Mexican chipotle chicken salad with avocado

With a little help from my friends: KANKUN chipotle sauce, Don Agustin tequila, and agua fresca de Jamaica from the Cool Chile Company

Summer's here and the time is right for eating salads in the street.

Or, you know, in your kitchen/dining room. Wherever.

Some people make a big deal about how the Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana (it was, you know).

What they don't talk about as much as that the chef, Caesar Cardini, was actually Italian, or that he was based in California but opened a restaurant just south of the border because the US had the whole Prohibition thing going on at the time.

But this salad weather we've been having got me thinking about a Rick Bayless recipe I've been meaning to rip off: chicken with avocados and chipotles.

Rick didn't intend this to be a salad. His recipe is more of a snack/taco filling. But I think this makes an awesome summer chicken salad, and shows you that Mexican food doesn't have to be heavy and stodgy.

Rick's recipe uses diced chipotles en adobo, which you can get from La Costena. If you do this, you have to dice the chiles very fine, otherwise you'll get random smoke-bombs while you're eating.

To make it easier to distribute the chipotles more evenly, you can make a chipotle sauce by combining a tin of chipotles en adobo, a tin of tomatillos, and a couple cloves of garlic.

I didn't have any tomatillos on hand. However, I did have a fresh bottle of KANKUN chipotle sauce, which is awesome. Basically, this stuff tastes exactly like a homemade Mexican chipotle sauce.

For the chicken, I poached some chicken breasts as I would for carnitas de pollo except I added some sliced carrot and potato.

When the chicken was done and shredded, I chopped up some romaine lettuce and avocados (do the avocados at the very last minute so they don't oxidize).

I also added some green tomatos (NOT tomatillos, which are actually not tomatoes at all but really a kind of gooseberry), because I have kind of a thing for Mary Louise Parker.

I don't wanna have dinner with you. You're covered in BEES!

I tossed everything together with the chicken, carrots and potatoes.

Rick Bayless says this should be topped with raw white onions, but I don't like raw white onions, so I made up a white onion version of Yucatecan Pink Pickled Onions:

Cebollas en escabeche

Ingredientes
1 white onion
1 habanero, fresh or dried
6 allspice berries
10 black peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon Mexican oregano
1/4 teaspoon cumin
120 ml white wine or cider vinegar

Procedimiento

Peel and thinly slice the onion.

Make a 1 cm slit in the habanero. (You can use more habaneros if you like it hot!)

Put the onion, habanero, spices, oregano, and vinegar in a bowl and add just-boiled water until the onion is covered by at least 1 cm.

Steep for about four hours.

Drain the onions, fish out the habanero and, if possible, the peppercorns and allspice.

Transfer to a serving bowl.

I served the salad covered with KANKUN (which I used as a salad dressing - seriously, it worked!) and with some sliced sourdough bread on the side.

Sourdough bread is kind of like a Guadalajaran bread called birote, but you could use a baguette or crusty white bread or (of course) fresh hot corn tortillas as well. 

For a drink I decided to keep with the summer thing and make a traditional agua fresca. 

Aguas frescas are non-alcoholic drinks made by steeping something in boiled water. There are lots of aguas frescas. Probably the most famous is horchata, which is made with ground rice and almonds, but I chose the hibiscus flower water or agua fresca de Jamaica. 

You can get this from the Cool Chile Company.

Instructions are on the bag, but what you do is combine half the bag with 1.5 L of just-boiled water and 150g of sugar, give it a good stir and le it steep over night. 

The next day, sieve it and serve!

I decided to make mine alcoholic by adding a shot of Don Agustin tequlia!

Because YOLO!

(I can't believe I actually wrote "YOLO". I feel like such a douche.) 

Breakfast with MexiGeek: Chimichurri scrambled eggs on blue corn tortillas with habanero sauce and queso fresco

...which is a mouthful to say as well as to eat.

First off: chimicurri is NOT Mexican. It is (I believe) Argentine. It seems to be kind of a "thing" just now. They sell it in supermarkets, and of course in Lupe Pinto's. It was even mentioned in the most recent series of MasterChef.

So this breakfast came together because I was near the end of a bottle of chimichurri, so I fried the sauce in hot oil, because frying sauce is one of the basic techniques of Mexican cooking.

When the sauce was sizzling, I cracked a couple of eggs and scrambled them until they were just done.

On a plate I had two warm blue corn tortillas from The Cool Chile Company and some slices of cured Spanish-style chorizo.

I put the chimichurri scrambled eggs on top of the chorizo, crumbled up some queso fresco from Gringa Dairy and some KANKUN habanero sauce.

Y provecho!

It ain't breakfast if it don't got chiles

It has never occurred to me to cook eggs without some form of chile. I'm not even sure that it's possible.

What I loved about this breakfast was that:

A) I made it up as I went along, and 

B) I made it with a little help from my friends: Cool Chile Company, Gringa Dairy, and KANKUN. Three of the reasons it is possible to cook Mexican food in the UK. 

Also, it was delicious, but that pretty much goes without saying.

KANKUN tacos al pastor

Tacos al pastor means "shepherd's tacos". I would expect British readers to have visions of mince and peas and carrots topped with mashed potato.

But "shepherd's tacos" has nothing to do with shepherd's pie. In fact, I don't think it has anything to do with shepherds, really.

Whereas in the US tacos have been corrupted by Taco Bell into a ridiculous (usually stale) U-shaped crispy thing nearly always stuffed with the same hardly Mexican ground beef filling, in Mexico a taco is usually a fresh (soft) corn tortilla which can be filled with just about anything.

There's even a verb, taquear, which means "to put (something) in a taco".

And yet despite this endless possibility, there are some fillings which are so popular they can be put on a Top Ten Favourite Tacos list. If tacos al pastor is not top of that list, it's got to be pretty close.

But that doesn't mean you can get them outside of Mexico.

I myself first heard of them in the book Fiesta en la madriguera. And a lot of Mexpat food bloggers complain of how much they miss them.

So what are they? Tacos al pastor are pork and pineapple tacos in a spicy sweet and sour sauce made of chiles and achiote paste (recado rojo).

I've read one recipe that uses chiles guajillos for the chile element, but my preference is for chipotles.

And one of the best - and most authentically Mexican-tasting - chipotle sauces you can buy is from KANKUN.

Now, before we get to the recipe, I have to warn you: these are "al pastor-style" tacos, rather than literal tacos al pastor. The reason for this is that there's more to these tacos than the sauce.

Normally you'd expect Mexican pork tacos to use fried pork or slow-cooked carnitas. You wouldn't expect this:

Again, I'm sure my British readers are thinking "Kebabs!"

And indeed, these most popular of Mexican tacos were apparently first developed by Lebanese immigrants! Which just goes to show that Mexico, home of one of the world's first "fusion cuisines", remains adventurous and open-minded even it comes to food.

However, this also means that in the absence of a spit-roaster you can't make proper tacos al pastor at home. The flavour will be right, but the texture of the meat will not be quite the same.

One Mexpat blogger, Mely from Mexico in my Kitchen was driven to extremes to replicate the authentic texture:

That's one hell of a piece of kit, Mely!

Perhaps we could all get together and ask the UK's kebab shops to add tacos al pastor to their menus. Who's with me?

KANKUN pastor-style tacos

Ingredientes

500 - 750 g pork shoulder for carnitas
Half a pineapple, diced (I actually used tinned pineapple)

1 red onion, diced

1 recipe recado rojo (about 50 g)
4 tbsp KANKUN Chipotle Sauce
90 - 100 mL pineapple juice
A few pieces of diced pineapple

Tortillas and some extra KANKUN (to serve)

Procedimiento

First make carnitas: trim the gristle from your pork, rub it with some ground spices like black pepper, allspice, a dash of cinnamon and a pinch of cumin, put in a casserole dish, cover with about 500 mL of water (taking care not to wash off the spices), cover and roast at 180° C (160° fan) for 3 - 5 hours.

When it's done, shred it and leave it to one side.

This recipe works really well with leftover carnitas. Or, you could dice the pork shoulder, marinate it in the sauce (see below) for at least an hour (preferably overnight), then brown it in a frying pan along with the red onion, then cover and stick it in the oven at 160° C (fan) for an hour.

Now make the sauce. Blend the recado rojo (achiote paste) with the KANKUN Chipotle sauce and a few chunks of pineapple. Then add the pineapple juice a bit at a time until the sauce is thin but not watery. If you're using diced pork shoulder, this is what you use as a marinade.

If you're using carnitas, heat some oil in a pan and sweat the onion. Then fry the carnitas until they take on a bit of texture. Now add the sauce and continue cooking until the pork is completely covered and heated through. Then add the pineapple and continue frying a few minutes longer. 

Serve with warm tortillas (preferably homemade corn tortillas, though I once made this into a burrito) and a little extra KANKUN Chipotle sauce on the side.

The combination of the inimitable achiote paste with the smoky chipotle heat and the sweet and sharp pineapple is unbelievably addictive. I can really see why these are so popular.

Mrs MexiGeek called it a kind of Mexican Sweet and Sour, and there definitely is something "Asian" in the flavour profile, which isn't surprising considering the origin of these tacos.

If you've never tried tacos al pastor, you really need to. It's one of those things that will re-educate you about the flavours of Mexican food. And maybe some day we'll even get them from kebab shops!

Also, my mom sent me some jicama, so I whipped up a "Mexican raita" out of jicama and cucumber in sour cream and lime juice, sprinkled with some tajin of course, and served on the side. I "julienned" the jicama but peeled, seeded, and diced the cucumber. The tacos al pastor are pretty spicy, so it's good to have a "cooling" constrast dish on the side.

This recipe uses a fair bit of KANKUN (nearly 100 mL). Obviously I went for "hot". They make a mild version as well, if you're not such a heat freak. However I should warn you that it's Mexican mild, which is still pretty hot. For Edinburgh locals think of the so-called "mild" curries at Kebab Mahal.

One of the many reasons I love this sauce!

Breakfast with MexiGeek: Mexican Egg-Fried Rice with KANKUN Chipotle sauce

So when I made cochinita pibil with KANKUN habanero sauce, I served it with Mexican red rice (arroz a la mexicana).

At least it was meant to be Mexican red rice, but I didn't put enough tomato in it, so it wasn't really very red.

Still delicious though.

I had some rice left over, so the next morning I heated up some butter and fried the rice until it was cooked through.

Then I cracked an egg into the pan, doused it with some KANKUN chipotle sauce, and scrambled the egg into the rice.

Then I put it all in a flour tortilla, added some more KANKUN, ¡y provecho!

Simple but delicious.

Mexican Red Rice

Ingredients
1 cup rice
2 cups stock
1 white onion, diced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
Peas (defrosted if using frozen)
4 tomatoes, roasted on a comal or a dry frying pan
Oil or fat for frying

Preparation

Heat the oil in pot with a heavy bottom and high sides.

Add the onion and fry until translucent, then add the rice and fry a few minutes more.

Add the carrot and fry a few minutes until the carrot begins to soften.

Blitz the tomatoes to a smooth puree.

Add the stock to the rice; then add the tomato puree and the peas.

Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to medium low, partially cover, and let cook for about ten or fifteen minutes (until the rice is fully cooked).

I only used two tomatoes, so my rice wasn't very red.