Chiles Rellenos

romance that's almost the word that comes to my mind when I come to this place it's called Sun unkempt in and it's an old Carmelite monastery turned icy end a term restaurant and it's nestled right into the old money Sun on hill neighborhood of Mexico City and to tell you the truth coming here is like taking a pleasure trip to some long-lost well more genteel time and the food well the food is totally classic but I don't think it's changed all that much since my wife and I used to save up our pesos and you come here for a splurge II lunch 20 years ago when we were starving researchers living in Mexico City and everything from the way they served the margaritas to the decor to the food but it all just adds up to romance pure passion so that's why I ordered these chiles rellenos possibly the most passion infused dish in the Mexican canon mommy it starts with chilies which are already the culinary icon for passion and then there's the filling and the sauce and well so it's all about layers of texture and flavor all revealing themselves in Mexico people can get a little obsessed with Julis Rios they all have their quintessential favorites so I'm liking with fresh chiles out there with dried chilies I'm like a battered and others not what I've ordered here is probably the most classic version of chile rellenos it's the one that starts with a poblano chili that's stuffed with minced pork picadillo and then battered with a soufflé batter and and fried until golden and then covered with this beautiful tomato sauce but here's the deal I mean the words cheerless crayons and Spanish just mean stuff Chili's so you can imagine that here in Mexico the possibilities are endless well from the sublime to the spectacular this is midcal de la Merced in downtown Mexico City and it is the largest fresh market in all of Latin America if you're looking for Total Immersion intensive into the flavors and the foods that Mexico's just passionate about well this is the place to get it now when I said that Chili's are a part of everyday life in Mexico well this is what I was talking about I mean just in a few hours all of this will be gone and my guess is that the vast majority of them will turn into stuffed chiles rellenos now when you're choosing a poblano chili I always look for the ones the shiniest unblemished no wrinkled skin that always indicates that they're kind of old and if you're going to stuff them well choose the ones that don't have very many indentions in them it just makes them easier to roast and peel now you'll notice that the poblano chili is the closest looking thing to our green bell pepper and we all know that one of our favorite ways to serve green bell peppers is to stuff them and here in Mexico most of the time in the United States the number one choice for chile rellenos poblano chile now the thing about chiles rellenos is that they take some time and care to prepare some love which i would guess is the reason that at our restaurant they've achieved almost cult status I mean people line up on the street for them before we open which is just about the time that it is and so I've asked Richard James the chef at Frontera to sort of step us through the process of making them the first thing he does is to blister the skins and that's easiest to do if you plunk the chilies into a fryer basket drop them into the hot oil and then put another basket on top to keep them submerged after about a minute or so they'll be completely blistered all the way around you let them cool a little bit rub off that skin cut a slit in the side and then get all the seeds out from inside up now they're ready to stuff we use two different fillings cheese and a shredded pork picadillo you'll notice how Richard fills them and then flattens them slightly on a baking sheet we put them into a freezer to firm here while we're preparing the batter now the first thing which ERDs doing is to beat egg whites with a good pinch of salt until they go very stiff peaks then gently fold in we just used to sing quits get catch up and do this by hand some egg yolks and some flour and when the chiles are firmed take them out of the freezer dip them thoroughly through the batter and then lay them into that hot oil it's easiest if you'll dip them in on both sides so you start to cook the batter on both sides at the same time based and gently with a little bit of oil turn on after three or four minutes they'll be golden and beautiful perfect served over a broth the roasted tomato sauce with the fresh garnish like sunflower sprouts now to take our understanding of chiles rellenos to the next level I thought we'd go to Chile University and for the University part of that well I'm taking it to the Universidad Nacional autónoma the Mexico what most people call Nam or the National Autonomous University and we're the Chile part Wow that would go straight to the master to Ricardo munos Sarita the guy who's literally written the book on chiles rellenos in Mexico he's also written another huge volume called the dictionary of Mexican gastronomy and when that came out Time magazine called him the prophet and preserver of Mexican cooking well the University asked him to open a restaurant right in the cultural center of the University and it's become this incredible place a destination for four-star dining you know I came here last fall during the Independence Day celebrations and he was making the most famous chili relleno dish Mexico knows it's called Chile's en nogada it's a stuffed chili with this beautiful filling that's sort of pork and fruit covered with a creamy walnut sauce it was totally unforgettable you Ricardo nice to be worth you in your kitchen here master thank you very much okay so in the United States we're always thinking about Chile's Latinos as being either stuffed poblanos fresh poblano chiles or sometimes the long skinny Anaheim's you've got something completely different for us yes I have the Chile ancho one the dried Chile ancho and that's the this this chili here right right and it's the one that's the dried form of a poblano chili right yes introducing we need to something you know in a special water made out of piloncillo which is the septic well okay this is like the the unrefined sugar raw sugar so you've dissolved some of that in some water what we have here no salt no no sir okay and then you just soaked if this is hot now and you're just gonna put them right down into that and then how long do they have to about five minutes about five minutes not very long at all no nobody okay because otherwise I think they get too soft but they just gonna fall out they're gonna fall apart okay so this next step here is these are already so pretty live movie you see how how soft they are now yes now the next thing that you need to do it which is very important is to depending and simply so you wanna break them I guess like that open them up slit down the side and then you will find all the seeds and all the veins and so we like all of that area we just want to remove them okay okay yes later good beautiful view and it should be very game Joseph I like this other one that we are here there are those shows okay so we're gonna fill them with plantings okay now so so that everybody knows these plantains they have to be very right I have to be very right just like you're seeing it here and if this was a regular banana that people just eat they we think this was over right but these are really really dark no but that's what you really want to produce these particular banana develops a particular kind of sweetness when it's when it's ripe like that otherwise a little bit 200 it's not eatable okay it won't taste sweet right right okay that's what we want so you let them ripen till they're what I call black ripe like that and then what do you do with it then we bake it bake it okay into the oven like a media yeah million and how long does it take about 20 minutes about 20 minutes and what do you wanted how does it should it there what do you want to look for just like that it should be really soft huh and he has a really nice is soft like that right see you tomato of it okay so we've got the search Chili's and we've got the baked plantain that's been all cut up what else goes into the filling oh that I have to show you here okay we're going to hit the oil and then we're going to saute the onion right after even add the garlic really quick yeah keep your steering just a few seconds again yeah and then we're gonna the red tomato it's chopped and here we went away about five minutes until the red tomato is cooked okay we're going to add the plantains that we already baked yeah now what do you want to cook this about ten minutes you wanna make sure that the plantain is cooked all the way through all the way okay okay and now one of the secret ingredients of this recipe is to use the piloncillo again so that you notice that this powder yeah so how did you do that did you grate it yes okay so gradient Dylan CEO exactly into it a little salt yeah you don't need too much so because this is a sweet recipe okay and a little pepper mixed well and wait until everything is very well combined and cook okay well you wanna remove from the heat little bit cool and it'll be and then as a final step we will add the vanilla okay good okay so we've got the filling of the cooked plantains with the panela cheese ready to stuff the chilies right okay show us how to do it well this is a quite simple now that we have in Chile uh-huh we're gonna chop like that two to three fully spoons of day feeling and we when I push down a little bit and then now here is a little trick by sealing day with your fingers push down uh-huh and then you wanna overlap a little bit they overlap them adjust a little bit right in that way it's going to be what he's going to have the cone shape like how beautiful beautiful mural also when I place that I'll care to finish the presentation of the chain-link we're gonna choose fresh cream that looks pretty good right now and then just because I find out the core a big nice partly I can't wait to dig into it now I'll tell you what I'd love about that is that there's that sort of gentle spiciness of the chili that plays beautifully against the sweetness of depth of the plantain or onions and garlic and then of course that gorgeous cream oh how I love the creamy it's like oh it's the reason that I love being here I wish we had cream like that Ricardo thank you so much for sharing such a beautiful recipe with us thank you thanks well yes the whole idea of chiles rellenos does tend to be synonymous with spend a half a day in the kitchen and it usually involves battering and frying but like I said the name really does just mean stuffed chili and stuff in a chili doesn't have to be all that hard in fact I've come up with a new recipe a great recipe if you're gonna grill in the summer that sort of streamlines the whole process now I'm gonna throw these chilies on the grill these are some beautiful looking Anaheim chilies that are so popular in the southern part of the United States I'm gonna turn all of these chilies until they're blackened and blistered now while I'm doing that I'm going to slide a sliced red onion alongside I'm here be sure to brush it with a little oil let it brown and soften and then when all of the chilies are thoroughly blackened rub that blackened skin off cut a little slit in the side of them then reach a finger in there to dislodge all of the seeds and then give them a quick rinse to get all the seeds out oK we've got all of the chilies roasted and peeled and now on to the filling I'm going to combine here some grated Jack cheese and could use cheddar cheese you could use fetch awawa cheese with some cooked shrimp easy combination use anything that you want to flavor this or just do it straight cheese I'm using a sort of luxurious thing here because I want to make these kind of special now I'm going to season it with a little bit of Mexican oregano crumbling it between my palms to release all of its beautiful aromatic goodness a little salt over the top of the whole thing remember that cheese already is seasoned so you don't want to go too heavy on that see some fresh ground black pepper and then I'm just gonna dive in with my hand and mix all of this together okay one last thing to get into our filling there and that's that grilled onion I'm going to slide it here onto the cutting board and chop it into about quarter-inch pieces give that another little mix and we're ready to stuff a portion of this filling into each of those chilies now if you want to use the grill to finish your chili rellenos this you can't just slide them on there of course all the cheese it melt and drip right down through the grill grates so I'm going to borrow an ancient technique from Mexico and wrap them in corn husks these are just the standard-issue corn husks that you can find dried in many places soak them in water for 30 or 40 minutes until they're pliable and then lay one of the stuffed Chile's in there and then put another one alongside it that makes it a nice portion like that and then bring the husk up around to cover it grab another husk and open that one out flat but facing in the opposite direction then bring the husk up over to cover it nicely in that direction and then choose a very large husk here or long one I should say and tear it into strips I'll tear a couple of them here that we can use to tie and secure this package up and over not it and then the second one now in Mexico when they wrap food to cook on a griddle or grill they use the ancient Aztec name for it next lucky key now once we get all of those packages made we'll slide them onto the grill so I've been turning these on the grill for about 10 minutes or so I moved them from the hotter part of the grill to a cooler spot to just let that cheese melt more slowly and now they're ready to serve now you could serve these very rustic cornhusk wrap packages just as they are and let the guests dive into them and wrap their own little packages or you can pull off the wrappers here to expose that beautiful gooey goodness this is one of the things that I just love about Mexico what was I thinking just about the mezcal that I've got here no I do love them as scholars well no I was thinking about the way that people in Mexico understand what's modern I mean this place is a perfect example of it it's called oh my go well and it's in the core your con section of Mexico City oh mighty well by the way is the Aztec name for the goddess of my game the plant that you distill to make miss hell or its cousin tequila but the owners of this place well they're dedicated to taking Mexican classics and giving them a contemporary twist now I'm not talking here about about fusion or about becoming international no I'm just talking about a sort of Generation Next take on beloved Mexican prices I mean the myths cal is a perfect example of that I mean I'm sure you're probably thinking about miss cow as that poor relative rustic and robust of tequila right well I'll tell you when you put it into a a bottle like this sort of dress it up and then serve tastes of it beautifully in the little earthenware cuts way meet this like we've gotten auto steer well start seeing miss call from a completely different point of view I mean this one is from socket a cuss and it's beautifully balanced this one's from Oaxaca its smoky and rich from getraer it's almost like a meal in a cup there and of course in Michoacan it's the same kind a mess cow but a little bit more balanced and beautiful and dry on the finish well and in a place like this food is interpreted in the same way so I've got here at you living in a chimney you know that takes off them what vicara go Moo yeol showed us with the dried ancho chili but here it's stuffed with caramelized onions in skirt steak sort of like a taco filling and then the whole thing is doused with a kind of vinaigrette like escabeche it's time to get a little taste of this it's just right and that's what I love so much about many of the new restaurants here in this capital of cool

Channel: monteam

Views: 86,133

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Id: Wto4ckld274

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 23 2014