Welcome to Mexican Madness, an exploration of Mexican and Southwestern cookery interpreted
by some of the great chefs of America. From New York City, Zarela Martinez, Bobby Flay and Lynn
Aronson, Mark Holliger from New Orleans, and from Washington DC, Mark Miller. Mark Miller's Red
Sage restaurant in the nation's capital has been the talk of that very talkative town since it
opened in 1992. A visit from President and Mrs. Clinton didn't hurt. But Chef Miller's cooking
does not need celebrity hype. An example is his lamb loin and Pueblo flatbread. It begins with
preparation of the bread. Two cups of all-purpose flour and our dry ingredients first, tablespoon
of sugar, tablespoon of salt, and one teaspoon of baking powder. This is a very simple mixture and
it's an all-purpose bread. You can fry it, you can bake it, you can use it as a pizza bottom. It's a
real popular bread here at the restaurant. Now we're going to add our wet ingredients. We're going
to chop up, before we add our milk, we're going to chop up our herbs a little bit more. They're a
little bit too big. Okay, so here we have our sage, our chive, and our fresh mushroom. Okay,
that's good enough. We don't want to get the herbs too fine, but we'd also want them to distribute
evenly throughout the dried ingredients to distribute the flavor. So we've got our dried
herbs, our fresh herbs. It's also, if you use dried herbs in this recipe, they tend to burn and not
give you the flavor that you need. So really use some fresh herbs, even if you just have to use
like fresh parsley and one other herb. The sage is the most important one. Okay, we're going to add
our wet ingredients, our one cup of milk. We're going to put that together. We put our dough
together and we're going to get a nice ball that's not too dry, again, not too soft. So get our herbs
now. You can cover this in plastic and put it in the refrigerator and make this a day ahead of time.
It holds perfectly well. You can use it, roll it out for a pizza dough. So we're going to lightly
roll this out on a floured surface. A trimmed loin of lamb is used to flavor it with the South wet
and dry rub. We're going to flavor this with a dried rub, which has mostly chilies, also aniseed,
dried coriander, fresh thyme, dried oregano, and a hot chili, a little bit of black pepper and some
salt. We're just going to roll that in our dry marinade, give the loin a little bit more flavor,
a little crust and seal in those juices. Again, a light coat. You could put some sage in here,
but I like a mixture of sage or thyme, certainly. It gives you some of those desert tones.
We're going to take our loin. Now you want to have the loin cold. If you have the loin at
room temperature and you dry sear it, it'll start cooking too much. So that by the time we wrap it
with our dough, we'll end up with a medium well loin. So it's important that you have your loin
cold or cold to do the dry searing. And again, we don't want to cook this till it's black and we
just want to cook it about a minute, a minute and a half on each side. And here we're going to cook
just the two sides, not the sides. All right, we're going to take a lamb loin off. Give it a little
bit of crust. There we go. You can also use a venison loin for this. You can also use it,
pork loin or veal loin for this dish. It's a really, really nice centerpiece. This is one of
the dishes that we use for Valentine's Day when the president and Mrs. Clinton came for dinner.
Let's see. Here we've got our Pueblo bread rolled out with the fresh herbs in it. We can stretch it
out a little bit. Want to get it about a quarter of an inch thin. Want to take off most of the
flour after we've rolled it out off the surfaces. We don't need that. So I've made a mixture of
spicy black bean that's been pureed with fresh mint. The black bean spread is also flavored with
roasted cumin seed, roasted oregano and chipotle chili sauce. Okay, next thing we're going to do is
we're going to take our loin and we're going to cover it with some blanched mustard greens,
which we've blanched off in a little bit of salted water and then cooled off. The bigger
mustard greens, we're going to pull out part of that center stem that's a little bit tough.
Put the mustard greens down to put our loin lamb on top and then we're going to again pull out
those big center stems and put enough mustard greens around in order to fully encase the whole
loin. The screens are a little bit wet so I'm going to put them, make sure that they're dry
because otherwise you won't get a nice crusty lamb. Put that last green down and we're going to just
pick up some of that excess moisture here in our greens because we don't want our pastry to be
soggy inside. Okay, bring that up, bring those over. We've got a little mustard green package.
The last ingredient that we're going to add is goat cheese and the goat cheese, you can use an
unflavored goat cheese either domestic, I think a lot of the Americans really make great goat
cheeses. Now this is a goat cheese from California. We also have goat cheeses from New Mexico,
Upper State New York and you want to put a fairly thick coat of the goat cheese because of course
the goat cheese is going to melt. It's going to create that sort of tanginess and sort of coolingness
against the bitterness of the mustard greens and some of the of the chili. We're going to bring
our sides up. We're going to pinch our ends down. We're going to cut our ends off or not use them
so it's not important that we get that seen. The last thing we're going to do is we're going to
use an egg wash, which is a whole egg mixed with a little bit of cream or milk to give it some color.
Now we're going to put egg wash the bottom and the sides and the top. We're going to cook this in
about a 450 degree oven. If you have a convection oven at home and it'll take a little less time
and if you have a regular oven make sure that you get a hot oven otherwise the bread will
won't color and the meat will cook too quickly. Turn that over and we've got a lightly buttered
sheet pan to bake this on. In a standard oven bake the packet at 375 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes.
We're going to put this into our wood burning oven. This is an oven that was especially made
for us that uses wood. We get some of that wood smoky tones and this oven is burned very quickly
and stay very hot. Vegetable for this dish is a ragu of roasted corn, blackened Roma tomatoes,
and a melange of wild mushrooms and garlic sauteed in olive oil. Here we've got our different kinds
of wild mushrooms with our garlic and sauteed. Get our morels, our black trumpets de moritz,
fresh chanterelles, a little bit of portobello. Nice woodsy flavors. We're going to add to that
some blackened tomato. We're going to add our dry roasted corn. Now at this point all of our
ingredients have already been cooked. Our tomatoes have been blackened, our corn is already cooked,
so we don't want to cook this too long because our corn will get too starchy. Get nice colors
there. We're going to add a little bit of toasted Mexican wild oregano. We're going to add a little
bit of our chipotle and adobo, again our smoked chili sauce here. It gives us a little vinegar
and a little bit more of that smoky tones and a little bit more chili flavor. We want to cook
this only for about two to three minutes. The lamb loin will be served on a bed of this ragout. The
lamb and flatbread is carved for service. Okay we've got our two ends off. We're going to cut it,
you can either cut it in sections and lie it down. You could probably make about, if you want to serve
it as a smaller portions you'd make a large one and then cut it across and lie it. Here we're
going to cut it in a diagonal and do it sort of triangular so that it really looks pretty standing
up on the plate. Okay this is a serrated edge knife which is a little bit easier. If you can
look at that you've got our nice color of our lamb with our black bean and mustard greens and our
goat cheese. Put that one pocket going one way and another pocket going the other way. A lamb
stock based sauce flavored with a number of southwestern products and spiked with orange
zest completes presentation. We're going to finish our dish with our strained stock with
our flavor of the cinnamon. You can smell the cinnamon and the orange and the smoked chili,
that little herbal jus. Lola in New York is anything but an ethnic restaurant. However,
chef Lynn Aronson's menu has a rainbow of influences. For example, she presents a taco
with Japanese daikon radish sprouts and miso as well as Chinese rice wine vinegar and star anise.
It's called a tuna taco and begins by preparing the tuna for searing. So first I'm going to coat
the tuna in some egg white so that the spice mix adheres evenly to the tuna. You just you
want to lay it out flat so it does coat evenly. The spice mix is a combination of star anise,
sesame seed, ground black pepper, and coriander seed. I've already mixed salt into the spice mix.
All of the spices are toasted and then ground in a spice mill. You want to get your pan hot
but not too hot so that you don't burn those spices because they burn easily. You don't need
very much oil. Just make sure your pan is evenly coated. It's only going to sear for probably about
one minute on each side just until the tuna is cooked about an eighth of an inch all the way
around. You definitely need to keep a close eye on it. You might want to adjust the heat as you
go along. So now it's ready to be sliced and you can just take it off the flame and hold it aside
until you're ready to use. The taco shell that I'm using is a peppered papadum. You can buy it in
any Indian market. They're extremely thin and they cook very, very quickly. It's predominantly
made of chickpea flour. They're made in India outside and they're let they stay outside and
they dry and that's how they become so crisp. You can probably see how they bubble up. As soon as
the entire shell is bubbled, you know it's done. It's very flexible at that point and you can mold
it with your hands to form the shape that you want it to be. This dish takes two vinaigrettes on the
plate. One is made from whole cucumbers. So you have the cucumber in the blender. I'm adding some
rice wine vinegar. The rice wine vinegar is a little sweet canola oil so it really makes a
nice combination with the cucumber. These are daikon sprouts. They're also a component in the
dish so I think it's really nice to add them into this vinaigrette. All you really want to do is
pulverize the cucumber until the oil and the rice wine vinegar come together. Seasoning is adjusted
with salt. Daikon, a Japanese radish, is diced to begin the relish which will garnish the tuna
taco. The relish also contains cucumber. So this is the relish for the top of the tuna taco. I'm
using a mandolin but it certainly isn't necessary to do that. You can do this by hand. You don't
have a mandolin at home. Once again it's not necessary to remove the skin. The skin gives
it really nice color and adds nice flavor. You want to make an even dice because it sits on
top of the tuna. It's the first thing you see. So with that cucumber vinaigrette that was just
prepared, the cucumber and the daikon get tossed in that. Now I'm going to slice the tuna really
thin. As thin as possible. If you try to go too thin sometimes it crumbles. You want to use an
extremely sharp knife. Presentation includes a miso vinaigrette containing miso paste, lime juice,
canola oil, and rice vinegar. Miso paste is fermented soybeans that you can buy in any Japanese market.
Also fresh baby spinach. I'm tossing the spinach and just a combination of also the canola oil,
and some lime juice.
Just going to put a little bit of this relish on top of the tuna. Garnish with the sprout.
The plate is finished with red curry oil and cilantro oil.
In New Orleans, German Bond chef Mark Holliger's Santa Fe restaurant trumpets the Mexican theme.
Actually Mexican food is one of the few ethnic categories not amalgamated in what is eponymously
labeled Creole cooking. Chef Holliger offers the Mexican specialty fajita, but instead of skirt steak,
he serves Louisiana seafood. We have a seafood fajitas here. You notice it nice. Louisiana,
if you're lucky enough to live in Louisiana, you have the variation of it. Even that one,
it doesn't, the green mussels does not come from that area, but I like to look assortment of seafood.
Soft shell crawfish. We have the green mussels. We have soft shell crawfish meat, the tail. We have
mussels. We have a monkfish. What you call a monkfish is the poor man's lobster. You can use any kind
of firm fish, but that's very good. Oh, you can use lobster even. Soft shell crab. We have
frog legs. We do find some frog legs somewhere around here. We have a few little shrimps here.
We have two oysters. Clarified butter is used in hot saute pans. So we have to make sure it is very,
very hot. Now, of course you don't put the cooked ingredients in. You put first in the ones that
take a little longer. This is the monkfish, the soft shell crab. And of course we have a beautiful
scallop. We don't get it from Louisiana, but that's better. You notice that the fish is wet. Now,
if you put it in a hot skillet, of course the flame comes up. You use a palette knife along
four so you don't burn yourself. Just move it over there. Fish, both sides. It doesn't take very
long. This is a dish you can cook very fast at home. Beer. You feel like you're in Mexico when you
cook that. Sliced onion and bell pepper are sauteed in the second skillet. You just put a little bit
of butter in it or margarine and you cook the peppers. We have this cooked for a while, a few
minutes. You put the rest of the seafood to it and you add in the mushroom to it. The best thing
is you're using definitely two skillets because otherwise it won't cook together. You add some
tomatoes to it. The rest of the vegetable. You let it cook nice. I have to put seafood spice. I
make it. Cape Horn seafood spice is very good too. But if you're using mine, I don't put salt
and pepper to it because it's spicy enough. You can't put the seafood spice too early because
otherwise it burns. Now I do put a little bit of salt and pepper to the veggie peppers to make
it better taste. Mix it all together. Doesn't it look delicious? Now you put on a platter,
you put our rice. Lovely colorful rice. The Mexican, Mexican saffron rice. You add beans
to it and we're using a brown gravy, any kind of brown gravy. I'll be calling a papalano sauce
because we put papalano puree in there. And of course we put a garnish on here. Salt,
cream, and guacamole. Flour tortillas are quickly heated. And if you want to cook something like
that, it takes a few minutes to cook it. Do you notice it? And don't tell me you'd, you have some
Mexican music and some good margaritas or sangria and you feel like in Mexico. A New York Times
critic calls Zarela's arguably the best Mexican restaurant in the city. Zarela Martinez and Abullion
Dynamo opened her operation in 1987 and the menu is vivid testament to a passion for her native
food. Born in Sonora, she was raised on a ranch and learned cooking from her mother. Several of
Zarela's menu items can be traced directly to this source, not uncommon in Mexican restaurants. She
presents two dishes here, beginning with a seafood stew with coconut milk and a fiery salsa verde.
Okay, so what we're going to be making is a salsa verde. And it's very simple. It's just a matter
of putting everything in the food processor and doing it for one second. We have an onion, which
is peeled and cut in a few pieces. We have five garlic cloves. Somebody came the other day and
said, I want something with that garlic. I said, you got the wrong place. Some jalapeno chilies.
This is a hot sauce. Eight fresh jalapenos. A little bit of oregano, some tablespoon of oregano.
Some isla sal. A bit of salt. Not too much. This is not the, my food processor at home is better than this.
Here we go. Put in a little bit of oil.
Olive oil is good here, but you can use vegetable. Yeah, fine.
And that's the whole secret of this. So we have to put the cilantro in it.
The salsa verde can be held covered and refrigerated for up to two weeks.
Okay. I love the flavor. This always reminds me of the ranch, the smell of the mint.
Another powerful flavor factor in the stew is chopped mint. Saute the salsa verde in butter to begin the stew.
And this, this sauce is very hot. Let me take a few spoonfuls.
The salsa is cooked for about two minutes before the seafood is added.
Put in the scallops.
The salmon. And some peeled shrimp.
So all of a sudden all that salsa doesn't look like it was all that salsa, huh?
Some chopped mint.
At this stage of the dish, stir constantly for two to three minutes.
Some of the, some nice fish stock. And the coconut water.
The coconut water was drained from a fresh coconut. A fourth of a cup of canned unsweetened coconut milk will substitute.
This is simmered uncovered for another two to three minutes until the seafood is opaque.
A few little shrimp, a little bit of sauce.
A little more scallops. And you just clean the plate.
Zarella's second offering is a chicken stew called drunken chicken. One of the flavorings is tequila.
A saute pan is preheated with vegetable oil and seasoning for the chicken is prepared.
We're going to combine some flour, salt and freshly ground pepper.
You can always never have too much pepper. We're going to dust this chicken in it.
I got this recipe from this woman that used to have a still next to the ranch.
And they used to make this recipe with mezcal. But since we can't get that kind of so tall here, we're doing.
I do it with tequila. But I love it.
The chicken pieces are browned on both sides of a medium high heat for about 10 minutes.
And in the meantime, I'm going to be heating up some sherry.
And plumping up some raisins.
But you're going to heat up a little bit and then we'll let it soak about 20 minutes.
After the chicken is browned, cover and keep warm using the same pan brown sliced onions.
And I get every little piece of chicken there.
And some almonds, some slivered almonds. You can make them whole if you want. Depends on the look that you want.
Like that you get a little bit toasted.
I often use whole olives, but you can also use sliced ones if you'd like.
And the plump raisins.
The olives and the raisins and the almonds are another one of the trinity of Mexican food.
They use very, very much.
A cup of tequila is mixed with some corn starch.
So we're going to add now some chicken stock.
And then some vinegar, some white vinegar.
You might not like it as sour as I like it, but Mexicans do like things sour.
We are the people that eat chili with lime.
And this is a little bit of sugar because you want to bring out a little bit of the sugar.
You don't really need to add salt because of the olives.
The sauce is simmered for about 10 minutes or until it thickens.
Cook it like that.
This is the at home version of this recipe.
Put it in the oven.
Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.
This can also be done on top of the stove.
It's a nice onion sauce.
And there you go, some pollo borracha.
The Mesa Grill in Manhattan is serious about its southwestern theme.
Executive chef Bobby Flea is the guiding hand behind it.
And in 1993 won the James Beard Foundation's Rising Star Award.
His dish shows he may have already risen.
With shrimp and roasted garlic tamale, which starts with a corn meal or masa stuffing.
Okay, first I'm going to make the masa.
I'm going to use some fresh corn.
Some fresh chopped jalapenos.
Some chopped red onions.
Little water or some chicken stock is fine also.
And then totally puree this.
Transfer this to a mixing bowl.
I'm going to add some yellow corn meal.
Vegetable shortening.
And some butter.
Salt and pepper.
Mix this well.
Takes a while to incorporate shortening in the butter to this.
Now I'm going to take some soaked corn husks.
Soaked in lukewarm water for about half an hour.
I'm going to take two and to lock them.
Wrap the husk around it.
Then I'm going to tie both ends.
Tod
Okay.
I'm just going to put them in the steamer.
Let them steam for about 45 minutes.
Next, garlic sauce.
I'm going to sweat some onions.
Some roasted garlic.
Some butter.
Sweat this for about five minutes.
Then I'm going to add about half a bottle of this white wine.
Let it reduce down until it's dry.
After the white wine is reduced, add the cream.
Let that simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes.
The ensuing mixture is processed.
Just blend it all together.
This is what it should look like.
Reserve the sauce until service.
These bluish shrimp are flown in from the Far East.
They are butterflied and will be sauteed quickly.
Take the steamed tamale.
I'm going to cut one end.
Let the masa spill out a little bit.
This will set up a plate.
One side.
And when that's done, add the roasted garlic sauce.
Some fresh corn.
Cilantro.
Salt and pepper.
Garnish with a little red pepper.
And that's it.
Mark Miller returns for another version of tamale.
During the 70s in San Francisco, he was at the epicenter of New American cooking.
Now he calls it modern western.
And when he deals with Mexican food, he is almost professorial.
As you will see with his wild mushroom tamale.
It too starts with the masa dough.
We put in two cups of dried masa, which is our flour that is from the dried corn that's
been used in Mexico for several thousand years.
Water.
About half a cup of warm water.
A bit of salt.
About a half teaspoon.
Some sugar.
Sort of sweetens up the corn.
And some baking powder.
Half teaspoon of baking powder.
We're going to add some dry roasted corn.
This fresh corn that's been dry roasted in a pan to give it a nice smoky flavor.
Accentuate the more sort of country tones.
A lot of the food was traditionally cooked on open fires or in wood burning ovens.
So the food always became smokier.
The last ingredient we're going to add is our butter.
This is about a cup of sweet butter.
Traditionally tamales have been made with pork fat.
We find that or lard.
And by using butter you can lighten the tamale up and it's more accessible.
You can also use margarine or another type of fat.
The more you whip the tamale dough the more air you get and the lighter your tamale will
be.
The last ingredient is dried mushroom powder.
We've taken our dried porcini or dried seps.
We put them in a food spice grinder and then you create some dried mushroom powder in order
to intensify the flavor of the wild mushroom flavor coming through the masa dough.
You can either use this dry or rehydrate it with a little bit of water.
The masa dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.
It's done.
You don't want to get it too wet and you don't want to get it too dry.
It's going to be dry enough to hold the consistency but not too wet that it doesn't pull away
from the sides of the bowl.
That's the important trick here.
Let's look at our dough.
We've got it pulled away from the sides of the bowl.
The other important thing when you're making tamales is to check on the fat.
You make a little bit of a ball here and you see how you sort of put it against your hand
and if you get a light coating here, a blistering, it means that you have enough moisture and
enough fat in it.
Otherwise, when you cook it, it will be too dry.
You always take the tamale and you get a light.
If it gets too oily, it should just be a light coat and the dough should form in a wet ball
and be very, very pliable.
If it's a little bit better to go to the other side of having a little bit more fat and moisture
than being too dry because when you steam them, they'll be very dry and mealy.
There we've got our dough.
Now, you can make this dough a day ahead of time, two days ahead of time, three days ahead
of time.
Three days is about maximum because it will ferment at you.
If you make it ahead of time, cover it in plastic wrap and keep it in the very cold
part of the refrigerator.
It doesn't freeze well, but it will refrigerate for two to three days.
Take our fresh morels.
A variety of wild mushrooms comprise the filling.
Some of our oyster mushrooms.
Another favorite mushroom that I love to use is called hen of the woods.
You want to get some nice meaty mushrooms.
This is woodsear.
It sort of looks like a pig's ear or something, but it's called a woodsear.
It has a sort of gelatinous kind of quality.
The mushrooms will have different flavor characteristics and also different textural characteristics.
So I like to use mushrooms and also the colors are really pretty.
Also the chef will use portobello, chanterelle, black trumpet, and shiitake, but any variety
available will work.
I'm going to slice up a little bit of fresh garlic to add to them.
French always have a saying that mushrooms without garlic is a little bit like a carriage
without a horse.
You want to get the garlic very finely minced because you don't want to have, you want to
cook the garlic very quickly and you don't want to have large pieces of garlic floating
around in the tamale because you want the mushrooms to be flavored by the garlic.
You don't want to bite into a piece of garlic.
Begin by sauteing the garlic in butter and olive oil.
We're going to add our mushrooms.
We're going to add the mushrooms before the garlic turns brown.
A little bit of salt and pepper to our mushrooms.
Salt will help bring out some of the liquid.
Also obviously as a flavoring, you don't need too much salt with mushrooms because they
contain a large amount of natural MSG.
A little bit more pepper.
You could also add some fresh herbs to this like a little bit of parsley or cilantro or
some chive.
When it's sort of near finishing, you don't want to lose too much of the color or the
flavoring of the herbs or the greenness.
So you would add the fresh herbs at the end of the process.
The mushrooms cook over medium heat for five to eight minutes.
I'm going to add a little bit of water to help them stew.
Next Chef Miller stuffs the corn husks.
We're going to spread the tamale.
Now you want to start about a third, about a fourth of the way down.
You want to leave about a half inch.
The idea here is to spread the dough out to a nice thin paste that you create a square
or a rectangle inside the tamale husk with a dried corn husk.
A lot of times people make their dough too thick and they don't get enough filling.
So what you're eating is a lot of masa rather than a mushroom tamale.
You can make barbeque tamales, you can make shrimp tamales, you can make lobster tamales,
you can make a goat cheese and raja, nice vegetarian tamales.
When you're working with the tamale dough it shouldn't adhere to your hands.
You should be able to work with it and press it in.
Now if you've got the ball refrigerated, take it out of the refrigerator about a half hour
because you want the dough soft as you're working with the dough.
The corn husks were soaked in water making them pliable.
The coloring here, you notice it's a little bit darker.
That comes from our wild mushroom powder.
You can add barbeque sauces, you can add mustards, you can add different kinds of hot sauces.
I really find it's fun to flavor tamales.
Now here you can see how thin we've made our dough.
We've made it approximately about less than a fourth of an inch.
Now we're going to put, this is sort of a tamale grande here, big fat tamale.
Put our stuffing in the center.
We want to use a lot of nice wild mushrooms.
See how that gives us the texture, different colors.
We don't want to have little tiny pieces of mushroom.
We want to have something that has a lot of body.
So you want to have a sort of generous tamale.
You don't want to be skimpy.
A lot of times you go to the grocery store and you buy those little Texan tamales.
This is a New Mexican tamale.
We're going to take one side of the masa dough and bring it over to the top.
We're going to create our seam.
Bring the other side, we're going to roll it a little thin.
We're going to pull the tamale husk away.
Bring the other side up.
Don't use your fingers inside.
Use the husk to use the tamale.
You don't have to touch the dough.
We're going to close the end here by pushing the outside and pinching it a little bit.
At this point we've got a little hole here.
We're going to take a little bit of dough, thin it out, and we're going to just put it
there and we're going to push down from the outside so that you have a nice thin casing
around the tamale.
There we have the mushroom filling that's closed at the top.
Now if you're using a wet filling, it's more important that you close off the ends.
This part is okay.
There are different ways.
Now we've got our tamale inside the husk.
Now this is what we're doing to do it very simply.
You could fold this over and you can steam it just like that.
You can actually tie both ends and we would have moved our dough to the center.
This one we're going to just, we're going to fold this side over and we're going to
tie and twist one end and we're going to leave this end open.
Tie the tamales with a strip of corn husk.
Make a little bit of a bow.
They are steamed for about 20 minutes.
For our sauce for our tamales, we're going to make a roasted or blackened or dry roasted
tomatillo sauce with smoked chilies.
The tomatillo, a lot of people think is related to the tomato, but actually it's in the gooseberry
family or the nightshade family.
It has a nice flavor of the, you can use it either raw or cooked, and the flavor of the
tomatillos, nice and tart, has sort of a green plum rhubarb flavor.
It's a really nice thing to use.
A lot of people don't know about the tomatillos.
Dry roast the tomatillos for 20 minutes over high heat, turning every five minutes.
Dry roasted garlic is also included in the sauce.
This is much better in a blender rather than a food processor because I find it's much
easier to do and it gives us a better consistency.
We'll add a little bit of garlic.
There's a little too much garlic.
We're going to add our smoked chilies.
Now these are chilies that were originally like large, called a huachinang or a very
large size jalapeno, and they turn red when they ripen.
Then they're smoked over their mesquite fires for about 72 hours or three days.
They have a very, very intense smoky, hot flavor, and it's a chipotle.
It comes also in this form.
You can buy it in a sauce that comes in a can called chipotle in adobo, which this is
already mixed.
It's this chili that's been pureed with a little bit of vinegar, tomato, onion, salt,
and garlic.
You can find it in the Latino markets called chipotle en adobe.
We're going to add the whole chipoles.
We're going to add two of these with the seeds, leave the seeds in.
You shouldn't actually need any extra water with this.
You can add just a touch of salt and a little touch of sugar to bring out some of the natural
sweetness of the tomatillo, just a tiny bit.
Sort of like in the Chinese cooking where we add a little tiny bit of salt, a little
sugar, sort of round out the flavors in our mouth.
Fresh cilantro leaves are the final flavoring.
So we're going to put our cilantro.
You want to get a little bit of the stem, the smaller part of the stem is fine because
it's going to blend, but you don't want your big stems.
I'm going to put that right in.
Now you put the cilantro in making sure the tomatillos are cool.
If the tomatillos are very hot, they're going to basically cook the cilantro and you want
to leave the green flavor and the texture of the cilantro in it.
So leave your tomatillos after you dry roast them and let them get to room temperature
or even cold.
We're just going to blend this part very, very shortly.
You want to see all the green specks in the sauce when you finish it.
So there we have our roasted tomatillo, smoked chili and cilantro sauce for our tamale.
We're going to serve this by peeling back.
This is the top part, this is the bottom part of the tamale, this is the top.
The bottom part is where our seam is and we always want to go to the top.
We're going to peel it back so that we can see.
We're just going to create little strips here so that you can actually see the tamale itself.
Now so you peel some for each end and you can fold it under.
Here we have the wild mushroom tamale.
You can see that nice dark texture from our dried mushroom pattern.
You can see the corn and you can see a little bit of the mushroom sticking out of the end,
which gives it a nice appearance I think.
This is our blackened tomatillo in smoked chili with cilantro.
Finally, some of the sauteed mushrooms.
A little bit of the portobello, a little bit of the black trumpets, some fresh chanterelle.
And then we have our wild mushroom tamale with wild mushroom dough.
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