Oaxacan · Salad
Chileajo de Verduras
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, warm spice humming through the middle, on a drift of smoke.
Ingredients
- 80 g chile guajillo, stemmed and seeded
- 40 g chile ancho, stemmed and seeded
- 20 g chile costeño rojo, stemmed and seeded
- 50 g garlic cloves, peeled
- 3 cloves
- 8 black peppercorns
- 2 g cumin seed
- 3 g dried Mexican oregano
- 80 g cider vinegar
- 60 g neutral oil
- 250 g carrots, in 1 cm dice
- 250 g chayote, in 1 cm dice
- 200 g green beans, in 2 cm lengths
- 200 g cauliflower, in small florets
- 150 g peas
- fine salt
- tostadas and crumbled queso fresco, to serve
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Tortillas on the comalSautéing & the shallow fryFrying the paste until the oil splitsSalted water & the float testStraining & passing through a sieveKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Toast the chillies on a dry comal 10-15 seconds a side, pressing them down: they should darken half a shade and smell like toasted bread, and any that smoke or blacken go in the bin.
- Cover them with hot water, soak 20 minutes until floppy, then blend with the garlic, spices, vinegar and 150 ml of the soaking water until smooth and push through a sieve. 20 min
- Fry the sauce in the oil over medium heat 8-10 minutes, stirring, until it darkens, thickens and red oil rises at the edge; salt it hard, there is a lot of vegetable to season. 10 min
- Boil the vegetables separately in salted water, lifting each one the moment a knife tip meets slight resistance, and spread them on a tray to cool fast.
- Fold the cold vegetables through the warm sauce, rest at least two hours, and pile onto tostadas with queso fresco.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Tortillas on the comal 27 recipes
- It puffs. On the second turn the tortilla lifts into a dome as the trapped water flashes to steam and splits the two faces apart; a tortilla that never puffs was pressed too thick, cooked too cool, or turned too often.
- Freckled, not blackened: small brown spots across a pale field. An evenly browned tortilla has been on too long and will be a cracker by the time it reaches the table.
- It folds without cracking while warm, and still folds after five minutes under a cloth. A tortilla that splits along the fold has lost too much water on the comal.
- The edges are unbroken and roughly round, with no ragged fringe: a fringed edge means the masa was too dry when it was pressed, and no amount of heat will fix it afterwards.
- It smells of toasted corn rather than of scorch or of raw lime. Raw lime means the nixtamal was under-rinsed; scorch means the comal was above the working heat.
Where it goes wrong The masa was too dry or the comal too cool. A dry masa cracks at the edge on pressing and cannot generate the steam that puffs it; a cool comal dries the tortilla through before the water can flash, so it leaves the heat stiff, pale and already stale.
Sautéing & the shallow fry 80 recipes
- Everything sits in a single layer with visible space between the pieces: nothing stacked, nothing touching, or the pan is too small for the quantity.
- The pieces move freely and keep moving, sliding across the pan rather than sticking and tearing when the pan is worked.
- Light even browning arrived at quickly: colour on most faces, not the deep crust of a sear and not grey.
- A thin film of fat with the food glossed by it: no pool left in the pan at the end, and nothing greasy on the fingers or the plate.
- Cooked through but still firm, having spent only a few minutes in the pan: anything that has gone soft has been in there too long.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, the pan cooled, and the food released its water: what was meant to brown in three minutes stews for ten and comes out grey, slack and wet.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauvignon Blanc (Sancerre)
- Also Right
- Grüner Veltliner
- From the Taps
- Berliner weisse
- Zero-Proof
- Cucumber-lime water
Green plates want green wines: vinaigrette’s acid meets its match, and the difficult vegetables surrender to Grüner.
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