DC Culinarian

Aguas Frescas

The price of enjoying Mexico is vigilance. It is realizing that in everything you do, everywhere you go, each and every interaction you have, there is a hidden menace. An invisible threat.

Montezuma...

Guarding oneself against the Aztec emperor's gastrointestinal curse means avoiding all non-treated water. This is not difficult, given the ubiquity of bottled water and alcohol, but it can make the enjoyment of aguas frescas an adventurous affair.

Aguas are like ades, made with fresh fruit, flowers, cacti, whatever. Often you'll encounter stands on the street with huge cylindrical jars of brightly colored aguas, looking superbly appealing in the Mexican heat. This is the time to be wary. Sip a careless vendor's wares and you'll find yourself perched atop the porcelain.

The easiest way to obviate this risk is to make your own aguas frescas. Here we have two aguas for two different purposes: agua de jamaica for refreshment, and agua de horchata to counter spiciness.

The agua de jamaica is made from dried hibiscus flowers, and is simple to the point of comedy. You simply boil the flowers (obtainable at most Latin markets) with sugar, strain over ice, and enjoy the tart, refreshing goodness.

The horchata is slightly more involved -- more ingredients and a certain amount of technique -- but oh the payoff. Horchata is one of the great accompaniments to spicy food: sweet, milky, and utterly delicious.

Recipes after the jump.

Chalupa Veterans For Truth

Taco Bell stands guilty of many, many crimes: an 840-calorie taco "salad," "Mexican pizza," popularization of the word "melty," etc. One of their most persistent acts of mischief has been to sow confusion as to what a chalupa is.

It is not, as they advertise, a deep-fried taco shell stuffed with ground beef and regret. And while I'm harsh on this account, I have to tend to my own house as well. My chalupas de pescado con pipián from last May are not true chalupas either. They're actually sopes.

So what makes a true chalupa? At it's most basic it is a thin tortilla, fried lightly until just firm, and covered with salsa, minced onion, and shredded meat. It's street food, light and quick.

Part of the confusion stems from the fact that so many other street foods follow this same tortilla-salsa-meat formula. An elongated tortilla fried and dressed in the exact same fashion as a chalupa and cut into strips is called a huarache. A chalupa whose tortilla has been fried until crispy is a tostada. Use a thicker, deep-fried tortilla (as I did with my faux-chalupas... fauxlupas... sorry) and you'll have sopes.

The salsas are the traditional salsa roja or salsa verde I showed you how to make the other day. It's important that you use good salsa -- it's doing the heavy lifting here flavor-wise. Typically, the meat used is either chicken or beef, boiled with garlic and onion and shredded. (The best thing to do is boil a bunch at one time, shred it, and freeze the remainder -- when is a big bag of frozen shredded meat NOT useful?)

Now that the chalupa science has been dropped and we're clear on what a chalupa is and what it isn't, get to making them. If you don't, then Taco Bell has already won...

Recipe after the jump.

Wisdom Of The Buddha (Bar)

My office shares the same building with Buddha Bar DC. Aside from filling the lobby with the overpowering stench of garbage, Buddha Bar's primary contribution to the community was to provide a safe habitat for some of Washington's more execrable residents to field test experimental new hair gels while spending too much money on terrible cocktails.

Much to the benefit of humankind, Buddha Bar abruptly shuttered this past weekend. Eater DC has what few details exist, but even better, they have an email allegedly from a Buddha Bar staffer confirming the bar's demise and blaming its failure on the many people with sense enough not to patronize their establishment.

Apparently, we just didn't get it.

Unfortunately with the constant struggle of the DC cliental [sic] not understanding our concept and the reluctance from Paris to allow us to make changes, the owners have been investing additional money every month to keep the doors open. The owners were to receive from the landlord their cash deposit on May 15th 2012, which would have helped to keep the doors open. This didn't happen and the owners had to make a very hard decision which was to close down.

Buddha Bar isn't to blame here. Their awful menu, noxious atmosphere, and absurd prices would have worked if only you, I, everyone had worked a little harder to appreciate them.

You killed Buddha Bar, Washington DC. And for that, you should take a bow.

Simple Salsas

We're back from Mexico. Been back for a week, actually, though I figured that since I spent my vacation blogging, I'd take a week off from writing about food. But I'm back with some more Mexican goodness.

Poblanos are proud of their food, and as Mrs. Culinarian and I talked to them we picked up on a certain frustration with regard to the American concept of Mexican cuisine. Chef Hernández in particular voiced exasperation at the Taco Bell-ification of the food he loved. "No es mexicano. Es Tex-Mex."

Purists do tend to fight losing battles, but still, it's not a complaint without merit. So I'll do my small part in the fight for culinary authenticity and impart the simple secrets of one of the basics: salsa.

Salsa roja and salsa verde, two simple sauces that form the base for a broad array of Mexican foods. The red is colored by tomatoes and flavored with chipotle chiles. The green is colored by tomatillos and flavored with serrano chiles.

The technique for preparing both is the same. Char all the ingredients on a comal (or skillet), grind them all together, and add salt. If you're going super authentic, use the molcajete (if you do, make sure the onion is well, well cooked, otherwise you'll have a tough time grinding it). If you want them done quickly, use a blender (though be sure to add a little water).

The salsa roja is sweet from the tomatoes and smokey-hot from the chipotle. The salsa verde is tart from the tomatillos with considerable kick from the serranos, but it's tempered (somewhat) by the addition of cilantro.

They're both pretty damn good with just a few chips and beer, but they're also integral to some other classic Mexican preparations that we'll get into later.

Recipe after the jump.

Guacamole

This week's theme has been volcanoes. It really can't be anything else. The thick column of ash rising from Popocatépetl is on everyone's tongues, literally and figuratively. Mrs. Culinarian has already had an asthma attack, and I tried to go for a run the other day, working up a light sweat and a heavy wheeze.

Which leads us to the molcajete, a solid hunk of porous volcanic basalt that has been hewn and shaped into an efficient grinding instrument. A traditional molcajete has three legs supporting a broad basin, and the likeness of an animal's face -- typically a pig -- on the side. It comes paired with a tejolote, the pestle-like grinding tool that represents the animal's child.

It's the tool of choice for grinding up a good guacamole. "Guacamole" is a portmanteau of the Spanish word for avocado (aguacate) and mole, meaning ground chile paste. The chile of choice is serrano, a skinny, angry little green bugger whose heat is mercifully tamed by the avocado. 

The traditional guacamole has just six ingredients: avocado, serrano chile, cilantro, onion, lime juice, and salt. Preparing it depends largely on a proper molcajete technique. Set the rounded point of the tejolote in the center of your palm, drape your fingers down its sides, and grind using quick turns of the wrist. If you hold it like an ice pick and start mashing away at your guacamole, you'll end up with a seventh ingredient: tiny chips of basalt.

The beauty of the molcajete is that it also becomes your serving dish. Just set it on the table with a bowl of tortilla chips and enjoy with a cold beer.

Under The Shadow Of The Volcano (Finally)

I've mentioned in previous posts that one of the local volcanoes, Popocatépetl, has been active of late. But for weeks now, Don Goyo, as the volcano is lovingly dubbed by the locals, has been hidden from view, shrouded by a cloud of ash of its own creation.

Last night, the wind picked up around sunset, clearing out the ash and giving us our first spectacular view of Don Goyo.

Mole Sacristía

Another class, another mole. Namely, mole sacristía, devised by chef Hernández and the speciality of Mesones Sacristía.

It's commonly held that all moles contain chocolate and thence derive their coloring. This is wrong. Some moles do contain chocolate -- mole poblano among them -- but it's not universal and a mole's coloring comes primarily from the type of chile used..

Mole sacristía is colored and flavored with chipotles: a specific variety of chipotle called meco, which are jalapeños that have been sun dried, boiled with liquid smoke, and then sun dried again. The boiling changes the color, turning the chiles a brownish-yellow. When the chiles are fried prior to their inclusion in the mole they inflate and take on a color that, if you haven't seen the process, can best be described as mahogany. If you have seen the process, it can best be described as... something else.

Anyway, the chipotles are ground together with tomatillos, onions, and garlic charred on the comal. And that's it. When stacked against other mole recipes that are 30- or 40-ingredient monsters, it comes off as simplistic. But the flavor is complex and excellent: smokey and hot from the chipotle, tart and slightly bitter from the tomatillos.

That's two moles in two days -- not an awful way to kick off your vacation. As hinted at by the photos, we learned and prepared much more at Mesones Sacristía, which I'll get into later.

Mole Poblano

So here we are in Puebla.

It's a big city -- the fourth largest in Mexico -- and it is growing at such an alarming rate that it likely would have merged with nearby Mexico City at this point but for the two monstrous volcanos that separate them.

Growth and modernization are changing Puebla, but it is still at its core, both physically and culturally, a traditional colonial Mexican city. Food is a vital part of that culture.

In the historical center of Puebla, just off the zócalo, or central square, Mesones Sacristía maintains that culinary tradition, preparing classic poblano fare and offering instruction in its preparation. That is where Mrs. Culinarian and I went yesterday to learn the intricacies of Puebla's namesake dish, mole poblano, as explained by executive chef Alonzo Hernández, seen here explaining the virtues of small tomatillos.

"Mole" comes from the Nahuatl word molli, meaning a sauce or paste of ground chiles. The Aztecs ate molli straight -- just ground chiles. As chef Hernández told it, the spice of the molli was too much for European colonizers, whose palates were ironically unadventurous. So they made some additions to cut the heat; the Spaniards threw tomatoes and onions into the mix, while the French tamed it further with fruits. But still, mole is defined by chiles.

To be considered mole poblano, the mole must contain three specific varieties of chile: mulato, smoked and dried; ancho, deep red and leathery; and pasilla, redolent of tobacco. (All three can be easily obtained in Latin markets.) Six of each chile have their seeds removed and are quickly fried in oil -- three or four seconds, maximum -- to release their flavors. In that same oil you fry your desired quantity of thoroughly ripe plantain, which sweetens as it caramelizes and takes on some of the spiciness of the chile-infused oil.

The plantain pulls double duty, sweetening the mole but also thickening it with copious amounts of starch. This effect is achieved, curiously, by mixing the plantain with tortillas that have been set on fire and blackened until they resemble hockey pucks. (Speaking of double duty, the Aztecs also used blackened corn to clean their teeth.) The blackened tortilla and fried plantain are blended together with a small quantity of water to produce an ashen-gray paste whose usefulness far exceeds its appearance.

We have the thickener, but what about the thickenee? Roma tomatoes, rough-chopped white onion, and a couple of cloves of garlic form the substrate for the mole. They're charred; then boiled in a pot with with peanuts, almonds, and the fried crumbled chiles; then blended until smooth. You saute the chile sauce over high heat, add in the plantain paste, crumble in some good Mexican chocolate, and after 25 minutes of slow simmering: mole poblano.

The fashionable plating you see above was the work of Mrs. Culinarian, who under the expert tutelage of chef Hernández transformed a tomato skin into that lovely rose garnishing the mole. (I also attempted this. We don't need to talk about the result.)

I'll post a detailed recipe at some point soon, but I'm on vacation, so you people can wait.

Sur De La Frontera...

Next week Mrs. Culinarian and I are headed from her ancestral homeland of Washington, DC to her other ancestral homeland of Puebla, Mexico. Which means we'll be trading the unseasonably warm DC weather for central Mexico's volcanic hellscape.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, but it is true that all of Puebla is right now covered with a fine layer of ash courtesy of Popocatépetl, the pronunciation-defying volcano that has been angrily disgorging the molten innards of Earth's crust for about six weeks straight. 

Officially we're headed there for a wedding. Unofficially, we're there to partake of the local cuisine, learn how to make authentic mole poblano and pipián, and perhaps take a side trip to a more secluded corner of the country. Also, one of Mrs. Culinarian's Poblano friends has promised to put my liver through its paces. Which should be educational.

We'll post updates of our Mexican adventure as time and internet access permit, so be sure to check in!