Comida en Colorado

Comida en Colorado
Chamorros de Cerdo en Chile Colorado
Arroz 'Duque de Sessa' con Fríjoles Colorados

a Don Miguel Comechicago, Administrador del Sistema

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing your post on and fine picture of a dish of carne en chile colorado which you had made following the recipe from the book Authentic Mexican by Don Ricardo Bélez:
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=63669#63669
I concur with your remarks on the delicious and wholesome nature of this humble norteño dish and readily confess that pork in red chile sauce is one of the favourites in our small and most remote part of the Spanish Empire. He aquí:



Though we have had the aforementioned Bélez book for some time, I believe we first started making this dish following the recipe that appears in the older classic book on Mexican cookery, Recipes from the Regional Cooks of Mexico, by Doña Diana Quénedi, but over time I have made some minor adjustments in how I go about making the dish. The most notable change is my inclination not simply to simmer the pork in the intitial stage of cooking -- a method which is quite widespread in Mexican cookery -- but rather to brown it (albeit gently) in a first stage, before then introducing water for a long and slow braising stage. After reading your post, I pulled the Bélez book off the shelf to read his recipe and, lo, I was amused to see that he too browns the pork initially, before simmering it for a long time in the rich sauce of the chiles colorados. In order to accomodate El Infante Lucantonio, who is yet to develop a taste for the piquant but natheless proves himself to be a grand lover of tacos de puerco, I must needs make a further adjustment in the preparation, namely that I subject the meat to an initial braising, sans salsa de chiles colorados, and then a second with the sauce added in. Just as at Rey de las Burguesas, at our house the motto is 'have it your way', at least with regard to piquancy.

Here are photos of a recent preparation of this dish with some accompanying notes. Along with the carne de cerdo en chile colorado, I made rice in my paëlla according to my own basic recipe but added to the rice some fríjoles colorados, red kidney beans, to lend the meal a poetic theme.

It was hard for us to decide which was more delicious, the rice with beans or the pork with chiles. They tasted really good mixed together too.

***

I came across these beautiful chamorros de cerdo in one of the Mexican groceries we frequent and they are to my mind very well suited to this preparation.


The chamorros were, as mentioned above, first browned lightly.


The chiles shown here have been cleaned (and I think already toasted as well) and so are awaiting soaking (I decided to simmer them first and then leave them to soak for a time before grinding them up). Note that these are Mexican guajillos which are more piquant than most of the California/New Mexico chiles one finds. To my mind, however, they are very close to the dried New Mexican chiles we purchased in Alburquerque which were labelled specifically as being 'hot'.


Garlic, sea salt, whole cumin, Mexican oregano, all being ground up for the chile sauce.


Here are the chamorros at the end of the first, chile-less braising. Note that one is missing -- consumed in tacos by Lucantonio. For the intial braising, I deglaze with a touch of white wine, add a little water and a clove of garlic.


While the chamorros were simmering for the second time, now with the chile sauce, I made the rice with beans (previously soaked and cooked).


Here are the chamorros after having cooked a good while in the chile sauce.


Chamorros de cerdo en chile colorado y arroz 'Duque de Sessa' con fríjoles colorados. Una murre saborosa cena.


Criado de Vuestra Excelencia,
Don Antonio de los Trisastres
"Siempre uno más!" (para evitar los disastres*)

Una burlita para los Manitos, que dicen di- en lugar del de- del Castellano.

Antonius,

Thank you for sharing your detailed experience with this dish, and for your kind words. I also have Ms. Kennedy's book but had never looked at this particular recipe until I prepared the one from Bayless' book. I'm interested in trying Kennedy's "braise first" method which I have a feeling would boost the tenderness of the meat. I enjoyed the toothsome feel of the pork in the final prep, but petit pois would have preferred a softer result.

-----

Is the use of chile guajillo a common substitution in this dish, or a personal preference? I enjoyed the sauce from the chiles california, but I'm sure a more lively pepper would add a whole new dimension.

-------

Antonius wrote:a Don Miguel Comechicago

This had me laughing all afternoon.

Best,
Michael

Antonius wrote:Here are the chamorros after having cooked a good while in the chile sauce.

Antonius,

Fantastic looking dish, flavor seems to radiate from from the pic.

Enjoy,
Gary

Gary, Michael:

Many thanks for the compliments.

eatchicago wrote:I'm interested in trying Kennedy's "braise first" method which I have a feeling would boost the tenderness of the meat. I enjoyed the toothsome feel of the pork in the final prep, but petit pois would have preferred a softer result.

Michael:

As I mentioned above, my cooking method here is something I developed in response to the desire to have one preparation yield the carne con chile colorado for the grown-ups but also something really tasty for Lucantonius, who hasn't developed any taste for spicy food yet. In browning the meat a little, deglazing with a touch of wine, and braising with a little garlic present, I get a very tasty and soft product for the little guy. Note, however, that the browning is not especially intense and lasts nowhere near the ten minutes worth of browning that Don Ricardo Bélez calls for. The reason I brown at all is for the flavour -- and especially for the non-chilied application for L. -- but I carefully try to avoid cooking the meat much beyond the outer layer, precisely because I want to achieve the very soft texture.

Is the use of chile guajillo a common substitution in this dish, or a personal preference? I enjoyed the sauce from the chiles california, but I'm sure a more lively pepper would add a whole new dimension.

Guajillos are used widely in northern Mexico (as well as elsewhere) and I assume they find their way into this sort of preparation. As I said above, I find they are fairly similar in overall taste profile to the New Mexican chiles and in piquancy are on the hotter end of the range one finds in the New Mexico ones. We were recently in New Mexico and brought back a large bag of New Mexico 'medium' reds and another of New Mexico 'hot' reds and made carne con chile colorado with the hots soon after we got back in early January. I'm not sure why I used the guajillos this time rather than the New Mexico chiles -- maybe I was meaning to save the latter for a bit longer. The ones we got in Alburquerque are outstanding and the supply will run out soon, but guajillos I can buy everywhere, even in the neighbourhood convenience store here in Trisastres.

Antonius

Guisado de puerco con chiles guajillos, papas al horno estilo Trisastres, y calabacitas y elotes ‘Nuevo Méjico’

When we make a sauce based on dried chiles, more often than not we make a double measure, and such was the case when we made the sauce with guajillos mentioned above. Yesterday evening, after having played hockey in the afternoon, I was in the mood for a meat and potatoes sort of a meal, but then one with a little bit of a kick. Amata got the preparation of the pork underway whilst I was enjoying the post-game beers with a couple of my teammates. This time, we had some trocitos de puerco from La Chiquita, that is, just some odds and ends chunks of pork for stewing, including some fairly tough pieces which would benefit from the long and slow cooking in the chile colorado style sauce we had made with guajillos.


To go along with the guisado, I made some potatoes, roasted in the oven with cumin, garlic and serranos.


As a vegetable dish, I made calabacitas y elotes, Mexican zucchini with corn and some onion, garlic and red jalapeños. This dish was loosely modelled on one Amata and I had the pleasure of enjoying at a holiday feast on one of the pueblos in New Mexico last month, though that version, unlike mine, was not at all spicy. The combination of squash, corn and peppers is a very tasty and quintessentially pre-Columbian one.


The three dishes, guisado de puerco con chiles guajillos, papas al horno estilo Trisastres, y calabacitas y elotes ‘Nuevo Méjico’, really complemented one another extremely well. A further delicious element in the meal was the very tangy imported Mexican crema that we had, as well as the remarkable queso oaxaqueño, just brought back from Mexico to us by a friend.


Murre rico!

Antonius

Links to other recipes and cooking notes by this writer: http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=55649#55649

Swell pics and the usual excellent commentary. Made me hungry. For a change. Made me want to go in the kitchen and cook, too. And I was particularly inrigued by the discussion on the chiles. I have, at any given moment, about half a dozen kinds of chiles (both whole and home-ground) in my freezer at any given time. And one of the pleasures of Mexican and New Mexican cooking is the chance to try different combinations. I have for many years favored a powder I can only find in Santa Fe, it's called Dixon Medium Hot (I order from the same shop every year) and it is just the single perfect flavor if you have to limit yourself to one. My other favorite is cascabel, a small bell-shaped pepper with only a little heat and a lot of deep flavor. Ancho and guajillo are regulars. And the others vary, usually an assortment of things I've found (often at Pendery's, by mail order from San Antonio). Right now, I've got some moritas (a version of chipotle) and some pulla/pujas. Indeed, experimenting with the chiles is both enjoyable and instructive.
Look forward to reading more by fra Antonio. And thanks for the pleasures of the day.

Gypsy Boy wrote:Swell pics and the usual excellent commentary. Made me hungry. For a change. Made me want to go in the kitchen and cook, too. And I was particularly inrigued by the discussion on the chiles. I have, at any given moment, about half a dozen kinds of chiles (both whole and home-ground) in my freezer at any given time. And one of the pleasures of Mexican and New Mexican cooking is the chance to try different combinations. I have for many years favored a powder I can only find in Santa Fe, it's called Dixon Medium Hot (I order from the same shop every year) and it is just the single perfect flavor if you have to limit yourself to one. My other favorite is cascabel, a small bell-shaped pepper with only a little heat and a lot of deep flavor. Ancho and guajillo are regulars. And the others vary, usually an assortment of things I've found (often at Pendery's, by mail order from San Antonio). Right now, I've got some moritas (a version of chipotle) and some pulla/pujas. Indeed, experimenting with the chiles is both enjoyable and instructive.
Look forward to reading more by fra Antonio. And thanks for the pleasures of the day.

Thank you, mi amigo gitano, both for the kind words and for the further discussion of chiles and references to sources. A couple of questions: do you have a rough idea of what is in the Dixon Medium Hot powder you mention above? Also, any particularly preferred applications you have for the cascabels?

Our recent trip to New Mexico was my first time there and we brought back a lot of chiles. One of the odder items I got was a bag of rather hot green chile flakes, which I have grown very fond of. They're especially nice to have on hand to add zip to some dishes that have been made for the whole family, including a not-yet-chile-eating 5 year old. The real New Mexico chiles, both green and red, are really quite flavourful.

Antonius

fra Antonio wrote

..do you have a rough idea of what is in the Dixon Medium Hot powder you mention above? Also, any particularly preferred applications you have for the cascabels?

It took a while to research and, sadly, I found little to help me in providing my explanation. First, I must make clear that Dixon is simply a variety of chile. So it's chile powder in the sense of being ground from the pepper itself. Nothing whatsoever is added. Although there is a surprising dearth of information available on the Dixon chile, it is, I have nevertheless learned, an heirloom variety of the basic Numex chile. I have never seen it available whole; I buy it pre-ground (something I absolutely refuse to do in normal circumstances). Dixon is apparently grown in only a small area of northern NM. (Frankly, my suspicion is that unless you either know or pass the grower's farm, you're not going to find it for sale in the whole pod form.) It is both slightly sweet and mildly hot and I've never found it to have the bitter edge that many otherwise excellent chiles have.

FWIW, an excellent resource with many pics and helpful descriptions of more chiles than you would ever have thought existed can be found at http://www.g6csy.net/chile/database.html The picture and description there of the cascabels is particularly nice.

I use the Dixon as a general all-purpose chile, largely because of its (to me) highly agreeable and many layers of flavor. Cascabel...I tend to use it is chili, and also find that it works quite nicely in my single favorite New Mexican dish, carne adovada. But again, the best thing about buying and trying so many chiles is the opportunity to test combinations.

Carne Adovada (Importada)

One of the glories of New Mexican cuisine is carne adovada, that is, ‘adoboed meat’. The dish is really a variant of carne en chile colorado discussed hereabove. The sauce is just a simple version of the one described above,* in which one uses only dried red New Mexican chiles, some water, a healthy dose of garlic and perhaps some oregano. The meat used is pork (shoulder is a good cut), preferably not too fatty, cut into pieces, the size and form of which can vary according to personal taste, though in the versions I’ve had in (or from -- see below) New Mexico the pieces have been fairly small chunks. Crucial to this dish is the fact that the meat is marinated for a long time (at least overnight) in the red chile sauce; some extra garlic cloves can be added to the marinade. Actual cooking is done slowly in a not-too-hot oven (300-325º for several hours) and some people finish the dish briefly in a hot pan or under the broiler (e.g., Regina Romero). The finished product should be fairly ‘tight’, sufficiently so that it can serve as a not at all sloppy filling for a tortilla or burrito.

* If one surveys a lot of recipes for this dish, one comes across versions in which the red chile sauce includes some flavourings beyond the chiles and garlic mentioned above; oregano is quite common and cumin is also a fairly common addition and there are yet others I’ve seen. But the best examples of this dish that I’ve had were, I firmly believe, maximally simple (and when we've made the dish, that's how we've done it). One such version, made on one of the Native American pueblos in New Mexico and brought to us (frozen) by a friend a couple of weeks ago was to my mind pretty much perfect. Red chiles of medium heat, garlic and pork. In a word: wow.

We defrosted the carne adovada and then reheated it in a pan. To accompany it, I made my version of ‘moros y cristianos’, which I call moros y agnosticos. Here is the rice cooking in my paella – a good dose of saffron, chicken stock, parsley and a simple sofrito of onion and a little garlic. The black beans were cooked separately with just a little olive oil and garlic.


Here simmers the adoboed pork:


Los moros y agnosticos:


Here you can see the degree of ‘tightness’ of the chile sauce in the final stage.


Along with the rice and beans, some flour tortillas, some shredded or chopped vegetables and a spot of crema, the imported carne adovada made for an absolutely delicious meal.


Munchas gracias a nuestra amiga de Alburquerque!
Antonio de Trisastres