The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

oaxacan chile pasilla

Trout tacos with spicy Oaxaca pasilla cream sauce

by

We like to buy trout from the organic tianguis that comes to the Roma every two weeks. A vendor sells it whole and in filets. The trout isn’t available all the time, so when we buy it, it’s a treat.

In the past, I’ve poached the fish and served it with a salsa verde (one day I’m going to post all these recipes for you, I swear). But lately I’ve been bored with poaching. I said to Crayton, who is slowly coming around to eating seafood, what would you like to do with this fish? Usually when I ask him what he wants to eat, he says meatloaf. This time he said, Why not fish tacos?

The idea zapped me, because I’ve never actually made fish tacos before. Salad tacos, peanut butter tacos, roasted carrot and banh mi tacos, yes. Fish tacos no.

The dream fish taco… and the reality

My favorite kind of fish taco is deep-fried: nuggets of bland white fish, sheathed in beer batter, puffed up in hot oil and served with shredded cabbage and a spicy cream sauce. The cream sauce is kinda half tartar sauce, half salsa.

For our meal at home, I wanted to make something healthier while keeping the idea of that sauce intact. The fish, because I would not be marinating it, needed a little zing.

So I pan-fried my trout filets. I made a sauce using the Oaxacan chile pasilla (I am obsessed), garlic, yogurt and mayonnaise. The result, thrown together in 30 minutes, was exactly what I wanted it to be: a simple taco that felt hefty because of the cabbage, and that wowed you with its smoky-creaminess. My friend Liz came over for dinner and moaned when she bit into these. “What is the name of this chile?” she demanded.

If you don’t have Oaxacan pasillas, you could substitute morita or chipotle.

Trout tacos with spicy Oaxaca pasilla cream sauce
Serves 4 with a few side dishes

For the sauce (makes about 1/4 cup):
1 Oaxaca chile pasilla, or any other intensely smoky, spicy chile
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons plain yogurt
1 tablespoon mayonnaise

For the fish:
12 ounces trout filets
Vegetable or olive oil (or oil of your choice)
Six to 8 corn tortillas
Salt
Pepper

Garnish:
Lime wedges
Shredded cabbage

Directions

It’s a good idea to make the sauce first, so the flavors mix while you’re preparing the rest of the dish. Using kitchen shears or a knife, make an incision in the chile and scrape out the seeds and veins. Don’t use your fingers — it’s better to use a small spoon or a butter knife. Cover chile in hot water and let hydrate until the skin has softened, about five to 10 minutes. While the chile rests, you can slice your cabbage and let it sit in cold water, so it stays fresh.

Once the chile is sufficiently softened, add it to a blender with the garlic and just a little (1 or 2 tablespoons) water. Blend until as smooth as possible. Don’t worry if you see pieces of chile — that’s okay. Scrape or pour mixture into a small bowl, and whisk in mayonnaise and yogurt. Taste for salt and add if necessary. Store sauce in fridge until ready to use.

Wash and pat dry the fish filets. Season with salt and pepper. To cook, drizzle about a tablespoon of oil in a nonstick skillet and heat to medium. Add the fish when the pan is hot. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

To serve tacos, take a fork and shred a little bit of fish into a warm corn tortilla. Top with a spritz of lime juice, a spoonful of salsa and the cabbage.

Simple Oaxacan chile pasilla salsa

by

Whenever I have visitors in town or I want to wow dinner guests, I break into my stash of Oaxacan pasilla chiles. I’ve been obsessed with this chile for the past year — unlike the regular chile pasilla, or even the chipotle or mora for that matter, they’re intensely smoky, raisiny, fruity.

My friend Ian was visiting last weekend, so I asked him whether he wanted to make oaxacan pasillas rellenos (someday I’m going to post that recipe for you, it’s divine) or salsa. He chose the latter. I’ve posted a recipe previously for oaxacan pasilla salsa with tomatillos, so we thumbed through Ricardo Muñoz Zurita’s excellent book Salsas Mexicanas for another.

The one we found was simple: a mix of rehydrated chiles, garlic and salt. My mouth watered just thinking about it — can you imagine the flavor without the acidity from the tomatoes? It would be a smoke-tobacco-fruit fest.

With Ian on the tejolote, we threw comal-roasted garlic, sea salt and the rehydrated pasillas into the molcajete. He ground everything together for perhaps 20 minutes, adding a few dribbles of water when it looked too thick.

The result was a gorgeous, deep red paste. We dipped our noses closer to the molcajete, inhaled, and sighed. It was as smoky and intense as we’d imagined. We ate the salsa with totopos I’d made from old tortillas baked in the oven. The next day, I spooned some onto my quesadillas.

If you can’t find the Oaxacan chile pasilla, you could try substituting chile chipotle or morita. The basic idea of letting the chile shine with a little bit of garlic is a good one, I think.

Simple Oaxacan chile pasilla salsa
Makes about 1 very spicy cup

Note: The original recipe didn’t call for roasting the garlic on the comal, but we did it anyway, because Ian and I both prefer the taste. The original recipe also called for keeping the seeds and grinding them in the salsa, but we only added a pinch. It’s still very hot.

If you’re substituting dried chipotles, I’d stick with three large ones. Canned chipotles tend to be a little hotter, but you might try using three and see what happens. (Or start with two large ones and go from there.) If you’re using dried moras, which tend to be smaller, I’d do perhaps five or six.

You could also make this salsa in a blender, if you don’t have a molcajete. If you do have one, I’d use it, as you get more control over the texture/consistency.

My ideal consistency here was a thick sauce — thinner than tomato paste, but not as runny as a taquería salsa. In any case, the consistency doesn’t matter so much, because it’s going to taste good no matter what.

Ingredients

4 large cloves garlic, unpeeled
3 oaxacan chile pasillas* (see note)
sea salt to taste

Heat a comal or dry skillet on the stovetop. Add garlic cloves to the outer edge of the pan, where the heat isn’t so intense, and cook until golden brown and soft on both sides, turning occasionally. If you leave them too long on the comal and they blacken in spots, just shave off the those pieces with a knife. You don’t want them because they’re bitter.

Meanwhile, use a dish towel to rub off any dust that might have collected on the chiles. Add them to the comal and quickly toast, until the skin has softened slightly and the chiles become aromatic. This should take maybe 10 or 15 seconds at the most.

Remove the chiles to a work space. Using kitchen shears, cut off the chile stems, slice open the chiles, and remove the seeds and veins. Save a few seeds on the side, if you’d like to add them to your salsa later. (Do NOT use your fingers to de-seed/de-vein — the seeds are super hot. I’d use a knife or little spoon.) Cover the chiles with hot water and let rest until the skin has softened, perhaps 10 minutes.

Peel the garlic. In a molcajete, add the garlic and a pinch of sea salt. Grind together until it forms a paste. Then add the chiles, one at a time unless you’re a whiz on the molcajete. Grind each chile until you no longer see big pieces of chile skin, and you’ve got a uniform paste. Add more water as you go, if it looks too thick.

Taste for salt. Serve at room temperature with your favorite chips, tacos or quesadillas.

Tomatillo salsa with chile pasilla oaxaqueña

by

If there is one chile you need to try in your life, it’s the chile pasilla oaxaqueña.

The dried, wrinkly, pointy chile is almost cartoonishly smoky. It smells like a campfire, or like a match right after you’ve blown it out. And the taste! It’s woodsy and kind of fruity, and perfumed with smoke. Make a salsa with this baby and you’ve got everything you’ve ever wanted: acid. Heat. Fire. And just a little nudging of raisins and berries.

This chile is hard to find outside of Oaxaca. I didn’t realize that until I came back from Oaxaca thinking, “I’ll go to Mercado Medellín and pick up some pasilla oaxaqueñas!” and my guy didn’t have any. Ending up finding them at Mercado San Juan, for eight pesos each. I paid — that’s almost $1 per chile — because the pasilla is worth it.

This chile is also known as the mixe (pronounced MEE-hay) because it’s grown in the Sierra Mixe, which is a region east of Oaxaca City. In From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients, Diana Kennedy says the chiles are grown in such small batches that they’ll probably never be imported on a large scale. Interestingly, my sister- and brother-in-law in New York recently found a “pasilla de Oaxaca” salsa at their local grocery store, made by Rosa Mexicano.

If you haven’t tasted this chile before, I’d highly recommend making a table salsa. You can really do it any way you want, but the basic ingredients are the chiles and garlic. I don’t toast my chiles or add any onion, but you can. Really at the end you want to taste the pasilla as much as possible.

If you can’t find the pasilla oaxaqueña, this salsa also works with chile de árbol. Just make sure you use a good, hefty handful. Don’t be afraid about making the salsa too hot — the point of this dish is that the chile is the star.

Tomatillo salsa with chile pasilla oaxaqueña
Recipe first learned in Reyna Mendoza’s cooking class
Makes about 1 1/2 to 2 cups

Note: This tastes best at room temperature, so make sure you give it time to cool down before serving. Also, store your dried chiles in an air tight container, in a cool, dark place. Humidity enables mold growth.

Ingredients

1 pound tomatillos, husked and washed
1 or 2 unpeeled cloves garlic, depending on your preference
2 chile pasilla oaxaqueñas or 8 chile de árbol
salt

Directions

Place the chiles in a shallow dish and cover with very hot water. In the meantime, dry-roast the tomatillos on a comal until they’re soft and blackened in spots, and have turned a dull green color. Toast the garlic as well, ideally on the outer edges of the comal so it doesn’t burn. You want it softened too.

Once the chiles have softened — perhaps 10 to 15 minutes; if you need more time or to replenish the hot water, that’s fine — carefully cut open the chiles and remove the seeds. Place the chiles in a blender jar with the garlic and just a little water, perhaps two or three tablespoons. Blend until smooth. Then add tomatillos and blend until you reach your desired consistency. (For me it’s about 5 to 10 seconds.) Add salt to taste. Serve the salsa at room temperature.