Cebollas en escabeche

When I first decided to make panuchos, Alison was totally on board...until I mentioned the pickled onions. Why would you make a delicious meal and then ruin it with something gross like that, she wondered. You don't have to eat them, I told her, but I think they'll be nice.

There was a misunderstanding, you see. She heard "pickled onions" and thought of those stunted baby onions soaked in vinegar and sold in jars. Why indeed would I put those on my delicious food? Why indeed do those onions exist at all? I can't imagine anyone enjoying them. Even if you had no taste buds, their texture would put you off.

Of course I had no intention of putting pickled white baby onions on our panuchos. The pickled onions I had in mind are a Yucatecan delicacy, like panuchos themselves.

Like most things beyond the limited range of North Mexican, Tex-Mex, and Mexi-Cali cuisines (eg burritos, baked enchiladas, chile con carne, and those U-shaped hard tacos), I had never heard of this condiment. In fact, these pickled onions belong to the list of foods I would never have expected to be part of Mexican cuisine, like duck en pipián.

Once she tried them, Alison agreed they are delicious, but insisted I learn their Spanish name, you avoid evoking the jarred monstrosities. In another cookbook I learned they are called cebollas en escabeche.

So what are they? Well, to start, they are red onions, not white; and they are full-grown, not baby-sized; and they are sliced, not whole.

The pickling is a bit problematic, actually, as the usual way to pickle something in European cooking is to soak it in vinegar. To get vinegar you need wine, and Mexico is not a major producer of wine (much to the dismay of the Spanish colonists).

Obviously vinegar can be and is imported now, but how did they make the dish traditionally?

A running theme of this blog is that I have a lot of Mexican cookbooks, and all of them include recipes for certain classic dishes. The Two Cooks version of pickled onions calls for red wine vinegar. Other versions use white wine or even cider vinegar. There's even one which doesn't call for vinegar at all. It can, apparently, be done with boiling water.

The other common natural pickling agent is citric acid, i.e. the juice of any citrus fruit, which is and always has been readily available in Mexico. Yet strangely, citrus juice is not used in this recipe until after the onions have already been pickled! However, all versions call for habanero chilies, so perhaps the acid from these is enough to do the job on its own.

I have made these pickled cebollas twice, once using red wine vinegar and once using white wine vinegar, and I haven't noticed a major difference in taste. In both versions, more than half the liquid is still just boiled water, so I'd say the more important thing to get right is the seasonings. Some versions call for nothing more than the chilies, but I stand by the Two Cooks version, which includes allspice berries, Mexican oregano, and epazote. These have been my favourite Mexican seasonings ever since I discovered them, and I use them at every opportunity.

So, begin by slicing red onion very thinly. I cut the onion in half first, because I don't want rings, but this may not be the most attractive way to present the finished product. It is, though, only a garnish.

Then you need some habanero, roasted and finely chopped. You can leave the seeds out if you include vinegar, but if you're going with just water I'd include the seeds, as you'll need as much acid as possible.

Then you need some allspice berries (lightly crushed), some epazote, Mexican oregano, and maybe a teaspoon of ground cumin.

Put all this in a bowl. Add vinegar until the onions are about a third of the way to being covered. Then pour in boiling water to cover the onions. If you're not using vinegar, just cover with boiling water.

Seal the bowl with clingfilm and set aside for about four hours.

But that's not the end. After the onions have pickled, drain most of the liquid (and remove the allspice berries) and place the onions in a serving bowl. Then pour the juice of one bitter orange over them.

Bitter orange is a Mexican citrus fruit that does but seem to be available outside Mexico. Obviously I've never had it myself, but apparently it tastes life a cross between orange and grapefruit, so you can make "mock bitter orange juice" by mixing the two fruits. It is this bitter citrus zing that makes this such a delicious condiment. And the best part is that there's usually plenty left over to put on sandwiches and such for the next few days.

One of my cookbooks calls these "pink pickled onions" in English, and indeed, though they start out as standard red onions, they end up uniformly pink by the time they're ready to serve.

I forgot to take a picture while they were in the serving dish, but I do have a photo of the last of them sitting on a flour tortilla (store-bought), moments before I filled it with chicken and probably too many chipotle peppers. I'm not sure the picture does them justice, but at least you can see how pink they are.

If you are ever cooking a Yucatecan dish, you must include these. In fact, you should probably make them anyway. They're that good.

Adventures in Tortilla-Making

I don't own a tortilla-press, which is perhaps why I attempted tamales before I tried making my own corn tortillas. Even after I bought a bag of real Mexican masa harina from Lupe Pintos (Maseca, which is the leading brand in Mexico), the first tortillas I made were actually panuchos.

Before I read Two Cooks and a Suitcase I had never heard of panuchos, and unless you've lived in Yucatán, you probably haven't either, so I will explain.

Panuchos are extra-thick corn tortillas with pockets cut into them, sort of like a Mexican version of pita bread. The pockets are filled with refried beans or black beans; then the panuchos are shallow-fried. Just before serving they are topped with something like shredded pollo pibil and some Yucatecan pickled red onions (cebollas en escabeche) - or just the onions, if it's a snack or a light lunch you're after.

Obviously, stuffed and fried tortillas would be tempting enough on their own, but it was equally the "extra-thick" part that appealed to me, as I thought they would be easier to make without a tortilla-press.

When I was in college, I saw this film about Guatemalan refugees called El Norte (which you should definitely check out). In one early scene, a young girl makes tortillas by patting them back and forth from hand to hand. I figured I could try this technique for my panuchos. How hard could it be?

So I made a batch of masa dough and patted out some panuchos.

It's pretty tricky to get it right your first time, so the first few were a bit wonky, but most were usable, shape-wise. One caveat for anyone trying this at home: there is no way to get perfectly round edges on a homemade tortilla unless you trim it using a bowl or something, which I've never bothered to do.

The recipe I had (again from Two Cooks), said that when you flip the tortilla to cook the other side, you must press down gently to get it to puff (essential for the pocketed panuchos). I didn't believe them. I thought, how could pressing down in the middle cause a great puffy pocket to form? So I pressed down firmly around the edges for the first one. And nothing happened.

I can't remember now if I decided to try pressing down in the middle on the second or third panucho, but I regardless, I eventually trusted the recipe enough and pressed down in the middle with my spatula. And behold: it puffed! Not a helluva lot, but enough to create a pocket.

Fresh-cooked tortillas and their relatives are hot to touch, so I let them cool in a pile on some kitchen paper. Then I gingerly tried opening the pockets with a sharp knife.

Obviously the first one or two had no pocket because they hadn't puffed properly, but most were definitely usable. I made more than enough, so I decided to choose the best looking six (three per person).

Once they had been fried, I arranged them in a triangle patten on the plate, with a neat pile of pollo en pipián in the middle, plus a trio of garnishes in the colours of the Mexican flag: chopped tomatoes, diced avocado, and sour cream (one for each panucho). I wish I had a picture of this, but I didn't record my food back then.

Naturally I made cebollas en escabeche as well, but I'm making them again this weekend, and they deserve a post of their own.

The second time I made "panuchos", I was really after plain tortillas to go with the mole sauce I got for my birthday, but (again owing to no tortilla press) I lacked confidence to make them. Further, Rick Bayless confirms in his book Authentic Mexican, that the hand-patting technique I saw in El Norte is practised in Mexico as well, though discouragingly he doubts a non-native could ever learn it.

My first batch of panuchos had looked a bit rustic, but the last two of my second batch looked almost right, so I did begin to hope I could eventually master this. (All the the panuchos tasted lovely, by the way, so if you're making this at home don't worry too much about looks. Dinner will still be delicious.)

The hand-patting technique is even a plot point in my story. Esteban impresses his friend's mother by hand-patting tortillas, which she hasn't seen since her childhood in Mexico. This friend becomes Esteban's business partner for his first restaurant and an investor in his second.

However, my own hand-patting experiments were brought to a halt by a tip from Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Simple. In the absence of a tortilla press, she recommends placing the ball of masa dough in a large ziploc bag and rolling it out as if it were a pastry. This works a charm, though the edges are still not very round (again, you could use a cutter or trace around a bowl if you want perfect edges).

I first tried this out the Sunday after I made the disastrous alternate version of sopa de lima. I had hella broth left over, plus some of the hot chiles, and I needed something to do with them. There were also some bits of veg left in the fridge from the week's other meals: cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, sweet peppers, etc.

Thomasina Miers only includes four recipes for taco fillings, one for each season, and all are veg-heavy, with two or three exclusively vegetarian. This gave me an idea: make some corn tortillas, sauté the veg with some of the broth and some Mexican seasonings, and make tacos.

This calls for a bit of exposition. In Mexico, tacos are not those fried U-shaped things filled with ground beef. In the first place, beef is not widely eaten on Mexico, apart from in the North. Chicken, pork, and goat are the main meats. Secondly, the U-shape things are a complete US invention. Real Mexican tacos are either not fried (what we would think of as "soft tacos", but with corn tortillas), or if they are fried, they are first rolled into a cigar shape (like what we call "taquitos").

Tacos are street food: really nothing more than a warm corn tortilla informally wrapped around whatever stewed, fried, or grilled fillings the taco vender has on hand, with maybe some salsa on top for good measure. And they are both more delicious and easier to rest than the American imposters.

Now, back to my tacos.

I seasoned the veg with epazote, jalapeño, and some ground allspice berries (which was a revelation to me, as far as Mexican cuisine goes) and just a bit of the leftover soup. The rest of the soup I used to cook arroz blanco.  For something I just made up out of what was on hand, the sauteed veg was delicious. In fact, it could stand up to any planned dish. But the real stars were the tortillas.

The recipe for tortilla dough from masa harina is simplicity itself: one part masa harina to one and a quarter parts warm water. Bring the dough together with your hands and knead for ten minutes. The let it rest for half an hour. Tortilla dough is made from warm or room-temperature ingredients, so rest it on the counter, not in the fridge, but cover it with clingfilm to keep it from drying out. If it's to dry after resting (and won't hold together when you roll it out), work a bit more water into it.

There are few things I love more than the gorgeous corn smell you get when you add warm water to masa harina. It always fills me with a combination of good memories and anticipation.

Thomasina's rolling advice was spot on, and I got the best-looking tortillas I'd ever made, but the real triumph was when I flipped them and watched them puff. Next time I make tacos I'll try to make video of it. Until then, here's a picture of my impromptu vegetation tacos and white rice (tacos de verduras con arroz blanco).

Next time: Yucatecan pickled onions get their own post.

Loco

I have crazy idea: to write a book -- a novel, though I hate that word -- about a Mexican chef.
It's crazy because I'm not a chef and I'm not Mexican*.
This idea started when I first moved to Edinburgh ten years ago. I found that, contrary to my expectations, Mexican food was available (there was once even a Mexican restaurant across the street from my flat). But it was very different from the cuisine I grew up with in Southern California.
I had always thought of burritos as the prime Mexican dish, but in Britain they are rarely on the menu. Instead, the country is obsessed with fajitas, which I don't remember eating until I was a teenager.
My first thought was "This is not real Mexican food." Then, of course, I realized the food we eat in SoCal may not be authentic either.
Not long after that I discovered a brilliant Mexican deli at Tollcross called Lupe Pintos. They seem to have everything, including homemade tortillas (both corn and flour). I stocked up with provisions and started making my own Mexican food.
Alison, my wife, became very fond of burritos; however as that was all I ever made, it did get to be a bit same-y. I started wondering what else I could cook. Lupe Pintos have their own cookbook, called Two Cooks and a Suitcase (actually I believe they have more than one now). So one year for my birthday, Alison got me the book, and I began broadening my culinary horizons.
They idea for the novel, though came much more recently.
Last summer I was sitting in the Ivory and Willow in Corstorphine with Alison and our daugher Abby. I noticed they had nachos on the menu. A lot of British cafes and pubs serve nachos now (of greatly varying quality). I guess it's an easy dish to make, especially if you don't make your own tortilla chips, and it doesn't require any fancy presentation.
I started thinking about how most Mexican food in Britain is still pretty humble, and not very authentic. And basically, I came up with the plot -- about Mexican chef who seeks to elevate his national cuisine to Michelin-star quality -- by the time we finished our lunch.
But as I said, I'm not a chef, and I'm not Mexican. All my previous writing had been about me, more or less, but this project would require serious research.
So that's what this journey is about: learning how to cook real Mexican food and learning how to elevate it to fine dining. Along the way I'll report on how the book is going and any other culinary experimentations I attempt.
*Actually I do have some Mexican ancestry, but no more than many other Americans from the southwest are likely to have