"Fancy" Mexican Food Tonight

Liz and I are going to cook what some consider Mexico's national dish, chiles en nogada, which is a stuffed pepper dish. It has the colors of the Mexican Flag - chiles for green, cream sauce for white, and pomegranate seeds for red.

We're also having a grilled vegetable quesadilla for an appetizer, a spicy corn soup and a salad with red onion, orange, and goat cheese, and for dessert... well that's a surprise (meaning it's experimental and might not work at all!)

The main course:

Chiles En Nogada:

Cubing, stewing, and shredding the pork for the stuffing:







Preparing the fruit and nuts and cooking the filling for the chilies:



The ingredients for the walnut sauce and pomegranates for topping:



Roasting the poblano peppers:



The Finished Product:



Main course and salad served:




Orange and Red Onion Salad with Goat cheese, Pecans and Cranberries:





Soup and Appetizer which were served before the main course:

Spicy Sweet Corn and Poblano Soup:

Cooking the onions and jalapenos, roasting the corn, and finally the finished product after pureeing everything, seasoning, and adding chicken stock and cream:






Soup served:



Vegetable Quesadillas:

Grilling the vegetables and preparing the quesadillas:




Quesadillas served:



Appetizer and soup course served:



And finally the dessert:

Making chocolate ganache:




The completed dessert after frying up some flour tortillas and sprinkling them with cinnamon and sugar and serving with fruit and vanilla ice cream:






Elvis waiting and then looking guilty:




The Ratings (As decided by Liz and Cory who rate things pretty tough)

Chiles en Nogada: 9 (Lots of work but well worth it, making pork this way is always fantastic, and the walnut sauce is good enough to eat by the spoonful itself)

Salad: 9 (Great salad, pretty and delicious)

Spicy Corn Soup: 8 (Quite good, much better the second day. It had an intense roasted corn flavor, but needed a little something. Possibly add some extra cilantro to brighten it and only roast half the corn)

Quesadillas: (7, good but nothing fancy, nice contrast to creamy soup)

Dessert: (7, chocolate sauce great with addition of cinnamon; cinnamon tortilla crisps need some thought and work to get right. Ice Cream and fresh fruit were nice with the chocolate sauce.)



The Recipes (as written by Liz):

The original recipe for the Chiles en Nogada came from Rick Bayless' website:

Recipes from Chef Rick Bayless - Rick Bayless | Frontera

The ingredient list that we used:

Walnuts for the sauce
2 cups (7 ounces) walnut halves and pieces, you’ll need 36 (about 1 pound) very fresh walnuts in their shells

Chiles and Pork-and-Fruit Stuffing
1 pound boneless pork shoulder, cut into 2-inch cubes
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1 small white onion, diced
8 very large (about 2 pounds) fresh poblano chiles, roasted, peeled, and deveined
3 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 generous tablespoons raisins
2 generous tablespoons dried mango
2 generous tablespoons dried cherries
1 small pear, peeled, cored and cut into 1/4-inch dice
2 small Jonathan or McIntosh applea, peeled, cored and cut into 1/4-inch dice
2 medium fresh peaches (or extra pears or apples), peeled, pitted and cut into 1/4-inch dice
1 ripe, medium-small tomato, seeded and roughly chopped
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Salt, about 1 generous teaspoon
1/3 cup (about 1 3/4 ounces) silvered blanched almonds\

Walnut Sauce
1 to 1 1/2 cups milk
1 slice firm white bread, crusts removed
1 tablespoon sugar
Salt, about 1/2 generous teaspoon
1 teaspoon dry sherry
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, preferable freshly ground Mexican canela
1/2 cup Mexican crema

Garnish
1 pomegranate

We made a few changes from the original due to ingredient availability. For example, I left out the plantains, since the store didn't have any and Cory doesn't really care for them (too much like bananas). I added dried cherries because I use them in my picadillo empanada filling and like how they taste.

Directions

1. Cook and shred the meat. Place the pork in a medium saucepan, cover with heavily salted water, add the garlic and half of the onion. Bring to a gentle boil over medium heat, skim off any grayish foam that rises to the surface, partially cover and simmer over medium-low until the meat is thoroughly tender, about 1 1/2 hours.

If time permits, let the meat cool in the broth, then remove it with tongs or a slotted spoon and shred it between you fingers or with two forks held back to back. (There will be about 2 cups of meat). Reserve the broth.

2. Before you start cooking the stuffing, complete all the initial peeling, coring, chopping and so forth of the stuffing ingredients.

Heat 1 1/2 tablespoons of the oil in a very large (12 inch) skillet over medium-high. When quite hot, add the remaining half of the onion and shredded pork in a thin layer and cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture is lightly browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Drain off any excess fat.

Stir in the dried and fresh fruit, the tomato, herbs and cinnamon. Measure in 1/4 cup of the reserved broth, mix well, reduce the heat to medium-low, cover the skillet and simmer until the apple and pear are tender (but not mushy) and the flavors are blended, about 10 minutes. Season with salt, usually a generous teaspoon.

While the meat mixture is simmering, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in a medium-small skillet over medium heat. Add the almonds and fry, stirring nearly constantly, until they are a deep golden color, about 3 minutes; remove and cool. Add to the meat mixture. Remove the filling from the heat and let cool uncovered.

3. Stuff the chiles with cooled filling, packing it in well and re-forming them in their original shape. Place on a baking sheet and cover with foil.

4. Within a couple of hours of serving, prepare the sauce. Put the walnuts into the food processor bowl fitted with the chopping blade. Add 1 cup of milk, the bread, sugar, salt, sherry and ground cinnamon. Blend until smooth; if the mixture should clog in the machine or if only the mixture at the bottom is moving through the blades, add more milk a little at a time, until all the mixture is moving through the blades again. Finally add the crema and blend for just a few seconds. Taste for salt and sugar; the sauce should have a slightly sweet edge with just enough salt to bring up the flavor of the walnuts. Set aside at room temperature.

5. Finish the dish. Half an hour before serving, place the chiles in a 250-degree oven to heat through. Break the pomegranate apart, pick out all the seeds and place them in a small dish.

When you are ready to serve, add a little mike or cream to the sauce if it is thicker than a medium-consistency custard sauce. Place 1 or 2 chiles on each warm dinner plate. Spoon the room-temperature sauce over the warm chiles. Sprinkle the sauce with the pomegranate seeds and serve at once.

The instructions given in the original recipe worked well, although I skipped the step of blanching and peeling the walnuts - I just used the shelled ones from Costco. I made some other small revisions to result in the directions given above.

Cory also decided to add the juice of one orange and one lime to the liquid for braising the pork, though for this recipe he said he wouldn't do it again because with everything else in the stuffing you probably couldn't tell.


Corn Soup

This Recipe is one I made by combining elements of several others. The food processor does most of the work.

3 Cups frozen corn, defrosted
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 poblano chile, roasted, peeled, and chopped
1/2 - 1 small jalapeno, chopped
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground pepper
2 cans chicken broth
1/2 c cream
1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
sprigs of cilantro for garnish

Spread the corn on a baking sheet and roast in a 450 degree oven for about 20 minutes, or until beginning to caramelize and "pop". Set aside 1/2 cup kernels for garnish.

Meanwhile, saute onion in 2 T oil until beginning to soften. Add garlic, chiles, and spices and saute until onions are soft and begin to turn golden.

Combine onion mixture and corn and add to food processor fitted with chopping blade. Add 1/2 can broth and begin to run processor. Add additional liquid intermittently until 1 full can has been added. Process until smooth, about 5-7 minutes.

Put mixture back in pan, add in additional can broth, and bring to simmer. Simmer 15 minutes. Add cream, taste and add salt as needed. Garnish and serve, or chill overnight and bring up to simmer when reheating.

Orange, Red Onion, and Goat Cheese Salad

This salad recipe is one I made up and is really good as is, and by changing the fruit and the vinegar you can have lots of good variations - using strawberries and balsamic vinegar, and omitting the onions, is a particularly good variation.

2 oranges, peeled and sectioned ("supremed" - meaning no peel or pith)
1/2 small red onion, sliced
2 oz goat cheese, crumbled
1/4 c pecans
2 T dried cranberries
3 C mixed baby greens including baby spinach

For dressing:
2 T olive oil
1 T red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp sugar, or more to taste
pinch salt
few grinds freshly ground pepper
1 tsp dijon mustard

Arrange fruit, nuts, and cheese on top of greens. Mix all dressing ingredients in shaker cup or whisk together in bowl. Drizzle over salad and serve.


Grilled Vegetable Quesadilla

1 small zucchini, sliced
4 small crimini or button mushrooms
1/4 small onion, chopped
1/2 poblano chile, roasted, peeled, and chopped
1/2 c jack cheese
2 tortillas

Grill vegetables on grill pan with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. From here, proceed like any other quesadilla, dividing veggies and cheese equally between tortillas, folding in half, and grilling on grill pan.


Hot Fudge Sauce

4 oz Ghirardelli 60% cacao chocolate
2 T butter
1/2 c cream
2 T light corn syrup

Melt chocolate and butter together. Stir in corn syrup. Add cream slowly and stir/whisk until smooth. Add a little ground cinnamon if you like (I do).