♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - If you're lucky enough to go to Oaxaca City in Southern Mexico, you will find, well, it looks like a Hollywood set-- cobblestone streets, one- and two-story buildings, parrot greens, cornflower blue.

It's absolutely wonderful, as are the people.

But you're gonna get some surprises as well.

The green mole is bright with cilantro and mint, the black beans are one of those universal recipes that are absolutely stunning.

And, finally, you can throw together a pozole, simple stew, in very little time and make it any time during the week.

So stay tuned right here at Milk Street as we explore the secrets of Mexico.

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♪ ♪ - You know, one of the great surprises when I was in Oaxaca is that mole is not what I thought it was.

It's just a sauce.

So it can be water, and cornmeal, and some chilies.

It can be tomatillos, and poblanos, and onion.

It can be almost anything.

It doesn't have to have six different kinds of chilies or 25 ingredients.

Some of them are actually relatively simple to make, as is this.

And also if you live ten miles away from someone, their idea of a yellow mole is totally different than that person that lives in Oaxaca City.

So even within a small geographic area, how you make a yellow, or green mole, or black mole would be quite different.

- Absolutely.

I love mole.

I love it in any way, shape, or form.

This green mole is one of my absolute favorites because it's very light.

You have all those herbs and a little bit of spice, but it's not hot.

There's a complexity there, and a lightness that's really surprising, too.

We're going to start ours with a base of chicken broth thickened with corn tortillas, which is an interesting way to replicate the masa that's usually used to thicken it.

Before we get the broth going, let's go ahead and season our chicken.

We're going to use two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs.

And season well-- remember, you want to season things start to finish.

And we can just use our tongs to toss that.

And now we're going to start our broth.

We're gonna have four cups of low sodium chicken broth, and we're gonna bring that up to simmer over medium high with seven six-inch corn tortillas.

You can use white, yellow, just make sure it's a corn tortilla.

- That is the single weirdest thing we've ever done in Milk Street in three years.

You're stuffing tortillas into some chicken stock.

>> They're going to soften up, and then we're gonna puree them, and that's going to form the basis of the sauce that we're gonna make here.

- Now while we were there, we drove outside to Tultitlán, which is about 20 miles outside of Oaxaca City.

And there's a Zapotec cook who does the traditional cooking.

So she took corn and she roasted it on a comal, which was really cool.

And then she ground it on a metate, and then she used that as the thickener for the yellow mole she was doing.

- Oh, bet that was fantastic.

The broth has come up to a simmer, and you can see that the tortillas have really softened up.

So let's go ahead and transfer those to the blender.

And Chris, you know what?

if the tortillas break up a little bit, and they dissolve into the broth, that's okay.

So we're going to take those tortillas and we're gonna add a quarter cup of water to help loosen it up.

And let's puree these.

We want it to be a pretty smooth paste.

Should take about a minute.

(whirring) (whirring stops) Let's go ahead and scrape that into our broth.

You can see it's a pretty thick paste.

And that's going to be the basis for this mole.

- It's actually pretty smart, I have to say.

- Well, thank you.

Let's bring that back to a simmer, and we're going to whisk that in.

You can smell the corn, too, so you get that really clear corn flavor.

So at this point, we can add our seasoned chicken to the pot.

Cover it, and... reduce it to low... and it should take about 30 minutes, but you want that chicken to be really tender.

You can easily pierce it with a knife.

♪ ♪ So while that chicken is simmering in the tortilla-thickened broth there, we're gonna broil our vegetables.

So we want a little bit of charring, and what this does is replicates the comal that's typically used in Mexico for your aromatics.

It's dry-frying.

You want a little charring, a little speckle.

You don't really want to blacken these things.

So we're gonna go ahead and we've got four garlic cloves.

Two tomatillos.

They add this nice acidity.

So we've just halved those.

You can arrange those there.

And then we've got a poblano chili.

These aren't green peppers.

They've got this great, earthy flavor.

We've got one white onion.

It's just a small white onion.

White onions are used a lot in Mexican cooking.

They have a brighter flavor.

And we're gonna broil these.

We want the rack about four inches from the element, and it's about three to five minutes per side.

Again, you want some speckling, you don't want to char it.

We broiled all those veggies about three to five minutes per side.

Then we let them cool for five minutes.

You don't want to add hot things to a blender, or you can have it explode all over the ceiling.

Then we're gonna add half a cup of water just to help lubricate it.

And we're going to puree this for about 30 seconds until it's sort of smooth.

- Okay.

(blender whirring) (whirring stops) - And to this we're gonna start adding our herbs and spices.

A half-cup of mint.

The mint replicates the epazote, which is normally added to the sauce.

Fennel seed.

And what this replicates is the hoja santa leaves, which are common in Oaxacan cooking.

- And we happen have them here.

- Oh, excellent.

- Now I actually, I had this at a restaurant in Austin.

There was a woman who had a restaurant in Oaxaca for 20 years and then moved up to Austin.

And her leaves were a little bit bigger.

She just picked them right outside the restaurant, and then she filled them with quesillo cheese... - Oooh... - Which is good with a... with a green salsa.

It was quite tasty.

- Yum.

- And this is the epazote.

There's a little fennel and a little mintiness to it.

It's a really unique flavor.

- So the mint-fennel combo really does a good job of replicating those flavors.

So to that, we're going to add a bunch of cilantro.

One cup of flat leaf parsley leaves, which really helps set the color.

Three-quarter teaspoon ground black pepper.

A teaspoon of whole cumin seed.

And two teaspoons of kosher salt.

And we want to puree this really smooth.

(whirring) (whirring stops) So at this point, we can go ahead and add the remaining ingredients to our soup.

And we're going to add one yellow zucchini, eight ounces of little Yukon gold potatoes, and then six ounces of green beans trimmed to about one-inch lengths.

So we can go ahead and stir those in.

And we're going to cook it at medium, uncovered, for about 15 minutes.

You just want the vegetables tender.

You don't want those potatoes breaking down.

♪ ♪ It's been 15 minutes and everything looks tender.

So we're going to take the puree and we're just gonna stir it right in.

This is like the Wizard of Oz.

Do you remember when it goes from black and white to full color?

- (laughing): What does that have to do with green mole?

- Well, it looks really bland.

And then we go ahead and we add that puree, and it totally changes.

It really becomes this lustrous green color.

And that's it.

Let's go ahead and serve.

Chris, that color is amazing.

- I have to say, okay, yeah, the color is amazing.

- And you could smell the herbs.

You can smell the corn.

- Mm.

- There's this amazing viscosity to the sauce from the tortillas that we pureed in.

And the herbs are so fresh and so bright because we didn't cook those at all.

We just added it in very last minute.

- So I learned two things going to Oaxaca-- that a mole is almost anything.

(chuckling): Also that I'd like to move to Oaxaca because the food and the people are so wonderful.

But here, this is a green mole.

We used tomatillos, poblanos.

We also thicken the chicken stock with tortillas, corn tortillas, which is a little bit of a quick fix here at Milk Street.

Very simple recipe, but has really great depth of flavor.

So Oaxacan green mole with chicken.

I think it's an absolute must on everyone's repertoire.

♪ ♪ You know, every once in a while here at Milk Street we like to invite a friend of Milk Street in.

This is Gonzalo Guzman.

Thank you for coming.

- Thank you.

- To show us how to cook, how to cook their food, from their experience.

Gonzalo, you have Nopalito restaurants in San Francisco.

I've been there, the food is great.

And that's why you're here today because I love the food.

So we're doing a pozole rojo.

- Correct.

- So, so what is pozole, what does it actually mean, pozole?

- Well, pozole just, you know, means soup.

But it's a soup that has been around for many years, since the Aztecs.

It was a ritual that they will do a sacrifice somebody, someone to offer to their gods, and then they will make it into a soups.

- This was not the answer I was expecting.

So in other words, it goes back to human sacrifice.

- Right, it started all there.

Traditionally we will be using every part of the pig.

Today, we're gonna make it more like simple and we're just gonna be using a pork shoulder to make our pozole rojo.

- Okay, so we're gonna keep it simple now, so.

- Yeah, and so to make that we need just a few ingredients.

But one of the main ingredients for this soup is the dried chili that we're gonna be using.

We're gonna be using ancho chilies, which we have right here.

Other recipes will use guajillo chilies or tomatoes.

But, again, I like the... the flavor of these chilies specifically because it gives you that mole, mole taste.

- A richer taste.

- Richer, yeah, truly.

So we'll first do like a little paste.

We call it adobo.

So for that, we just boil some water, which we have right here.

- So can I ask you a question?

So if you buy ancho chilies or guajillo chilies, dried chilies, should they be... if they're brittle and hard, they're not good, right?

you want them to be, like, sort of like leather?

They want to be sort of malleable?

- Right, for this kind of specific chilies, yes, you want them to be a little bit more like rubbery.

- Softer.

- Softer.

Because that means that they're kind of meaty.

So meaning a lot more of their raisins and dried fruit flavors into the-- again, at this point, we just let it sit for, like, 20 to 25 minutes until they're really soft, and then we're just gonna mix it all together, and we're gonna blend it and form that paste.

- Okay.

- Okay, so now the chilies have been sitting here for, like, 25 minutes already.

See how they're nice and soft?

So they're ready to be blended.

And just throw the chilies in it.

Four, about.

All the onions... - So blender, I noticed, everyone in Oaxaca had blenders.

It was... it's a key tool in Mexican cooking, because you're always making sauces or adobos?

- You know, it's funny, but when I was growing like we didn't have a blender.

We had a metate.

- Right.

- I don't know if you're familiar with it.

- Yes.

- A piece of stone and that's where people will make their adobos.

- And they roll over it like this.

- And that's, I think, the whole idea of making adobos because they wouldn't... You know, if you had a lot of liquid, then it doesn't really work.

Every... everything goes everywhere if you're using the metate.

So, again, all the dry ingredients-- onions, garlic, always add a little salt-- and then pour this liquid into the magic blender.

And then we're gonna make our adobo, and that's your turn now.

- This is my job.

Okay.

- All right.

Let's see.

(blender whirring) Okay, so now we have it, and it's ready.

So we're gonna leave it here and we're gonna move on to the next step because we're gonna be using this later with our pozole.

As as I mentioned, we're using pork shoulder in this pozole.

So we're just gonna throw all this back...

So we got our pork here, cut into, you know, one-inch squares.

Then we have our hominy, which is corn cooked all the way through, that's what it means.

But also, this has been nixtamalized already, which means that you have to cook that in water, and then add your cal, which is calcium, and then bring it up to boil.

Wash it, rinse it off, all off, to get all the skin off the corn.

- Or you could go to the supermarket and buy the can.

- Right, which is the easier way.

(laughs) - So when you were growing up, did you have to do this?

- Yeah, everything we had to do ourselves.

We used to grow the corn, and then dry it, and then nixtamalize it for tortillas or for pozole.

Okay, and just throw it all in there.

Throw water in there too.

What we're gonna do here, we have some cheesecloths, and then a quarter of an onion, which you can cut it or leave it into big pieces.

You don't really have to cut it.

- This looks like I'm cooking with Jacques Pépin now.

This is the French cheesecloth trick.

- Well, yeah, traditionally, you wouldn't do that.

I mean, we don't even have cheesecloth in Mexico, where I'm from.

- Right.

- So this is my thing.

- This is your thing.

The cheesecloth is your thing.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- Bay leaf, garlic, cilantro.

Tie it all together.

We throw it into the soup.

And then we're gonna add the adobo, which, again, is the paste we did earlier with the ancho chilies, and all the spices.

And we're just gonna... throw in there.

Might splash a little bit and the chilies, so... And then at the end, we're just gonna add some more salt.

I'm not gonna completely season it because this is gonna, you know, come to boil, it's gonna reduce.

So it might get too salty if you completely season it.

So we'll just... a little bit just for... - So this is going to cook for quite a while since it's pork shoulder.

- Right, so we then we just bring it up to boil for about an hour to an hour and a half, and then we taste it again for salt and everything.

And then we just add all these other ingredients when we put it on the table.

♪ ♪ All right, so now we're gonna check our soup.

Should be ready.

So what I just normally kind of get the meat and hominy first like halfway, and then liquid the other half so you got, like, a nice balance.

Not gonna do a lot.

So now there's different ways of eating it.

This is chili guajillo and chili de arbol that were toasted and then grinded.

- That's your Nopalito chili powder?

- Right.

So it's pretty spicy.

But you know, if you're hangover, just go crazy with the chili.

- Oh, that solves a hangover?

- Ah, yeah.

Yeah, it works.

- You know that from experience?

(both laughing) - And then cabbage...

Some radishes.

Onions... - So, I mean, this concept of making a soup and there are lots of garnishes.

A lot of, like in Somalia, they do the same thing with a chicken soup.

I really like that idea because a lot of those fresh flavors come in at the end, so.

- Yeah, so your pozole is half of the soup, the other half of this.

- Right.

- Lime juice.

Now the way I eat it, like making little tostadas with just the hominy and the... and the corn.

(crunches loudly) - I'm using the spoon for the whole thing because it's going to get all over... you know.

- Mm-mmm.

- You did a good job.

Mm... - So mine needs a little lime.

The other way, you just crumble chips... - That was re... that was hot, I got to say, I didn't put too much on.

- Yeah, but adds a lot of flavor.

- It does add flavor, yeah.

- That's all.

That's all it takes.

- Mm...

In the classic European method, this is so different.

You know, you're cooking meat and water with some flavorings, and adding a lot of fresh flavorings at the end.

So you get a lot of contrast in texture and flavor, and it's really easy to do.

Gonzalo Guzman from Nopalito, thank you very much.

Pozole rojo is absolutely fabulous, and it's also easy to do.

Thank you.

- Thank you for having me.

- Pleasure.

- Thank you.

♪ ♪ - You know, every culture has one or two basic recipes they use all the time; in Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, they have a black bean recipe.

Every house you go into there's a pot with black beans.

They sort of cook them slowly for a long time.

And they use them in almost everything.

So we do have a recipe for this based on canned black beans, which is sort of a fix-it-up, quick version of this.

But this is the real deal and has great flavor.

And I would even make a double recipe because it'll last a long time and you can use them on anything.

- That's right, Chris.

And it is the real deal, and it's not super quick, but it is super easy.

This is a pretty straightforward recipe.

And, you know, the nice thing about black beans is you don't have to soak them.

So, to get started, I'm gonna heat up a tablespoon of lard.

- Well, you know, lard's gotten a bad name, but then everyone started using margarine and this other stuff, which is garbage.

Lard comes from the fat around the kidney of the pig-- leaf lard-- and you render it.

So you cube it in little pieces-- I've done this many times in a Dutch oven-- with a cup or two of water so it doesn't brown.

And then it starts to melt, and the stuff on top is very pure, and has no pork flavor, and use it in pie pastry.

The stuff at the bottom, however, that starts to brown with little bits is called asiento, which is what they use in Oaxaca, and they use that as a spread on a tortilla before they put the black beans on.

It's got great flavor, and everyone should go out and use lard.

Just get over it.

- So we like the flavor of the lard here.

It does add some savoriness.

Now, if you wanted to be vegetarian, or you just simply couldn't find lard, you can use refined coconut oil here and it works quite well.

So it's just starting to smoke, and I can actually smell that lard a little bit, it smells really good.

I'm going to add one large white onion here.

(sizzles) We have a pint of cherry tomatoes, or grape tomatoes, you can use either.

- And you don't even have to cut them up.

- No, you just throw them right in there.

And then we have five guajillo chilies.

And we did take out those seeds, which add quite a bit of heat, and, of course, take off the stems.

(sizzling) And we're just going to cook this for five to seven minutes.

You want to get a little bit of browning on it.

Obviously, kind of soften and sweeten everything up.

All right, Chris, you can see we have some nice browning here and it's starting to smell really good.

I'm gonna add a pound of the dried black beans.

Ten cloves of garlic.

We're not messing around.

We have a couple bay leaves.

And a teaspoon of aniseed.

And I'll kind of explain that flavor combination to you.

Could you add the water, please?

- Mm-hmm.

So this is ten cups of water?

- Ten cups of water.

Once you add the water, we're going to bring it up to a boil, and then we'll turn it down to low, partially cover it, and let it simmer for about an hour and a half to two hours.

As you probably know from your travels, this recipe originally was made with avocado leaves, and they actually provide quite a bit of flavor.

We really noticed a difference, but it just was unreasonable to think that people were going to source avocado leaves.

So we found that this combination of bay leaves, and aniseed, and then some oregano-- which we're gonna add towards the end-- really did a nice job of mimicking that flavor.

- Okay.

♪ ♪ - Okay, Chris, so these have been going for about an hour and a half.

And I just want to check them to make sure that they're tender.

Sometimes if you have older beans it can take a little bit longer.

So this is really what you're looking for.

Some of them are already bursting.

That's fine.

This is all gonna get blended.

And that's much better than having like a crunchy bean.

We're going to take out those bay leaves.

So now we're gonna drain them.

But you can see we're reserving the bean liquid.

Now, this is a little messy.

If you wouldn't mind reserving two cups of that bean liquid for me.

And then if there's some left over, you don't want to toss that either.

Set it aside because when you're reheating the beans, or if you want to make black bean soup, you want to use that liquid to thin them out.

- Okay.

Okay.

- Great.

All right, so now we're gonna just pulse these a few times to kind of break them up.

And all the flavor from all of those garlic cloves and the guajillos and everything are gonna make their way into the beans.

(processor whirring) All right, Chris, now with the motor running, I'm going to stream in about a cup and a half of this liquid.

(whirring) (whirring stops) Okay, these look great..

They're kind of glossy, smooth... - Mm!

- They smell really good.

- Aromatic.

- Beautiful.

Okay, so now we're gonna do the refried part of the refried beans.

So we have two tablespoons of lard.

And you want to make sure you're using a nonstick skillet here because we're going to be cooking these beans down.

So I'm gonna add some aromatics here.

Five more cloves of garlic that we've minced up.

Four teaspoons of cumin.

Four teaspoons of coriander.

A tablespoon of ancho chili powder.

So this isn't your standard chili powder that's a mix of spices.

And then a teaspoon of dried oregano.

And it's just gonna take about 30 seconds for this to get nice and fragrant and then we'll add in the beans.

- And this is just a classic master technique, which is blooming your spices in oil or lard.

It brings their flavor out before you add other ingredients.

And you could also toast whole spices and then grind them as well.

But blooming spices is classic in Indian cooking as well.

Just a really good first step.

- So this is going to take about eight to ten minutes here.

I'm going to turn it down.

So you just want to stay put, and stir it, letting those flavors really meld together.

♪ ♪ So you can see, Chris, this looks quite a bit more concentrated and cooked down.

We cook it for eight to ten minutes and get some nice browning.

And then for another five to seven, you keep cooking it down, and you can add some more of that reserved liquid if you need, but this looks perfect.

We want it to be like mashed potatoes, and here we are.

So we're gonna finish this with a final tablespoon of lard.

Just gonna give it a nice sheen, and a little bit more richness.

And let's serve.

- Okay.

Mmm... - All right, Chris, since you were the one lucky enough to go to Mexico, why don't you serve these up the proper way?

- It was a work trip!

It was work!

We're not gonna put lard on it, but we'll put a bit of black beans on.

Serve yourself cheese.

- I will.

- And there we are, okay.

Oh... That's not a hard recipe to make; like the cooking is easy.

There's a few ingredients, but boy, that really tastes good.

- I wasn't expecting it to have such a deep flavor.

- So from Oaxaca, a great foundation recipe, Oaxacan refried black beans.

We started with a pound of dried beans, some cherry tomatoes, guajillo chilies, cooked that with about ten cups of water for an hour and a half or so.

Drained it out, and then we finished them in a skillet with lots of spices to finish.

And we have a mix now-- black bean mix-- you can use for tlayudas, for almost anything.

Actually, for a simple quesadilla, just add black beans to it.

And you can get this recipe, all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

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The Milk Street cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

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For more information on our extensive collection of kitchen products, we're on the web at fergusonshowrooms.com.

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Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

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- Since 1899, my family has shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

Only tomatoes.

Only Mutti.

- Designed by cooks for cooks for over 100 years.

Cookware collection by Regal Ware.

Handcrafted in Wisconsin.

- The AccuSharp knife and tool sharpener, designed to safely sharpen knives in seconds.

AccuSharp: Keep your edge.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪