Mexico City Favorites

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - This week on Milk Street, we travel to Mexico City, where we learn to make a tortilla casserole.

It's called pastel Azteca from Esmeralda Brinn.

Then we wake up very early to go the Coyoacan Market, where we stop by La Cocina de Mi Mama to cook pork in Veracruz sauce with Adriana Luna.

So please stay tuned for the cooking of Mexico City.

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- So, Maria?

- Yeah.

- Hola.

- Hola.

♪ ♪ - I'm traveling with María Ítaka, our guide and translator, who's showing us all the neighborhoods of Mexico City.

- So Chris, this stall, actually is very, very, very important, very interesting.

♪ ♪ - Tell me about Mexico City.

It's huge, it's almost 20 million people.

It kind of reminds me of Tokyo.

Is it now so many different cultures, it's kind of hard to describe?

- Well, I think Mexico City's like a melting pot of, like, different things, you know, since it's because we have people from all parts of the country, but we also have a lot of foreigners and a lot of different vibes.

Also, we have, you know, a big amount of Indigenous cultures, so it's always a continuous exchange of cultures.

Then there are parts like Roma and Condesa, you can listen to so many languages being spoken.

So Mexico City is like a kaleidoscope of things, it's, in a way, a representation of what the country is in itself.

♪ ♪ - This is gorgeous, this is Roma?

- Sí, this is Colonia Roma, this is one of my favorite plazas.

It's called Plaza Río de Janeiro.

It's very beautiful.

There are some vegan carts here.

- Really?

- Yeah.

But also, you know, the classical ones, where you sell tacos, tortas, tlacoyos, that is a very traditional-- - What is that?

- They look like ovals.

It's really representative of Mexico City, as well.

And they are filled with either fava bean, or cheese, or chicharrón.

- Chicharrón?

- Sí.

It's a very, very, very traditional one that, before the tacos, before all these restaurants in Roma, this was the original food of Mexico City.

It's cool, no?

- Yeah, that's very good.

- Yeah.

♪ ♪ Tomato salsa... sometimes goes with chipotle, for example.

- Ooh, I like the chipotle.

- Sí.

And we're also cooking pastel Azteca, which is... the most approximate reference to this is the lasagna.

We used tortillas, we use green salsa, chicken... - Ooh, that sounds good.

- So yeah, it changes a little bit.

We're visiting Esmeralda, she teaches foreign people coming to Mexico.

- Okay.

- Gracias.

- Gorgeous.

- This is a very old part of the city, as well.

We're not so far from Centro.

- Mucho gusto... - Hola.

- Nice to meet you.

- Me llamo Chris.

- Esmeralda.

We are going to do something called pastel Azteca.

We have the tortillas, which is the Mexican ingredient, chile poblano, that's also local.

You have to grill it and burn the skin off, and then we put it in a plastic bag, close it, and make it sweat.

- Steam.

- Yeah, it gets steamed and then you can peel it off very easily.

We have wild turkey.

It's usually made nowadays with chicken, but it used to be done with turkey, with rabbit, with different kinds of birds.

But then you have the cheese, and the cream.

This is a very simple thing that you can find in Mexican families, not in restaurants.

It's pretty weird.

- I was gonna say that... (laughter) Wild turkey... - (laughing) ♪ ♪ And then I'm gonna add the corn.

- And you said butter's more of a northern Mexican ingredient, not southern?

- Yes, but I also like to use butter with turkey because turkey can be a little bit intense and dry, so to fry it with butter makes it more creamy.

So I just want to wait for the corn to be... we call it dorado.

It's actually a cooking method that I haven't found anywhere else.

It's a cooking word.

- What does dorado mean?

- To make it golden.

So it's not even, you know, it's not frying, it's not roasting, it's... make it golden.

- So, it's, it's... - (laughs) So it's like... when the Maillard procedure, reaction starts to appear.

- I come all the way to Mexico City and someone's talking about Maillard.

♪ ♪ - Now, let's eat the rest.

- The taste is better, though.

Mm... Wow.

You should give up your professional career and start a chain-- the Mexican lasagna chain.

- (laughs) - This has so many things going on, right?

- I like the layers of flavors, right, 'cause you can taste everything.

- And like the typical American tourist I am, I'm just going to stand here and eat the whole plate, right?

- (laughs) - So Esmeralda, thank you so much.

As they say in Italy, molto bene.

- (laughs) Gracias.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know the last time I was in Mexico City, we walked the streets a lot, had a lot of great street food, like pork tacos.

But I was also introduced to a recipe called pastel Azteca, or Aztec pie, or also known as Mexican lasagna by Esmeralda Brinn.

Now this recipe has lots of takeaways that you see in lots of cooking in Mexico and it starts with poblanos.

Now we've taken the poblanos, put them in a very hot oven, 450 oven, for about ten minutes to char the outside.

So let's get those out.

♪ ♪ So, this is now ten minutes or so in a very hot oven.

We'll take them out, put them in a bowl, and cover them, which will steam them, so we can get the skins off easily.

So one of the things I found cooking with lots of home cooks that week was they almost always started with a blender sauce.

The sauce is made with peppers or tomatoes, or tomatillos, in this case, and then it's put into a pan and cooked along with other ingredients.

So we'll start this with tomatillos, which is a pound and a half.

We have a cup of cilantro.

Three cloves of garlic, just whole cloves that have been peeled, a little vinegar, two tablespoons of vinegar, which is nice, and two teaspoons of cumin.

And a little bit of salt.

And we'll just blend that until it's smooth.

(blender whirring) Now we're gonna heat up a little oil.

So once the oil is hot, we're gonna put the salsa in the pan, cook it for five or six minutes, just to thicken it up a little bit.

Now be careful when you pour this in, because it will splatter.

(sizzling) ♪ ♪ So it's done, I can run a spatula through it and I can see it's thick enough.

Now we're gonna start by reserving half a cup of the sauce.

Be using that later.

This is a pound of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, an onion that's been chopped, a teaspoon of cumin, then a little salt and pepper.

Quarter teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of pepper.

So, we'll just mix that up.

You want to keep this on medium low-- a very, very low simmer, you don't want anything to stick.

So it's up to a simmer, we put the top on.

Cook this 15 to 20 minutes.

So meanwhile, we have the poblanos, we roasted them for about ten minutes at 450, let them steam, and we'll take them out.

I like to use paper towels to try to get the skin off.

Or my fingers, whichever works best.

Now that we've skinned the poblanos, we'll chop them up and we'll finish cooking the chicken in the sauce.

♪ ♪ So those are ready to go.

We'll continue cooking the chicken till it's done, about another ten minutes.

♪ ♪ Obviously the chicken's cooked, it's been shredded, we should have about three and a half cups.

If you have more than that, you can cook it down another couple of minutes to get it a little bit thicker.

So now we're gonna add the balance of the ingredients to the basic sauce here.

The poblanos that we skinned and chopped, a cup of corn-- fresh is better than frozen, but if it's frozen, please defrost it first, and then a quarter cup of cilantro at the end, and we're good.

So now we're gonna build the pastel Azteca.

Now, we're gonna use a nine-inch spring form pan with some foil around it.

So we'll start with half of the reserved sauce.

We reserved a half a cup.

So we're gonna put quarter cup at the bottom.

And now we're gonna build this Aztec pie.

We're gonna start with two and a half tortillas at the bottom of every layer.

Now we're gonna put half of the chicken mixture on it.

Next up is the Mexican crema.

Now it's a little like sour cream, but it's not.

It's about 30% fat, which means that it's not gonna separate when it's heated, sour cream does tend to separate.

You can make this at home if you can't find it.

Use some sour cream, heavy cream, a little bit of lime juice, and let it sit for a couple of hours.

It's a little tangier than sour cream, but as I said, it has more fat, so it's really good for baking.

And then we have the cheese.

Now, we're gonna use two kinds of cheese-- pepper jack, 'cause it melts so well, has a little bit more flavor.

In Mexico, they might use, obviously, a lot of local cheeses, quesillo, for example, which is like a mozzarella.

They have some smokier and sort of richer cheeses they might use, but this is what you can get here and it works pretty well, so we use about a third of the cheese now.

Because we'll end up topping this with two kinds of cheese at the end.

This is where it resembles a lasagna, it's the cheese.

And then we're gonna repeat.

So we have tortillas as a base.

I'm going to put the remaining chicken mixture on.

We're gonna use the balance of the crema.

By the way, if you can't find it, you can use creme fraiche that has enough fat in it, so it will work well in a hot oven.

Another third of the cheese.

We have the final rounds.

To finish off, we have three more things.

The balance of that sauce... Pepper jack cheese... And finally some cotija, finely grated cotija cheese.

It's a cow's milk cheese, it's a little bit salty, which we like a lot; the more it's aged, the more it has kind of a funky flavor.

It's really delicious, it's not that hard to find.

So this goes into a 375 oven for about 35 minutes, and you want to see the top really start to bubble.

♪ ♪ So we took it out of the oven onto a cooling rack for half an hour then sprinkled it with toasted pumpkin seeds and cilantro.

So let's cut into it.

♪ ♪ So pastel Azteca, it has a lot of fresh flavors-- it has the poblanos, the crema, the cheese, it had the chicken, the corn, cilantro, cumin.

It's really an interesting, complex series of flavors.

And thanks to our friend Esmeralda Brinn, we have a whole new way to think about lasagna, pastel Azteca.

♪ ♪ We drive through Mexico City in the early morning and we're headed to the Coyoacan Market.

It's chilly, and inside the market it's sparsely populated, with the occasional worker pushing a hand cart.

It really is the calm before the storm.

You know, Mexican markets are an energetic mix of eateries and bars, there's produce and crafts, snacks, clothing, toys.

And walking down the narrow aisles is in fact an art.

So you're likely to bump into brightly colored dry chilies, open-jawed skeletons, or piles of mole powder and paste.

And after threading the Coyoacan needle, I finally head to the back of the market and I'm seeking out Adriana Luna.

She's the proprietor and chef at La Cocina de Mi Mama and she's going to cook us her version of fajitas called puntas a la Veracruzana.

Adriana, thank you so much.

- Muchas gracias.

- Muchas gracias.

- We're going to cook some (speaking Spanish).

She's going to add a twist to it.

It's one that she really likes, this Veracruz style.

So she's adding some olives, and these that we call chile guero.

- What is chile guero?

- (speaking Spanish) - It's very... - You're gonna say mild now, right?

- Mild... - I knew you were going to say mild.

- It's mild, but also in color.

And it's not spicy.

(laughs) - I know you well enough not to trust you when you say not spicy.

♪ ♪ - (speaking Spanish) - This is bistec?

- So this is pork-- - Oh, it's pork.

- Pork, cut like fajita-style.

- Okay.

(speaking Spanish) - When the tomatoes releases its juices, she will add some sea salt.

And she's pointing that this salt is from Nayarit.

That's the Pacific side, going north.

- Every chef in Mexico City has a different opinion about which salt is best, right?

They all have their little region, right?

- She just likes how this kind of salt sort of goes with all the cooking she does.

- (speaking Spanish) - (laughs) ♪ ♪ - (speaking Spanish) - She's saying, "I've tried fajitas in the States, and I've noticed they really like putting... adding cumin."

She doesn't like cumin at all, to put in here.

- She's very clear that the fajitas in the States are really terrible, right?

- No, no, no... - Oh, no, no?

♪ ♪ - (speaking Spanish) - So now she will add the olives.

- (speaking Spanish) - So she'll cover it again, to release the juices of the meat.

It's ready.

- Great.

This is a very quick dish.

- Sí.

- Mm...

So, yes, this is better than our fajitas.

- (laughs) Muchas gracias.

- That is so good, layers of flavor.

There's a little bit of spice, but not too much.

Everything just goes together so well.

Muchas gracias.

- Muchas gracias.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - So the energy in that market, with all of those colors, and sounds, and I can only imagine the smells-- it's so vibrant and that vibrancy is really reflected in the dish that we learned there, puntas a la Veracruzana.

So, chef Adriana Luna taught us the recipe and she taught us that puntas means "tips," which is paper-thin pieces of pork, tossed in a Veracruz sauce.

A la Veracruzana means "in the style of Veracruz."

Veracruz is a state on the Gulf Coast of Mexico.

It's where the Spanish first arrived in Mexico, and with them brought some Mediterranean flavors.

So you'll see that reflected in the dish.

There's tomatoes, tons of garlic, capers, olives, and parsley.

So let's get started with the pork.

So I have boneless pork loin chops here.

We're gonna slice it really thin, about a quarter of an inch thick, which can be a bit challenging to do when the meat is raw.

So a great tip is to just pop it in the freezer for a little bit.

You don't want it to get frozen, just firm it up a little.

That will allow your knife to kind of slice through really easily.

And that's what I've done here.

So let's go ahead and slice.

So you want these pieces nice and thin, so they're very tender.

♪ ♪ So everything is done in one skillet.

I'm gonna add a little bit of neutral oil.

So while that's heating, I'm gonna season the pork with salt and pepper.

♪ ♪ So the oil is just smoking, so I'm gonna add the pork in a single layer.

(sizzling) So we're browning the pork, but we're also adding a little bit of flavor to the pan where we're going to build the sauce.

Now this will only take two or three minutes to get browning, and we're only going to brown it on one side, then we'll take it off the heat and we'll finish cooking it later in the sauce.

So now we can add the garlic.

There's a lot of garlic in this.

This is 12 cloves of garlic, but we want to take it off the heat when we add the garlic.

And that's because this pan is really hot from cooking that pork and we don't want the garlic to burn.

So we'll use the residual heat of the pan to get this started.

We'll put it back on the heat, but this time at medium.

So we'll let this cook here for just a few more minutes, just until it's nice and golden brown.

So now we'll add some chopped onion and a little bit of salt and pepper.

(sizzling) And we'll let this cook until that onion is nice and translucent and soft, about five minutes.

These are jalapenos, jalapenos on the mild side of chili peppers.

I'm going to seed them and stem them... and cut out the ribs inside.

Cutting out the ribs and the stems will make them a lot less spicy.

♪ ♪ We can add those jalapenos we just chopped up.

I've got some cored and chopped ripe tomatoes, make sure they're ripe.

And a few bay leaves.

(sizzling) Once it comes to a boil, we'll cover it and lower the heat and let the vegetables cook.

In the meantime, I'm gonna chop up the main ingredient, which are the olives in this.

This is truly what makes it a Veracruz sauce.

You'll always see olives in a Veracruz sauce.

So this is boiling, I'm gonna cover it, reduce the heat to medium, and let those vegetables soften.

This will take about eight minutes or so.

♪ ♪ So the vegetables have softened.

We have a lot of liquid in the pan now, so I'm gonna actually crank up the heat to medium high and let this reduce, and you actually want to thicken it quite a bit, almost over-thicken it because when we add the pork, plus the juices from the pork and the juicy olives in, it's gonna loosen the sauce.

All right, so this looks great.

As you can see, it's nice and thick.

I can drag my spatula right through it.

Add the pork back in.

And any juices from the pork should go in as well, because that's a ton of flavor.

And then the olives.

And we'll just let this cook, just until that pork is cooked through.

That's really only gonna take a minute or two.

All right, this looks great, so I'm gonna take it off the heat.

We'll take those bay leaves out.

And now we can add the capers.

Gonna add some add some really nice, bright acidity to this.

And some parsley.

♪ ♪ So I'm gonna do this fajita style, in a charred tortilla, but you could also have this with a side of rice and beans.

Wow, that looks amazing, it's so vibrant, you can almost smell each individual ingredient in there.

So, pork in Veracruz sauce-- thank you to Adriana Luna at the Coyoacan Market for introducing us to this dish.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

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- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served.

Cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad: for all your kitchen adventures.

- Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Tel Aviv... - Welcome to Oaxaca's airport.

- Welcome to Beirut.

♪ ♪ (man speaking Hebrew) - (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

♪ ♪ - Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

♪ ♪ - So this is the Eduardo García blender.

- This is the no electricity.

♪ ♪ - Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

♪ ♪ I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something, and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

♪ ♪ - Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

♪ ♪ - This is a generational thing.

It's, it's something that you inherit.

♪ ♪ - Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for?

What did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪