Sunday, May 22, 2011

Como Chiles en Nogada

Chiles en Nogada always remind me of Laura Esquivel's novel, Como Agua Para Chocolate. When I taught students at a private all-girls school in Bethesda, May was the much-awaited month in our Spanish Conversation and Composition class where we would begin to read from the novel and watch the movie. I had watched the movie for all the years I had taught at that girls' school, sitting on the edge of my chair, commiserating with Tita, the heroine.   Each year felt as if it were the first time I watched her transform the cold wind that blew through her heart into a magical ritual surrounding the daily preparation of the family's meals. The thing that struck me in different ways as I watched the movie each year was what the ceremony of shared and lovingly prepared meals means as a spiritual 'glue' in a family.

I chuckle to myself now whenever I remember the impact of the ending on the entire classroom of girls, (yes, including me!).  Our feminine hearts beyond consolation, we would all sob loudly and with complete abandon, aghast at the realization that the happiness we wanted for Tita was a transcendental one.  She and Pedro, the man she had loved for so long but who had been married to her sister, would ignite at the moment of their union and would perish in an explosion of flames, throwing us into further spasms of emotion. Years later, teaching in an all-male equivalent of the girls' school, I decided to show the movie to the adolescent boys in my Honors Spanish class. My notion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus was confirmed! The boys broke out into hysterical laughter at the end of the movie.

In any case, besides the knowledge of Spanish gained from the study of the movie, I hope that my students, both genders, came to understand the role of food and its preparation in the life of a family. Undoubtedly, it is through food that many of the unwritten lessons of a culture are learned. Each year, I take a group of students to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for Spanish immersion. One of my favorite things is to introduce them to chiles en nogada.


Chiles en nogada is a dish originally from the colonial city of Puebla, but here in San Miguel, it is prepared in many restaurants.  Doña Beatriz' chiles at Casa Carmen are the best, in my opinion. Needless to say, there are a million ways to prepare stuffed chiles in Mexico.  Chiles en nogada is an elegant Mexican dish that is as beautiful to look at as it is delicious to eat. This version is adapted to make it slightly easier to prepare. The sauce is made without the walnuts, (no tedious peeling of walnut skins) they are simply added as a garnish. In fact, another variation is that the sauce has cilantro blended into it. It is, nevertheless, quite an elaborate affair, albeit all worth the trouble.







Chiles en Nogada


Recipe Type: Entree/Plato Fuerte

Author: Gilda V. Carbonaro

Serves: 6

Adapted from Doña Beatriz's recipe at Casa Carmen, San Miguel de Allende

Ingredients


  • 8 poblano peppers

  • 2 ½ cups crème fraiche or clotted cream and some amount of milk to water it down

  • cup parsley, chopped

  • 10 sprigs of cilantro with the bottom part of stems twisted off

  • 1 lb ground meat

  • 2 or three chopped onions

  • cups raisins

  • Olive oil for the ground meat and for the green sauce

  • Fresh pomegranate seeds (if they are available) for garnish

  • Walnuts for garnish

Instructions


Chiles


  1. Grill the peppers over an open flame and then put them either in a plastic or paper bag to sweat for about 15 minutes.

  2. Peel them, slit one side, clean out all the seeds, rinse them well and set them aside. The more thoroughly you clean them, the less chance you will get a really spicy one. You can do this a day ahead of time. To avoid a really 'hot' pepper, rinse them in a mixture of vinegar and water.

Picadillo:


  1. Cook the ground meat in about ¼ cup of olive oil for about 15 minutes at medium to high heat, add salt to taste, and pepper.

  2. Lower heat and add the parsley, two of the chopped onions and continue cooking for another 15 minutes.

  3. Finally, add the raisins and cover, cooking for another 10 or so minutes. This picadillo (pronounced picadiyo) is the stuffing for your chiles.

  4. In a 1 quart saucepan cook the other chopped onion in about ¼ cup of olive oil until it is transparent.

  5. Then, add ½ cup of the cream and continue to cook for another five minutes.

Sauce


  1. In a blender combine the cilantro, roughly chopped so it doesn't break your blender, two of the peeled chiles without their stems and the rest of the cream.

  2. Add salt and pepper to taste and blend this green mixture with the cream and onion mixture in your saucepan.

  3. Cook for about 10 minutes until it is well-combined.

  4. At this point, add the milk to make the sauce more liquid. This will be your sauce that you will pour on your stuffed chiles.

  5. Stuff the chiles with your picadillo, then place the chiles in a pan where you will warm them covered for a few minutes so all the flavors meld. They are often served room temperature.

  6. Variation: Add ½ chopped fennel bulb to the picadillo around the time you add the onions.



Notes



Chiles lose their fire when they are de-seeded and washed. This can be done a day ahead of time.

Also, for a thicker, greener sauce have extra peeled chiles on hand to add to the blender.


9 comments:

  1. Maria De Las CasasMay 23, 2011 at 4:25 AM

    Gilda I have too watched Como Agua para Chocolate several times as well as read the book. The love for the food and the food preparation is a great part of the story. I appreciate how in all your posts there is a strong emphasis in how important it is to share that in the family.
    The chiles en Nogada look so good. I will try the recipe, only that I will have to substitute the chiles for green peppers since I don't believe I will find poblanos here in Spain.

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  2. Gilda Valdez CarbonaroMay 23, 2011 at 1:32 PM

    Carmen,

    In Spain you can find these beautiful long red peppers, I don't know what they're called. They are not hot, but they would work just fine for chiles en nogada, I believe. Let me know if you try them.

    Gilda VC

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  3. Helo I was just looking for a picture of the drink Jamica, and somehow stubbled on the your site..these chiles look great I want to try them one day soon..I love to cook. So glad I have found you..have a great evening. Janice

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  4. Gilda Valdez CarbonaroAugust 11, 2011 at 3:48 PM

    Janice,

    Let us know how they come out!

    Gilda VC

    ReplyDelete
  5. [...] families have gathered afterwards at friends’ homes for such traditional fare as mole or chiles en nogada. Further south, in the Chiapas area, perhaps you’ll find a roast pork that’s been [...]

    ReplyDelete
  6. Gilda, your recipes are good in general.
    But this "Chile en Nogada" recipe, may be tasty but not authentic.
    The name of nogada means a sauce made of nuez (walnut). Fresh walnuts need to be peeled, because the thin skin has a bitter taste. Walnuts are expensive and hard to peel, for that reason, many restaurants have changed the recipe to make more profit.
    For those who want to prepare this recipe is to do for home, take the time to prepare the original sauce, which has fresh peeled walnuts, cream (not sour), milk, sugar (just to give a sweet touch) and a dash of ground cinnamon (optional).
    Blend the nuts with few milk, just to ease the blending, blend and add the cream, sugar, and cinnamon. Nothing else. cilantro or perejil kill the flavor of the walnuts do not use anything else.
    Some restaurants use goat cheese (feta of similar) but, that is not a good idea neither.
    The key is to use a good cream, not sour (not fermented) in Mexico is known as "crema dulce". Beware of those "light creams" adulterated with carragenina and hidroxi-metil-celulosa. READ THE INGREDIENTS ON THE LABEL. Look for one as pure as possible.

    Fresh walnuts are not available all the year, they can be substituted by not fresh walnuts, or even by pecans with a good result. In my opinion this option is closer in flavor to the original recipe, when a fresh walnuts are not available or peeling the nuts is unpractical for some reason.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This is a continuation of the above comment.
    The picadillo, is prepared in many ways, there are many traditional variants. It is sweet, a very common ingredient is platano macho frito (fried plantain), apple, pear, quince (membrillo), figs (higos), almonds, piñones. Just take care to not make it too sweet, some restaurants do it too sweet because they have many "gringos" customers, who they believe that wont like a spice chile, but a spice (picante) chile is still spicy and a too sweet filling just spoils the dish.

    The original chiles are not covered with beaten eggs (capeados), I do not know why that happened, when I was a kid, all the chiles in nogada were served with out egg. In my opinion that is a very bad decision, because with egg they taste like the normal chile relleno de carne, an everyday dish, not an special festive dish like the chile en nogada. The original recipe has the 3 colors of the Mexican flag, chile is green, the nogada white, an the granada (pomegranate) red. As the story says that were served to Iturbide, like the first Mexican flag (trigarante). Those who insist that the chiles should be capeados (covered with egg) put perejil (parsley) for the green of the Mexican flag, but that makes the worse such variant.
    The original recipe is with a naked chile.

    For those who can not find chiles poblanos, I am afraid that it is too hard to substitute with other kind of chile, los chiles pimientos (green peeper) have a different taste, I could even say that those who want to have an idea of which kind of flavor is, could simply omit the chile, instead to do it with one which does not combine with the rest of the ingredients. I should say that in the season where the walnuts are fresh, the chiles poblanos, are not spicy (pican menos en temporada). If you know how the chiles poblanos taste, you can try to find something similar in an oriental store, may they sell somthing closer to chiles poblanos, or try to know if there is a Mexican store that sell freeze chiles poblanos. They are sold peeled and freezed in Mexico, although I have never tried one, I think that could be an option, but due to the ice crystals they may be to fragile to handle, and special care should be taken to prevent a non desired tasty dish of rajas de poblano en nogada, :)

    Gilda, thanks, for your recipes, it is obvious that you have a buena mano, because you love this food.

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  8. Gila, cuando revises los mensajes para publicarlos, si gustas, puedes arreglar la redacción.
    Nuevamente te felicito, por tu gusto y amor por esta cocina que está en peligro por la moda de los cheffs, que destrozan las recetas tradicionales, hacen falta más páginas como la tuya.
    Gracias por regalarnos el placer de tus recetas.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Gilda Valdez CarbonaroDecember 19, 2014 at 7:50 AM

    Gracias por tus comentarios!

    ReplyDelete

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