Salsa Macha

This is an essential hot salsa for tacos. It's very easy to make and it adds a very earthy taste that adds depth and balance to acidity of limes, tomatoes, etc. The only drawback (for some) is that it's hot, really hot, hence the name. And the oil means that the heat just builds and builds. I think it's best on fried fish tacos with corn tortillas, but also goes well on everything!

What you need:
Olive oil
Dried Arbol chilies
Dried Chipotle  
Garlic cloves
Salt

Add about a cup (2.3dl)  of olive oil to a cold pan. Throw in a few cloves of garlic cloves, a Chipotle and a big handful of Arbol chilies (you can also use dried chilies that you'd get at an Asian or Turkish market). Turn the stove on to low heat.

After a couple minutes the garlic should start bubbling a little and the warm oil should start smelling of chilies. Stir things around every few minutes. After 10-15 minutes it should be done. The garlic should start to become translucent and slightly brown and the chilies will begin to brown just slightly (picture below).  

 

Take every out of the pan and into a blender or here I used a hand-blender. Blend until everything is relatively smooth.

 

Done. Put in a jar and it will keep in your fridge for a month or two. Put on everything!

Pollo asada

Pollo asada is just grilled chicken, but delicious. I've been working on a recipe for a while trying to get something that I love and reminds me of home. We usually just buy this pre-marinated and just grill it, so I've relied on recollection of taste and words of wisdom from Mexican friends.

Secret Ingredient-
First and foremost I've been taken aside by several friends with the same low whisper and hand jester to come over:

"Hey, Ryan come 'ere... hey man, you wanna know my secret ingredient?"
"Yeah, what is it?"
"Ok, but you can't tell anyone, ok?"
"Yep"
"It's beer man! I put beer in marinade!"

I've heard this several times now, this exact same way. I'm not sure how secret it really is now; It's the secret ingredient that everyone knows about. Nonetheless, crucial (also key in carne asada). Even more crucial that it's cheap beer (all the Norwegians are rejoicing). Which leads to the next little nugget of wisdom which comes from my friend's wife: "Ryan, you need to learn how to think like a Mexican, which means buying as cheap as possible. We don't by orange juice to put in our marinades, we buy Tampico (orange flavored drink)!" I have never had the courage to try that... yet. Although for the meat and the beer this is true.

Here goes:

10 cl beer (lettøl works, Ringnes, Corona... pilsners) Drink the rest. If you're making this in the morning so be it.
Juice of 1 orange or 2 clementines 
1/2 Lime
2-3 cloves garlic minced or thinly sliced
1/4 small onion sliced very thin
2 teaspoons of sugar
5 tablespoons of Chile powder (I use a bunch of stuff you don't have, but the chile powder you get at the market is typically an ok blend that works well. Paprika and a little cayenne would do the trick as well.)
Cilantro (Koriander) fresh and chopped 3 tablespoons
Mexican Oregano 1 tablespoon (you don't have it but buy next time you're in the US or have someone ship you some)
Black pepper 1 teaspoon 
Salt alright I can't tell you how much salt to add, but taste the marinade. You want it to taste just a little saltier than you want your chicken to taste. 
500 grams of boneless, skinless chicken thighs (or breasts if you want to be disappointed) you can find this at Meny and sometimes at other markets or just debone the entire "kyllinglår" *add last*

Pop this in the fridge to marinate for at least a few hours but up to a few days or freeze. Then grill or broil until cooked through. You want super hot temps to caramelize the sugars. Make tacos! See my other recipes for tortillas and salsas.

 
 

Salsas

Shredded Pork and Beef

This is an important process to know for making a variety of dishes and we will come back to this again several times when making dishes like tamales, tacos dorados (fried, folded tacos), rolled tacos and here a version of chile verde. Often when you get a dish with shredded meat it can often be a mixture of pork and beef. My mom always claimed that "the Chile Pepper," one of Yuma's most well known Mexican food establishments, always used pork and beef in there shredded meat, I'm sure she's right.

So let's start, always use meat with bone in it, there is a lot of protein and hence flavor in bone that will change your meat from lack luster to fantastic. Don't use super lean meat, some fat is good, yet of course too much fat is not good so trim large excess pieces of fat before you begin. In terms of ratios of pork:beef I aim for close to 50:50 yet as beef is very expensive here I often use more pork than beef sometimes to a ratio of 30:70. If you have very large pieces you can cut them down to tennis ball size chunks to facilitate faster cooking. Beef takes a longer time than pork to to get to the point where is falls apart, just to keep in mind.

For every kilo (2 pounds) of meat I use a medium to large onion, quartered or eighths is fine; two bay leaves, three or four cloves of garlic roughly chopped, several jalapenos or other small hot green chiles, and a couple tablespoons of Mexican Oregano.

Add a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil to the pan on medium heat and add the garlic, onion, and chiles.











Shortly thereafter, add the meat, oregano and bay leaves let brown for a few minutes then add some ground black pepper, then cover with water.










Now you wait, if using a pressure cooker it will take 2-2.5 hours if your doing it in a pot then it will take over 4 hours on high heat and you will need to continually add water. The trick here is to end up with as little as liquid as possible, while avoiding burning the meat. I have done this enough to where I can judge the rate of evaporation to coincide with the meat being finished. Other option that are less risky are using the oven or cooking on lower heat for a longer period.



What you are looking for is meat that easily pulls apart using a fork. When you get to that point shred the meat using two forks and add salt to taste. This is the basic shredded meat. You can use this as is for a variety of dishes.

Chile Verde/Green Chile
From here green chile is pretty simple. You will need to roast some green chiles (pictured are Chiles from Hatch, New Mexico). In Norway you can buy a good replacement at the immigrant shops, they come in bags and are roughly 20cm long, dark to light green. Roasting can be done several ways: on a grill, in a pan with oil or under the broiler. You will need high heat as the idea is to blacken the chiles, lower heat

Add caption

Finished green chile and bean burros with salsa verde!

Frijoles (beans)

Along with corn another staple New World food are beans. There are a variety of ways to serve beans and prepare dishes made with beans but there is a core way to cook beans which I will discuss here. There  are a variety of common beans than are often used in Mexican food and this is often dictated regionally by the varieties common to the indigenous peoples of the area. In Arizona pinto beans are the prevalent variety, elsewhere black beans and white beans can be found in dishes in Central and Southern Mexico. Nonetheless the methods for the basic preparation is the same. For the methods below I will be using an Italian variety of bean that is quite close in appearance and flavour to the pinto bean.

Beans

pinto beans after the fast soak method

So one of the most important steps to making beans is soaking. Soaking does a few things: It shortens the overall cooking time while producing a softer less gritty bean; it also removes much of the soluble  carbohydrates which feed the bacteria responsible for gas production... less flatulance. So take a pound of beans (500 grams) and sort through them to check for stones or any other foreign material. Next add enough water to cover the beans by a couple volumes, the beans will soak and nearly double in volume so add enough water that they remain covered. From here you can go one of two ways. The first is overnight soaking for 12+ hours in water, drain and wash the beans before cooking. The other is the "fast soak" method where you cover with water as before, but then immediately begin heating the beans and bring it to a boil for 15 minutes, then turn off the heat and let the beans sit for an additional 45 minutes covered. Next drain and wash the beans.

Pinto beans with onion and poblanos before cooking

After you have your soaked beans by either method it is time to cook them. Cover them again with as much water as you used for soaking. Add one yellow onion, quartered, some hot green chiles like jalepenos as well as some milder chiles. Then a little smoked pork (a few oz; 50-100g), this can be bacon, smoked pork hock, etc. Now turn on the heat and sit back, add water to keep the beans covered it will take several hours until the beans are soft... unless you have a pressure cooker then it takes under an hour. After soft add salt to taste. There is the basic process for beans. Here are some variations:

Frijoles rancheros (ranch beans, recipe I stole from my friend's aunt): After your beans are done cooking, in a skillet fry up some bacon until crispy, remove the bacon. In the grease fry up diced red onion until soft, then add chopped tomato. After the mixture is hot, chop and add the bacon back then use this to top a bowl of beans with some chopped cilantro (fresh coriander). Serve with tortillas and salsa.

Frijoles refritas (Refried beans):

Despite the name these beans are never fried. They are just smashed beans with fat, lard is the best (you can use vegetable shortening or butter). I take the beans, prepared as above, add a tablespoon of lard and blend with a hand blender. If they are too thin you can keep heated until they evaporate enough (if you plan on making refried beans I try to adjust the liquid before blending as it is much easier to burn the beans after blending). These go with almost everything, for instance burritos with chile verde (below). Tortillas from previous post, salsas and chile verde to come...

Tortillas de maiz... the corn tortilla.

Corn tortillas are something that I often took for granted. It seemed no matter where I went in the U.S. I could find good to fantastic corn tortillas. Norway has few options: import tortillas or make your own. I had originally been bringing masa and tortillas from the US but I was not quite satisfied with the results from masa. Therefore I decided to start from scratch.

Corn tortillas are made from corn yet the process is not so straight forward. As a kid I tried making them from corn flour/meal with unsuccessful results. The reason for my failure was that the corn had not been treated/processed before it was ground. This process is called "nixtamalization" and this can be done at home. Nixtamalization utilizes an alkaline solution to denature proteins in the corn to make them bio-available (digestible) to us humans. It also makes the resulting dough sticky, allowing it to be used for a tortilla. For this process you can use calcium hydroxide (CaOH) also referred to as pickling lime (this is what I use) as well as wood ash (I have not tried this yet).  Here is the process:

Nixtamalization (for tortillas, tamales, sopas...)

You'll need:
1kg or 2lbs Dried corn (not popcorn nor sweet corn)
CaOH 1 tablespoon
Water

Combine a tablespoon of CaOH (careful this is caustic) with a few oz or a dl of water mix in a stainless bowl and set aside. In a stainless steel pot add the corn and enough water to cover the corn by 1.5 volumes (for example if you have corn filling the pot to 1 liter then fill with water to 2.5 liters).  Add the CaOH solution and set on the burner and bring to a boil for 10-15 minutes. Cover and let the corn sit overnight, 12+ hours.

White corn after sitting overnight in CaOH solution.

White corn before nixtamalization (left) and after (right).

Now the corn is treated the next step is wash the corn and remove the shell. This is done by rubbing the kernels together until most of the shell (the shell should be like peeling skin from a sunburn) is removed (below). 

Grinding the corn 

So this was a bit of work finding a grinder/mill but I ended up finding an antique that works pretty well, although you can also purchase a Corona Corn Grinder at brewer supply companies in Norway or a good food processor might work. Here's a short video of mine at work: 

Here is the resulting flour:

After ground I take warm water and dissolve enough salt until the water tastes like sea water. Here is an important note: too much water and your tortilla will stick to everything and won't stick to itself. So add water slowly until the dough just comes together.

finished dough

Almost there.

Preheat a griddle or pan, you may want to lightly oil the surface to begin with. Next take make a small ball (golfball size) by rolling between your hands. The place between two pieces of plastic and press to a thin tortilla (see below).

Carefully peel back the plastic and set on the very hot griddle

when the tortilla begins to bubble, flip once for another 30-60 seconds depending on heat and remove

Done... here is the basic corn tortilla. We will come back to these in the future to make a variety of  tacos, chips, tostados and other dishes. 

I will next be adding some other basic staples such as beans, rice and salsas so you can start putting together some dishes. 

Spices, ingredients, etc...

Making some dishes here in Norway can be quite difficult because there hasn't been much demand for the necessary ingredients and I find myself importing chiles, corn and other items when I return from visits to the U.S. Although recently I have been finding more and more ingredients at specialty shops in Oslo and I will point out where to get the things you need throughout this blog.

CHILES
Below is a selection chiles/peppers. To the left are fresh green poblanos; moving to the right are anchos, aka pasilla (dried poblano after turning red); next New Mexico Chiles, then Gaudillos these and the aforementioned chiles are quite mild and sweet and are generally used in sauces. The next four can be quite hot and smell smokey. To the right of Gaudillos are chile tepin (spherical, small and pretty hot); below them are chile pequin (pretty similar to the tepin, perhaps slightly smokier); moving to the left are chipotles which are smoked, then dried red jalapenos. To the left again are Chile de Arbol, they are quite hot and I use them in a lot of my salsas.

BEANS and CORN

Beans and Corn are staples in Mexican food and many varieties exist in the Americas. Indigenous farmers have traded, grown and through selection, adapted varieties to local growing climates. In Africa for instance Corn (Maize) has become a staple throughout Africa and new varieties are under continual development for cultivars which are better adapted in terms of yield, drought/disease resistance, etc. to specific localities. Want to know more? Here is a paper from some colleagues: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0047832   

Pinto Beans (left) and Borlotti Beans (right). I have not been able to find pinto beans in Norway but they grew really well here last summer; the Italian Borlotti bean is a great substitute and can be found in many "grønnsaker torg/buttiker" in Oslo.  

Black Beans (the black ones), White Beans (the white ones) and Borlotti (in the back).

Giant White Corn (right) and Blue Corn (right) used for corn tortillas, posolé (type of soup), etc.

OTHER GOOD STUFF...

Tomatillos "little tomato" these are used in salsa and other sauces and have a distinct citrus/apple taste. A friend said they found these at Thulasy Daglivare in St. Hanshaugen otherwise they grow like weeds in this country. You will need two or more as they do not self-pollinate well... need seeds I have some.

Mexican oregano (Lippia graveolens), while it smells like oregano (Origanum vulgare) the taste is actually quite different and is one of my favorite herbs. 

Bay leaves or laurel can be found everywhere and used in everything...