paste — and it doesn’t have to be perfect — add the tomate verde one at a time. Grind some more, until the skins are mostly broken down. Add a little more water if you need.

Squeeze in the lime juice and stir to combine. Taste for more salt if necessary.

Serve on tostadas — I used teeny taquería-size tortillas that I’d crisped on the comal — topped with little wedges of avocado.

A portrait: my molcajete and metate

January 3, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

I finally brought them home from cooking school. On the upper-left corner of the metate, you can still see the stains from the cacao beans from the time we made chocolate from scratch.

Sikil pak (creamy Mexican pumpkin-seed dip)

January 3, 2011 by Lesley Tellez

I’ve made sikil pak three times in the past month, and each time I’d stare at the pile of pumpkin seeds in the bowl and think, “There’s no way I’m going to eat all this.” But then I would. Twice I split a batch with Crayton, and the other time I ate the whole thing myself with some tortillas I’d heated up on the stove.

Sikil pak has the comfort of an herbed cream cheese you’d spread on a cracker, and the meatiness of a mushroom or eggplant chutney. It doesn’t contain any dairy or even any major vegetables — just a few scoops of pumpkin seeds ground to dust, mixed with garlic, onion, water and some tomate verde. It’s great on tortilla chips, warm tortillas, cucumber slices, and (I’m imagining for next time) crusty slices of baguette.

I first came across sikil pak about a year ago while thumbing through Diana Kennedy cookbook, searching for things to serve at my tamalada. I hadn’t seen this dish anywhere in Mexico City, so I was intrigued. Kennedy’s directions sounded easy — toast the pumpkin seeds, grind them in a spice or coffee grinder, and add boiled tomatoes and spices. Unfortunately I added too many salted, unshelled pumpkin seeds and the dip came out too sharp and almost woodsy-tasting. Strangely, it tasted like it had meat in it.

A few months ago, I saw another sikil pak recipe in one of my Cocina Estado Por Estado magazines devoted to Campeche. Turns out Sikil Pak is typical to Campeche and the Yucatán, which explains why I hadn’t seen it locally.

This recipe called for using raw, shelled pumpkin seeds and roasted tomate verde, onion and garlic. I decided to make the dish in the molcajete, because my cooking instructors have drilled into me that it’s better.

The result was totally unlike the weird chunky red thing I’d made before. It was thick like hummus and glossy like mayonnaise. Grinding it by hand, I had much more control over the texture — were the seeds too dry and powdery? Did they need water? Pues ándale. I’ll add a few spoonfuls. I got to see how the dip changed with each step, and what gave it that creamy white color. (Water and the juices of the tomatoes.)

The next time I made sikil pak, I used the food processor because I was hungry and tired and didn’t want to spend 30 minutes grinding. The dip wasn’t the same. I was too scared the seeds would turn into peanut butter in the food processor, so I didn’t pulse them finely enough. Instead of hummus/mayonnaise, I had a chunky spread. Not bad, but not as good.

Plus… I don’t know. I missed being closer to the ingredients. To grind everything with my own hands, twisting the tejolete, ignoring the dull ache in my wrist — I was actively involved in preparing the food, and that meant something to me, because food was nourishment and our bodies depended on it.

So yesterday, with the Bears game on TV and both Crayton and I yearning for game-day snacks (well, more me than him), I took out the molcajete and put it on the coffee table. I ground the dip during the first quarter and we enjoyed it with tortilla chips I’d baked in the oven.

I didn’t enjoy every single minute — several times I looked down at the bowl crusted with chunks of half-ground pumpkin seeds and thought, “I just don’t have the wrist strength for this. This dip will never be done.” But in the end, I had my creamy wonder, and I was happy I stuck it out.

Recipe below.
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How to season a molcajete, when you’re absolutely tired of grinding

August 25, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

During my last cooking class, Yuri announced that we were taking a break from the metate. Instead, we’d cook up a few antojitos — corn-based snacks — which we’d then get to eat. This was cause for rejoicing, because we hadn’t eaten anything in the past two classes, despite marathon-amounts of grinding.

On the menu was homemade refried black beans, various types of salsa made in our molcajetes, and tortillas, tlacoyos and sopes from ready-made masa.

First, he instructed us how to cook the beans. We should pick over them carefully to remove any small stones, and then soak them overnight until the water turned an inky black color. We could use the same soaking water to cook the beans, ideally in a clay bean pot. Yuri warned us not to salt the beans or add anything to them while they’re cooking, save for a wee bit of epazote at the end.

He rhapsodized a bit more about black beans and how delicious they are, and then sent us off to our molcajetes to make salsas. As folks began pulling their molcajetes off the shelves, he called out a question:

“Everyone has seasoned their molcajetes, right?”

I’d been dreading this moment.
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Guacamole de molcajete, and how to make it without fear

August 9, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

I’ve always wanted to be an expert at making guacamole.

In my deep-seeded dreams for myself, I am that woman who throws a lovely, Mexican-food dinner party, featuring a simple batch of guacamole that blows everyone’s minds.

I could not make this dream come true, though, because I was too scared to make any. When I lived in Texas, I was on this guacamole high horse and didn’t want to use a recipe. So twice I made batches that were actually bad — one had too much lime juice; the other, too much onion. In Mexico City, I started making a kind of fast-food version of guac that combined avocados and Herdez salsa verde. It’s actually pretty good, but I felt a little ashamed to serve fast-food guac with something like homemade hibiscus-flower quesadillas.

Then about a month ago, I took a class on how to prepare salsas. We learned that the base of all guac is a pico de gallo — the combo of onion, cilantro, tomato and serrano chiles. You grind these things together in the molcajete and then add avocados. Top the whole thing with a few squirts of lime juice. That’s it. Doneskis.

I still didn’t have enough confidence to try it on my own, however, until I spent two hours seasoning my metate. Using just my two hands and a grinding stone, I had turned dried corn and beans into dust. Making guacamole? Pffft. That’s puny work.

About three weeks ago, with absolutely no nervousness at all, I used the ratios from my cooking class and whipped up a batch to accompany some quesadillas. The result was the best guacamole I’d ever made: buttery and creamy and evenly balanced, with a tang from the tomatoes. And I had made the entire thing myself. No Herdez.

I’ve since this a few more times, including at a party attended by some French tourists. They kept coming up to me and saying, “This is so good!” It was not exactly my dinner-party vision come to life, but close enough. I felt really proud.

Recipe below.
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