Ricardo Muñoz Zurita

Red taquería-style salsa

December 19, 2011 by Lesley Tellez

For awhile now, I’ve liked green salsa more than red. Green was always brighter, more acidic. A drizzle on my taco set off sparks on my tongue. And when the salsa had avocado, as green taquería salsas often do here, I wanted to curl up and take a nap in its creaminess.

Red salsa never hit me that way. It wasn’t luxurious or intense. Red salsa just sat there. Blinking. (Little did I know red salsa doesn’t work like that. It plants a seed, and then hurries away to see what you do with it.)

In the past few months, whenever I’d visit taquerías, I’d find myself looking at the red more than the green. I already knew what the green contained: chile serrano or chile verde, maybe chile de árbol or an avocado. But the red remained an enigma. Did the taquero use tomatoes? They’re not essential. Which chiles did he use? Guajillo, cascabel, mora? There were no acidic tomatillos to mask everything. With red salsa, you tasted the chiles themselves. The result was subtler, more mysterious.

I’ve been wanting to experiment with red salsas at home, so I tiptoed into the game with a batch of guajillo-árbol salsa from Ricardo Muñoz’s excellent book Salsas Mexicanas. I’ve used it several times before, always with good results.

This salsa contained a few tomatoes, pureed with toasted chiles until they became a thick, deep-red soup. (In another time five thousand years ago, maybe I could’ve dyed my hair with this stuff.) One bite murmured of garlic and the piney herbs of the guajillo. Then came the searing heat — like, straddling the line of edible — from the 8 chiles de árbol I used. Heat is the main difference between a table salsa and one you’d cook meat and vegetables in, by the way. The former, if you like spicy food, should be tongue-swellingly hot.

Seven days later, I still have a glass jar of this salsa in my fridge. I’ve slowly been working my way through it, spooning it into quesadillas, on chips, over eggs. It’s fabulous on anything.

Recipe below. Oh, and tell me — where do you come down on the fence? Red or green, and why?

…

Simple Oaxacan chile pasilla salsa

October 12, 2011 by Lesley Tellez

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.

Nicuatole, a creamy corn masa pudding

November 9, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Nicuatole stole my heart when I first tried it at a Mexico City restaurant a few months ago.

The waiter had described it as a corn-based dessert, and it arrived as two off-white, triangular wedges sitting in a puddle of vanilla sauce. As soon as I tasted, my mind turned to ooze. The nicuatole (pronounced “nee-kwah-TOLE-ay”) was milky. Earthy. Grainy. Sweet. The corn had this sharp, almost granite-like flavor that reminded me of a homemade corn tortilla. And god, for two wedges, this stuff had maximum comfort power. It was the equivalent of eating cubes of bread soaked in warm milk. Or Cream of Wheat on a cold day.

Came home that day and googled furiously, trying to learn more about it. (Or, in a perfect world, find a recipe.) I had no luck for about a month, until my friend Jesica casually mentioned that she may have seen a recipe in a cooking magazine she’d bought at the grocery store. Trying not to squawk, “WHAA?” I asked her kindly if I could borrow the magazine. She said yes.

It turns out Ricardo Muñoz Zurita himself had written the recipe. He’s the chef at Azul y Oro, where I first tried the nicuatole. I ended up following his instructions exactly — to mix milk, sugar and corn flour until it’s “uniform and thick” — but I failed at my first attempt. I didn’t cook it long enough; it came out soupy.

Ever determined to conquer, and finally having the time now that I’ve returned from my five million trips, I tried again yesterday, using some leftover half-and-half I’d picked up at an organic grocery store. I told Crayton to watch the clock while I mixed my milk and sugar and Maseca flour and stirred, and stirred, and stirred.

“How many minutes has it been?” That was me, standing at the stove with my wooden spoon.

“Nine.”

Then, later: “How many minutes has it been?”

“Fourteen.”

I cooked the thing for 21 minutes, until it had the texture of a thick pancake batter. It cooled to room temperature, and the result was a dense, sweet pudding that was plain, but pretty bewitching in its simplicity. A tart fruit sauce — strawberries or raspberries — might jazz things up even more, which I may try to do next time. Also, even though I used half-and-half, I think it added a little too much density. I’d use whole milk next time.

The recipe’s below, if you want to try it yourself. It’s the simplest, most comforting treat you can whip up for a sweet treat at home.

Nicuatole
Adapted from Ricardo Muñoz Zurita’s recipe in Sabor a Mexico
Serves 4 1/2 cup servings

Ingredients

500ml whole milk (about two cups)
50g Maseca corn flour (this is widely available in Latino supermarkets, if you don’t live in Mexico)
75g organic sugar

In a saucepan over low heat, whisk together milk, corn flour and sugar. Continue stirring almost constantly for the next 20 minutes, using a wooden spoon if you’ve got one. [Note: This time reflects our high altitude; if you’re in a normal altitude, I’d guess it might take about 10 minutes.] Occasionally scrape the bottom of the pan or remove it from the heat to ensure that the mixture doesn’t stick or burn. It will slowly thicken from a soup-like consistency to a thick, cream-of-wheat-like consistency; and then, finally, to a mixture resembling thick pancake batter. Scoop some onto your spoon and let it fall back into the pan — if it plops into the pan in thick dollops, it’s done.

Remove from heat to molds, or small ramekins. Let cool to room temperature and serve.