Antojitos - Street food

i mean how can i capture that excitement and make it the centerpiece of a really cool party that's actually got some mexican street crap well i've got this idea i'm going to turn this place this stove and this countertop into an honest-to-goodness mexican street stall i'm gonna do a lot of the prep ahead so that when my friends come over well i can just serve up my wares now the wares that i have in mind are three snacks based on that corn masa first of all i'm going to start with some blue corn masa turnovers mexico city-style quesadillas frites with a couple different fillings i'm going to make some great steak tacos with some seared nopales and then to top it all off i'm going to make guadaces you know those oval masa cakes and top those with some chorizo sausage and some salsa i think i can pull this thing off and the cool thing is that everybody will just be able to hang out here with me in the kitchen which is i think where they usually end up anyway so that combination of made to order immediacy and a really cool cocktail i've got in mind i think is gonna be my ticket to a great mexican street food party okay let's get this show on the road i'm gonna start off with a couple of fillings for those mexico city style quesadillas frittas the first one is going to be mushrooms and i'm going to put them into the food processor to help me with all of the chopping here we've got some cremini and some button and some of the caps off of shiitake mushrooms and then i'm just gonna pulse this until i got a nice fine chop okay i've got some bacon drippings and a large skillet here that i've put over kind of medium high and i'm gonna saute these chopped mushrooms in this deliciously flavorful fat just put a spoonful of it in there like that dump the chopped mushrooms in there and let those sort of stew around until all of the liquid has evaporated i'm gonna chop up about half of one of these white onions and a little serrano chili to give us some beautiful flavor okay onions and green chili into the pan and that famous mushroom seasoning from mexico city epasote now you could leave this stuff out if you want to but i'll tell you it is so delicious with mushrooms i'm just going to take some of the leaves off of this stalk here and give it a little rough chop so we're gonna toss that in to the same pan wow the aroma that comes up from that is so exciting to me stir all of that in and we're ready to go on now to the second filling i'm going to put over a flame here in the front a large poblano pepper i'm going to roast it here until it's blackened and blistered all over and then let it cool down for a couple of minutes then i can just pull off that black and scan tear it open pull out the seed pod then i'm going to rinse it really briefly just to get rid of any stray bits of of skin or some of those seeds and then slice it into thin strips okay scoop those into a little bowl we're going to set this out when our guests come for them to choose what they want to put in there and now on to cheese to go with it i've got a little monterey jack here that i'm going to grate using the food processor also now that'll just drop right in there okay now on to the masa that's going to be the little casing for our turnovers i'm going to use a blue corn masa mix a masa arena and i'm going to mix it in a large bowl now if all you can find is that regular masarina that is available in practically every well-stocked grocery store just go ahead and use that this blue corn is going to make for a very very attractive little casing here so i've got a third of a cup of flour that's going to go in there about a teaspoon of baking powder about a half a teaspoon of salt you know and while i'm at it here i'm going to go over to the mushroom mix and give that a little sprinkling of salt and now i'm going to rehydrate our dehydrated masa mix here with a little bit of hot tap water kind of a generous a generous cup full i'm going to pour that in i've got a couple of tablespoons of that fresh rendered bacon fat that's going to go in there as well and then i'm just going to use my hand to kind of mix everything together into a nice smooth dough so i'm going to press out little corn tortillas out of this blue corn masa mix fill them with whichever one of the fillings our guests want the cheese filling or the mushroom filling fry them till they're crisp sprinkle a little bit of salt on top of them and they'll make the perfect cocktail snack which brings me to the cocktail okay i'm gonna make agua de jamaica or jamaica flower water you've seen this stuff before right it's the dried hamaika flowers well really it's little calyx off of a relative of the hibiscus plants once you steep a tea out of it and sweeten it up a little bit well it tastes a lot like cranberry juice and all the street vendors all through latin america love to serve this stuff over ice well i've got a couple of cups of the dried flowers there and i'm gonna pour a quart and a half of water over it stir in about a cup and a quarter of sugar then let the whole mixture steep for about an hour no more than two hours strain it stir in three cups of water and you're ready to serve pour it into a beautiful glass i'm gonna set it out with some jicama some cucumber some apples a little lime to squeeze on some hot chili powder to add a little bit of interest and i think we're gonna have a great start to our street food party okay if you're gonna do a street food party then you obviously have to do some good tacos and what's better than a wonderful cast iron grill to sear some meat on of course those tacos have got to have a really special salsa so i'm going to make one out of arbol chili's now if you don't know arbol chilis they're the long skinny ones and these are really the workhorse of the mexican kitchen everybody uses them to make salsa out of they're really flavorful and they're really hot okay so i'm going to start my salsa by taking a handful of these guys i'm going to put them into a skillet over in a medium heat here and let them toast until they're aromatic until their color has changed a little bit ah those smell good i'm gonna just slide them right off here leave the pan still on the heat turn it down just a little bit and to form the backbone of that salsa i'm going to use tomatillos now these tomatillos have already been peeled of course when you find them at the grocery store a lot of times they'll have that papery husk on them you got to peel that husk off like that and then i'm gonna roast them but i'm gonna use my really fast method for roasting tomatillos which is to cut them in half and roast them right in a skillet i need about a pound of these guys and i'm just going to lay them out in a skillet like this we'll start them all face up there i'm going to go back and crush a head of garlic apart here and take about six of those cloves out to roast right alongside the tomatillos okay those are gonna go right in along with the tomatillos after three or four minutes we'll turn everything over and let it roast until everything is uniformly soft and lightly browned okay now all this gets combined in the the food processor the roasted tomatillos and roasted garlic i'll tell you that the kitchen already smells so incredibly delicious we'll put our toasted herbal chilies in there and then i'm just going to turn that food processor on and let it get as smooth as it possibly can okay we're going to give this a nice seasoning of salt but you always want to check your salsa to make sure it's the right consistency should be easily spoonable if it's not then add some water to it just a tablespoon or two to loosen it up and now we're on to the main attraction this is the beef now i went down to the mexican grocery store and i bought this very thinly cut beef the stuff that they call carne para assad oftentimes it's cut from skirt steak the thicker of the two skirt steaks that's very thinly sliced so that you can sear it on a hot griddle sprinkle with just a little bit of salt and that man is that stuff delicious all chopped up and nothing is more delicious than when you mix that chopped up seared steak with nopales i love these things maybe you've never had them before but this is the cactus paddle the prickly pear cactus paddle and in a lot of the markets they'll sell them already cleaned but if you get the ones that are not cleaned the ones that still have the spines on them then this is what you do to clean them you go around the outside to cut off all of the spines that are right there at the edge and then holding my knife perpendicular to the surface of the nopal i scrape all those nodes off where the little stickery spines are then flip it over and do the same to the other side that sweet rich browned onion flavor is one of my favorite things in tacos so i'm gonna slice this onion up and we'll be ready to start the whole process okay so we've got salsa we've got the beef we've got onions to caramelize we've got nopales to sear i'm going to steam some corn tortillas so that they have that wonderful supple quality that we can wrap around all of those delicious ingredients i'm gonna preheat that cast iron griddle until it's just exactly the right temperature so i think about the only thing that we have left to create this taco stand is the stand itself the classic mexican sandal of all mexican sandals and it happened to be an aficionado of street food and stall cooking we also know that what aches are pretty classic in that camp as well which came first the sandal the street food was named after it because well it's based on this pressed out flat bread masa cake that yeah looks like a wadache sandal so you know you'll find them topped with everything from chorizo sausage to steak to queso fresco cactus paddles it's kind of like a cross between a taco a quesadilla and a slice of pizza in other words the perfect party food which is why our little stall here tonight is gonna feature them i thought we would feature them with a topping of mexican chorizo sausage i'm gonna get the fire underneath a skillet and open up a package of the chorizo sausage you know this is completely raw you got to cook the whole thing i'm going to put that into the skillet and we'll come back to it'll take about 10 minutes or so for it to cook there okay now onto the masa this is the exciting part for me at least of making huaraches now remember that when we were making a little quesadillas masa we started with the dehydrated masarina the blue corn masaarina but for these i went down to the local tortilla and i bought fresh ground masa you know that stuff's got almost a silky texture to it i'm gonna add a little salt to it and then classic watches have a little pureed black bean in the middle of them so i'm going to open up a can of black beans and then tip off some of their liquid and then put those into the food processor so i'm going to put the top on it and get this as absolutely smooth as i can okay i think that's going to be just about right but the truth of the matter is i got to make sure that this moss is kind of the same texture and i think i've got a pretty good sense of that so i'm going to need a little bit of water but water really softens masa very fast so be very careful how much of it you add to you notice i just ran my hand over the water and then i'm kneading that in okay so we got a nice soft dough there we've got our bean mixture i'm gonna need a little spoon to get that out and of course we're gonna need the tortilla press to form these guys i like to work with those really heavy cast iron tortilla presses because they don't move around on the the countertop got a couple of pieces of plastic that are cut i just store them right in there that are cut to fit the plates like that i'm going to pull the top one off now to make a classic wadache we're going to take about oh well a little bit more than golf ball sized piece of that there and i'm going to make a little well right in the center of it and in that i'm going to put a little bit of beans you'll be amazed at how little beans will form this little thin layer now i'm going to form this masa up around it so i have to be careful to get that bean mixture down in there and the masa up around we don't want to see any of the bean mixture showing through at all and then i'm going to roll this gently now into about a five inch cigar shape we're going to lay it on the bottom piece of plastic here in our tortilla press and then very gently press it out see how that's looking kind of sandal-like now it won't be even so i flip it around and press gently on the other side very gentle pressing there now to unmold our wadache take the top piece of plastic off you can see there's tiny little bit of beans that's showing through that's okay there's not going to be any problem with that peel off the other piece of plastic and then we're going to lay this right onto the griddle it's been heated to about medium heat we're going to cook it for about two minutes on one side until it's set starting to brown then two or three minutes on the other side and then when the guests arrive we're going to rewarm these little watache bases we're going to drizzle them with a little bit of oil to tenderize them as they warm up and then we'll let each guest choose what they want to put on top of it so tell me what you would like to have in your little quesadilla now these are mexico city style quesadillas who likes mushrooms i'm going to sell one of my mushrooms so i'm going to put a little bit of cheese and a little bit of roasted poblano it's not very hot so i'm just closing it up there like that so i'm gonna drop that we've got a very good texture okay mexican street food isn't just a quick bite on a corner no it's actually the cornerstone of the cuisine so grab some friends fire up the stove and celebrate cheers

Channel: monteam

Views: 66,263

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Id: gRZ-VBxxsHo

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 02 2014