Sopa Verde (Mexican Pesto)

This is a recipe from my (sort-of) mother-in-law, and I'll bet that there are hundreds of "mother-in-law" recipes out there - some authentic spaghetti and meatballs with marinara from the overbearing mother of your mama's boy husband. Well, this is nothing like that (well, all except for the mama's boy part). This is a recipe for what we call sopa verde, sopa, in Mexican Spanish, referring to soup, rice or pasta (in this case, the last one).

When talking to fellow gringos about my new-found favorite spaghetti dish, I like to refer to this as Mexican pesto. It's green, it's delicious, and it has cheese and garlic. (OK, so no basil or pine nuts, but the important thing is that it's green, right?) This pasta is a creamy dish that brings out the flavor of the chiles, but not so much the heat. Sopa verde was always served to me as a side dish, but it does more than just fine on its own.

Ingredients
1 lb. spaghetti
4 poblano chiles
2 jalapeños
3 cloves of garlic
1 tsp. salt
250 g Mexican media crema (or 1 cup heavy cream)
100 g shredded Manchego cheese, plus more for garnish

Directions

1 - Boil spaghetti according to the instructions on the box.

2 - Char all chiles on a comal or over an open flame. Put chiles in a bowl, cover bowl with plastic for at least 10 minutes. Peel off the charred skin.

3 - Put chiles, garlic, salt and media crema in a blender and puree.

4 - Over low heat in a large saute pan, mix the spaghetti, chile sauce and 100 g of the manchego cheese. Stir until all spaghetti is coated and the cheese is melted.

5 - Serve warm with a sprinkling of the extra manchego cheese (and if you're one of those people that needs to have meat, I recommend grilled chicken).

Chile Profile - Serrano

The serrano chile, or chile verde as its commonly referred to in Mexico (despite the fact that most of the chiles here are green) are fairly small and thin, like a stretched-out jalapeño. With a rating of ten to twenty-five thousand Scoville units, the serranos are some of Mexico's hotter chiles. They are often used for their characteristic bright and spicy flavor.

Serrano chiles are available fresh; they don't come dried or pickled (as far as I've ever seen - and I do look). Serranos can be used raw, but that's probably a little intense for most people. Serranos can be boiled, charred (for more flavor), or chopped up and sauteed. They aren't that hot, so they don't really need to be deveined or seeded (although if you are chile sensitive, do what you got to do). The best use for serranos (that I've found so far) is salsa. I wouldn't make a salsa without them!

Fresh serranos are available in any supermarket, market or tianguis (moving markets that spend specific days in specific places) in Mexico. As for the United States (at least in Queens and central Jersey), serrano chiles are just as easy to find in any major supermarket.

Making Masa

It occurred to me while posting my sope entry that perhaps people don't know what masa is. Or, even more unfortunate, most people probably don't have the convenience that I enjoy of having a tortilleria on every corner at which to buy masa. Poor souls.

Masa is just Spanish for dough, but in Mexico the word typically refers to the corn dough used to make tortillas. In Mexico, any place that sells fresh corn tortillas, whether a one room porch with a machine in it or a giant supermarket, also sells masa. Outside of Mexico, however, I have seen neither tortillerias nor masa for sale. But do not despair! With the availability of masa harina (Maseca) both online (mexgrocer.com) and in any supermarket catering to a Latino population, you too can have masa and all of Mexico's most-beloved antojitos. (I'll admit that it's not the same, but it's still tasty in its own right.)

Ingredients
1 1/3 c. masa harina
1 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 c. melted lard (or melted butter or vegetable oil)
3/4 - 1 c. water

Directions

1 - Mix masa harina, flour, baking powder, salt and lard together.

2 - Add water slowly, kneading with your hands, until a smooth ball of dough comes together.

3 - Rest dough for at least 15 minutes. Then, you're good to go! (Pretty easy, right?)

Sopes (and Synonyms)

Sopes are a type of antojitos, or Mexican snacks made of masa (tortilla dough). Depending on where you eat them and what they are filled with, sopes can also be known as pellizcadas, memelas, gorditas, garnachas and picaditas (to name a few). What matters in sope classification is its shape - it should be small (3-4 inch diameter), round, and with pinched sides that create a shallow dish (well, you can see the picture).

This particular recipe is known in some places as a garnacha for its simple, inexpensive filling (just salsa and onions), making this sope, as I recently learned, "the poor man's sope" (which makes sense now, thinking back to where I had my first sope experience). Although eating this type of sope can earn you some insults in the street, in the privacy of your own home, these sopes are delicious and a great budget option.

Ingredients
3 lbs. masa
salsa (store-bought, or see the AP Red Salsa post)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 1/2 c. queso fresco
vegetable oil

Directions

1 - Divide the masa into golf ball sized portions.

2 - Between two pieces of plastic (I recommend cutting up a large Ziploc bag), flatten each piece of dough to a thickness of 1/8 of an inch and shape into a circle.

3 - On a comal (or griddle) over medium heat, cook the sopes for about one minute on each side.

4 - Upon removing the sopes from the comal, immediately place them on a thin cloth. Fold the cloth over the sope (to protect your fingers from getting burned) and pinch all around the sides, creating a 1/2 inch high wall to hold in the filling.

5 - Put the oil in a saute pan, about 1/2-inch deep, over medium heat. Fry sopes about two minutes on each side.

6 - Drain on a paper towel and begin assembly. Fill the sopes with salsa, add chopped onion and sprinkle the queso fresco on top. Your basic sope is done.

7 - Feel free to customize your sopes to your liking - shredded chicken, chorizo, ground beef, beans, lettuce, cabbage and cream are some common sope additions to help you get started!

Taco Bell Sauces

When I go to Taco Bell, I leave with about 100 packets of taco sauce for each taco. I do this every time that I go; I have no shame. The sauces are quite good - and useful for more than just tacos (like for Hot Pockets). Recently, Taco Bell has added two new sauces to their traditional Mild-Hot-Fire line-up, which means they all needed to be evaluated. The taste test results...

Mild - There is no space in my bag for Taco Bell's "Mild" sauce. Although it has a really balanced and tasty flavor, I find something oxymoronic (and ultimately wrong) about a mild hot sauce.

Hot - 90% of my bag is filled with these tiny packets, and that includes the space taken up by the actual tacos. This is the best sauce and has the perfect balance between flavor and heat.

Fire - I once worked for a magazine where I taste tested more than 100 hot sauces; most of them had no flavor, just burning pain - a week that my mouth and stomach will never forget. This "Fire" sauce gives me unpleasant flashbacks.

Verde - In my opinion, a good salsa verde can beat any red salsa. This one doesn't, but this verde does hit all the traditional bright and slightly acidic notes to make it a respectable alternate to the standard "Hot" sauce.

Fire-Roasted - A deep, smokey and almost sweet combination of tomato and garlic, but definitely not of chilies. Good taste, but as stated before, hot sauce should be, well, hot.

Stick with the "Hot" sauce (makes sense), but an authentic Mexican authority would argue that the combination of the "Hot" with the "Fire-Roasted" is unbeatable.

All-Purpose Red Salsa

In spite of what some Old El Paso commercial might be hawking, real salsa does not need to be chunky. In fact, here in Mexico, chunks are reserved for the raw garnish of pico de gallo, whereas salsas are near liquid - the only chunks coming from a lazy blending job.

This is my all-purpose salsa because the very few ingredients are universally easy to find, the recipe is simple to follow and the salsa is just about delicious on everything, although I personally find it best on cheesy omelettes, in sopes and just for dipping Tostitos.

This recipe is spicy (this is salsa, after all), but not overly so. If you like (or your stomach lining needs) your salsa milder, drop the number of serranos down to two.

Ingredients
7 roma (or plum) tomatoes
2 jalapeño peppers
4 serrano chilies
2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. vegetable oil

Directions

1 - Cut the ends off of the tomatoes and the stems off of the chilies.

2 - Boil the tomatoes and chilies together in a large pot over medium heat until the jalapeños and serranos turn a pale green, about 20 to 30 minutes.

3 - Place the tomatoes, chilies, garlic and salt into a blender, and blend until smooth (or to your preferred consistency).

4 - In a large saute pan over a low flame, heat the oil.

5 - Add the salsa, and saute the salsa for 10 to 15 minutes so that all the flavors marry.

6 - Allow to cool, and serve with anything!

Mexican Hot Chocolate

In these cold, snowy days of January, nothing goes down better than a hot chocolate. Even in the comfort of a temperate Mexico City or trapped in a scorching hot summer in Veracruz, the weather is always right for chocolate in Mexico. (Although, I must agree that a nice mug would have been more apt for my frigid visit home to New Jersey last week.)

Mexican hot chocolate stands out for being made with a specific type of chocolate (not Swiss Miss) and having a slight cinnamon flavor. Chocolate is traditionally enjoyed with a bolillo, a crusty white roll, as a dunker, but it's also pretty fabulous with the completely un-Mexican addition of marshmallows. (I know; I'm such a gringa.)

Ingredients
1 quart whole milk
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 tsp. instant coffee granules
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
135g Mexican chocolate (or 1 1/2 tablets of Abuelita)

Directions

1 - In a medium pot over medium-low heat, bring the milk and the cinnamon stick to a simmer.

2 - Add vanilla.

3 - Rough chop the chocolate. Add the chocolate and the coffee. Lower the heat, and stir until the chocolate is completely melted.

4 - Pour the hot chocolate through a strainer to remove the bits of cinnamon stick.

5 - Serve hot (obviously) with a bolillo (or kaiser roll, if bolillos are unavailable in your neighborhood) or marshmallows.