mexican cooking

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Outrageously luscious comfort from your pantry: Hello, huevos rancheros!

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Huevos rancheros is the opposite of a salad. It’s warm, and saucy. It’s rich and spicy and comforting. With everything we’re all going through these days, you deserve to have it for lunch — even in the middle of the week.

Does the steaming, rich, gooey extravaganza seem like something that can only be had in a restaurant? It’s not! It’s actually super easy to make at home.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you had everything you need to make it already in your kitchen:

• Corn tortilla

• Eggs — or even a single egg

• A can of diced tomatoes

• One of those tiny cans of diced green chiles

• Half an onion

• Two or three garlic cloves

Maybe you don’t have garlic cloves, but you have some garlic powder. Maybe you don’t have that little can of green chiles, but you have some red pepper flakes or Tabasco. Maybe you don’t have corn tortillas, but you have masa harina and you know your way around a tortilla press. You’ll manage. I’ll walk you through it.

Probably you do have salt and cooking oil of some sort. Queso fresco or cotija — or even feta or goat cheese or one of those bags of pre-grated fiesta mix? I’m sure you’ve got one the above. Cilantro? Yes! Totally not essential, but lovely if you have it.

If you have a can of pinto beans (or some dried ones and you put up a pot first thing in the morning), you can have dreamy side dish, too. Or maybe you have black beans. But don’t even worry if you don’t: Your belly and your soul will be in a very happy place when the noon-time whistle blows.

We made this indulgent lunch from stuff we happened to have lying around.

We made this indulgent lunch from stuff we happened to have lying around.

Here’s how to achieve the lunch that we all absolutely deserve.

First, toss together a ranchera sauce: blitz a can of diced tomatoes with some diced green chiles from a can and two or three garlic cloves. Set it aside. In a saucepan, sweat half an onion, then add the purée and salt. Simmer five minutes. Taste it: Wow. Sauce whipped up from cans has no right to be that good!

Lightly fry a tortilla or two. Blot and put ‘em on a plate. Fry an egg or two in your tortilla oil, any way you like ‘em — over-easy, sunny-side-up. Slide the egg onto the tortilla, spoon ranchera sauce over. Garnish with whatever you’ve got — crumbled cotija or cheese from a bag, a fresh sprig of cilantro or two.

Don’t you wish you had a ripe avocado? Man, I actually had one and forgot I did. A few slices on the side would have been awesome. (Still kicking myself!)

You’ve already heated up that can of pinto beans or refried beans. Spoon that next to the eggs.

Got it? Here’s the recipe:

If you want to make pinto beans, wash a pound of dried pinto beans, place them in a large pot, add 10 cups of hot water and half an onion, sliced, and bring it to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to very low, cover the pot, and cook — stirring occasionally — till the beans are tender. It might take anywhere from 90 minutes to 2 1/2 hours, depending on the beans. Add more hot water as you go along if they need it toward the end (you want it very liquidy). 10 minutes before you want to eat them, stir in salt to taste. That’s the basic recipe; throwing in some garlic and herbs (thyme, bay leaf) in the beginning is lovely too.

If it’s only huevos rancheros that you’re after, you can put that together in twenty minutes. Is it a date?

Meanwhile, tonight, if you can’t sleep, think about all the ingredients in your pantry and fridge that you’d love to find a delicious use for. Give me a list in the comments below. I’ll dream up something enticing for you to make.

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Luscious, crispy-edged, flavorful carnitas are (guess what!) super-easy to make

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I have one word for you: carnitas. Think about it: those super-flavorful, crispy-edged morsels of tender pork would be absolutely heavenly wrapped in a warm, handmade corn tortilla with a good dose of salsa verde. 

Here's the easy way to make those tortillas. And you have the recipe for zippy, deep-flavored roasted salsa verde. Just one thing missing. Where's the meat?

It probably seems as though great carnitas would be tricky or complicated to make, but it's actually a snap: You can make killer carnitas with very little effort – or expense. 

For years I was married to Diana Kennedy's recipe, the one in her classic cookbook The Cuisines of Mexico. It's easy, and I love the technique: Cut up a fatty piece of pork (I use pork shoulder) into smallish strips, cover it with salted cold water, simmer it till the water evaporates and the pork starts to brown in its own fat, brown the pieces all over, and that's it. Beautifully simple: just three ingredients, about an hour and ten minutes and very little work.

The thing is, done that way, the carnitas are very good – I've made them a million times. And they're definitely easy. 

Carnitas from Diana Kennedy's The Cuisines of Mexico

But they're not crazy-good. The smallish morsels do have that nice crispness, but last time I made them I found myself wanting more lushness, more tenderness.

What to do? Lots of carnitas recipes, especially cheffy ones, call for one large cut of pork that you roast for hours in a Dutch oven, then pull apart with forks to serve. Nice, but a giant commitment, and you don't get so many crispy edges. Also, I'd rather not turn on the oven for three or four hours on a hot summer day. 

I wondered if maybe I could split the difference. If we started with medium-sized pieces of pork rather than smallish strips, we should get more textural contrast – caramelized crispness on the outside, and the kind of tender meat you can pull apart with a fork on the inside.

So that's what I did. I cut a pork shoulder into three-inch chunks, covered them in water and simmered them on the stove, then fried them in their own fat. 

Carnitas heaven!

The compromise works brilliantly. The carnitas, which cook about 15 or 20 minutes longer than the Kennedy way, get lots of crispy edges and caramelized flavor, but they're tender and luscious inside. Adding a few sprigs of thyme, bay leaves and pieces of orange zest to the water doesn't add much work, but it definitely add complexity.

Here's the recipe:

And of course you'll want to make some corn tortillas.

And some roasted salsa verde:

I know what you're thinking: guacamole would be great in those tacos, too. You're right. It's not necessary, but it does send them over the top.

OK! Definitely let us know how this one goes. 

 

 

 

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Crash course in Mexican cooking: lamb barbacoa tacos

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Here's a project to attempt if you're in the mood for a major cooking endeavor. It involves some advance planning – scouting ingredients, a day or so of advance prep, a long, slow roast (three hours) and an hour letting the meat rest. You'll make a serious salsa, for which you'll roast dried chiles, spiked with mezcal, and create adobo, the brilliant paste that serves as a marinade for the lamb. You'll learn how to simulate pit-roasting in your oven. You'll make handmade corn tortillas. 

A lot of work – and time – to be sure. But it's really fun (if you're the type of person who loves to spend quality time in the kitchen), and when you're done, if you're not already adept at Mexican cooking techniques, when the project is done, you will be. 

And you will have something incredibly delicious to show for it. Invite your more gastronomically inclined friends, people who will truly appreciate it. It's the moment to break out that bottle of great mezcal you're been hoarding.

Lamb barbacoa – pit-roasted lamb – is a specialty of Oaxaca. I had a wonderful rendition recently in Mexico City, at El Cardenal in the historic district. So when I found a version in Alex Stupak and Jordana Rothman's new cookbook Tacos: Recipes and Provocations, I had to try it. Even if it meant chasing down ingredients in no less than four stores, two of them huge Mexican supermarkets. 

The most challenging was probably dried avocado leaves, which I found at one of the Mexican supermarkets (La Michoacana Meat Market in Richardson, Texas). I'm glad I bought three times the amount I needed, so I won't go through that next time. 

The two other challenges were fresh banana leaves, which I found easily at a Fiesta supermarket, and a boneless lamb shoulder. My local Whole Foods didn't have any kind of lamb shoulder; so I called Central Market (another well-stocked Dallas area supermarket) and the butcher was happy to bone one for me. I couldn't help but wonder, after making the dish, why it called for boneless. Maybe because it only called for two pounds? Still, my Dutch oven could have accommodated a larger piece of meat, and I would have been thrilled to have more barbacoa, so I think next time I'll try using a bone-in shoulder – or a piece of one.

So here's how the thing goes. The day before you're going to serve the tacos, make adobo. It's included in the main recipe. Five and a half hours or so before you want to make the tacos, take the lamb shoulder out of the fridge and let it come up to room temperature. Coat the roast in the adobo (very messy!).

Line a Dutch oven with banana leaves (this is explained more precisely in the recipe), then add a layer of avocado leaves:

Place the adobo-coated lamb shoulder on top . . . 

Cover it with more avocado leaves, then fold the ends of the banana leaves over it all and tuck them in.

Pour in a cup of water, cover the Dutch oven, and roast it slowly for three hours. After letting it rest at room temperature for an hour, unwrap the lamb, discard the banana and avocado leaves, skim the fat off the sauce and strain it, clean the Dutch oven, shred the meat and add it to the sauce. 

This is the moment when you know it was all worth it! The complex flavors go very deep. It's delicious.

Up for it? Here's the recipe:

You can eat the lamb barbacoa wrapped in freshly made corn tortillas, maybe dressed with guacamole (that's how I had it in Mexico City). Or you can go all the way and make Alex Stupak's lamb barbaco tacos. If you do that, you'll want to make salsa borracha sometime during the roasting process, or the day before. This is the part where you get to toast dried chiles and reconstitute them, grinding them up with other ingredients.

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You'll also need to prep the other stuff that goes in the tacos with the lamb: mince some white onion, chop green olives, slice some limes and cucumbers. 

Here's what you have to look forward to:

Awesome, right? Here's the recipe:

Let us know, in a comment, how it all goes!