♪ ♪ - You know, recipes are not works of art.

You don't put them on a wall.

They change all the time.

And this was really brought home to me in a recent trip to Mexico City.

First of all, I was looking for a great recipe for enchiladas.

It turns out enchiladas is a concept more than a recipe.

It's a way of using, I don't know, leftovers.

And the sauce, by the way, chars the onions and the tomatoes and the chilies first, so you get this great charred flavor.

Now the second recipe are frijoles charro.

Those are cowboy beans.

Nobody cooks beans better than the home cooks in Mexico.

And finally, esquites, which, as you probably know, is corn with chili and lime.

We saw this actually in one market where they served it in cups with some Doritos (chuckling): and what looked like Velveeta.

So we'll leave that out and just get back to basics.

So please stay with us as we explore the fabulous, simple cooking of Mexico City.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Mexico City is a head- spinning, high-energy amalgam of traffic jams and really great dining.

My guide is Paco de Santiago, former bullfighter, owner of many cowboy hats, and an expert on Mexican history and cuisine.

Fight over the grasshoppers?

- Yes.

- Gonna get more?

- Five grasshoppers.

You have three.

I have... ♪ ♪ - I traveled to Mexico City to get an insider's guide-- a Paco de Santiago tour of the home kitchens, the markets, and the cooks that most tourists never see.

- When I started going to the streets, I learned that the first thing that they would say to you when you were arriving to eat in a taqueria, say buen provecho.

Bon appetit.

♪ ♪ When we talk about taco in Mexico City, we locals picture in our mind any kind of food.

We taco everything.

♪ ♪ Many of these neighborhoods in the city, they have the fortune to have this mercado.

It's a one-stop shop.

You can find many things.

What would be called in the States, maybe like a fast food court, but in this case, it's not fast food.

It's like slow food.

And we call it cocina económica, like a very cheap family-style food prepared by women.

- You are very tall.

Where are you from?

- Boston.

- Boston.

- I am tall.

- You are working here?

- Am I working here?

I am now, yeah.

♪ ♪ After my shift at the cocina económica, Paco introduced me to some of the city's top chefs so I could get some firsthand experience with real Mexican cooking.

I wanted to know what most people get wrong.

- Mole.

Because mole is not one recipe.

There are thousands of moles.

You can use many chilies.

Mostly moles has very several chilies.

Not for adding spicy, for adding flavor and aroma.

- We don't really use a big bunch of overwhelming spices in our food.

For us, the spiciness matters, but it's not just about numbing your taste buds.

So it has to be flavorful and spicy at the same time.

- Mainly, we have salsas at the table.

You can add spicy if you like.

We love free will.

- I also asked them to share their takes on enchiladas.

♪ ♪ - Enchiladas for me, comfort food.

But it's very important to get to reach that point where the sauce is going to be the star of the show, and the filling is sometimes the less important thing.

We call in Mexico this technique tatemar-- high heat, no oil.

In this case, I'm using a skillet.

This one, I know it looks overcooked, almost over-burnt, but that's exactly what I'm looking for.

- Back at Nicos Restaurant, chef Lugo completed my enchilada education.

He made a quick blender salsa using a classic technique.

After that, day-old tortillas are refreshed quickly in hot oil filled with cheese, and then simply sauced.

This is a recipe so simple, so easy, that it could be thrown together on any Tuesday night.

- Gracias.

- Thank you.

- Mmm.

- Like that.

- This is my grandmother's style.

- I need to eat more.

♪ ♪ Here's a word about enchiladas.

I was in Mexico City not too long ago.

Chef Lugo actually went into the kitchen with me to make them, and I realized that enchiladas are not a recipe.

What are enchiladas?

Something rolled up in a soft tortilla with a simple sauce on top.

The first step, and this is what I love about Mexican cooking, is charring these ingredients.

Tomato.

Chili, it's been seeded.

Quarter of a white onion.

Couple garlic cloves, and... one guajillo, which hopefully is also seeded.

There was one other thing I saw in that restaurant kitchen.

He had one cook stand by the griddle, and what she would do is-- they make their own tortillas, of course.

She would heat up the tortilla, then pry open one side of it to make a little pouch in it.

She'd pour an egg, one egg, into the tortilla, seal the pouch with her finger, put it back on the griddle for a couple of minutes.

So you end up with a tortilla with a essentially poached or cooked egg in the inside.

And that's, that's one of the specialties there.

It's really amazing.

The one thing you want to watch out for is the guajillos will tend to color first, so you might have to take those out.

So you already have a little char going on.

When you get the sauce finished, if you have a recipe that calls for, let's say, a 28-ounce can of tomatoes, you can actually substitute this for that can of tomatoes.

And I've done this in a, in a few recipes.

And instead of getting just sort of a blah canned tomato base, you get this wonderful char, you know, a little bit of spice, little garlic and the onion, so you get much more flavor.

Now we're going to take this off the heat for just a second.

If I put water in it now, it's going to explode.

(laughs) Yeah, that really exploded, didn't it?

Just like I said.

(chuckling): And a half teaspoon of salt.

When I was in Mexico City, what they did at this point, after charring it, they put it in a blender with some water and pureed it.

They were not using guajillos, though, dried chilies, they were using fresh chilies.

We're going to take just a few minutes to help soften that.

Transfer this to a blender.

I'm going to use a spoon.

Little oregano.

So we'll let this cool down for just a couple minutes.

We'll puree it and then we'll put it back in the pan.

And as they do in Mexico City, they cook the sauce a little bit until the foam, which is on top of the sauce, goes away.

And now you have a cooked sauce.

Then all you have to do is fill some tortillas and you're good to go.

♪ ♪ To freshen up his day-old tortillas at Nicos, chef Lugo would get a pan with hot oil and then, and then obviously just run them through like this a couple of times.

And that freshened them up.

He did that so they were more pliable so they could be rolled and filled.

We like to do it in an oven with a little oil so you can do a whole bunch at once.

♪ ♪ Pop that into the oven for a few minutes.

And now we're going to do the onions.

A little vinegar with the onions.

So the filling is going to be white onion and two kinds of cheese.

We have queso fresco.

We have the pickled-- slightly pickled-- onions, and we have Chihuahua cheese.

What they used was ocosingo.

Looks like a big ball of mozzarella; has sort of a yellowish skin on it that's pretty tough.

And you open it up and then take a fork and just scrape it out.

It's kind of like a pretty dry mozzarella.

Obviously, it's hard to find here, so we're using this Chihuahua cheese instead.

You know, I used to make enchiladas a long time ago.

It took about four hours because I had to cook a filling, and, you know, it was just a big production.

So I only do that, like, on my birthday or something.

These are super simple.

Actually, I have to say, I prefer the cheese filling to the chicken filling, which is normally what I would do.

So we're gonna roll them up, put them seam-side down in the pan.

So back in the oven, it's 375 for about five minutes.

Bring them out.

And to serve, obviously, we're gonna add the sauce.

Here's a little thing about the sauce.

When we first started working on this recipe here at Milk Street, the thinking was, well, it should be sort of a thick sauce, 'cause that's what we're used to.

Actually, in Mexico, the sauce is sort of on the thin side, and it is also really delicious.

♪ ♪ Mm.

One more bite?

(laughs) Just one more bite.

Chef Lugo also brought out a chorizo potato version, which I also loved.

Obviously takes a little more time 'cause you actually have to cook a filling.

Um, so there are lots of ways to do it.

But this simple cheese, two-cheese version, with the onions was my favorite.

And that salsa roja, as I said, is one of those standalone recipes you could use with hundreds of other recipes.

So for Tuesday night, cheese enchiladas with salsa roja make a whole bunch of sense to me.

♪ ♪ - So you just saw Chris make salsa roja for the enchiladas.

But the thing about salsas is you can't have one.

You need many, or at least three.

So I want to show you two other approaches to salsa.

And I think that's the important word here-- it's an approach.

So the first salsa I'm going to show you is a template for a fresh and raw salsa.

You might be familiar with pico de gallo.

And this is sort of in that category.

We're not cooking anything; like Chris charred all of those vegetables for his salsa roja.

So this was some tomatillos.

And then we're gonna add in some serranos and white onion.

Those are your three main ingredients.

And then sneaky fourth is a little bit of salt.

So you'll notice we added no additional liquid like lime juice.

And that's for two reasons.

One, tomatillos are naturally sour, so we don't need another acid.

And two, tomatillos and onions have liquid in them.

So if we added water, we'd dilute it.

This way we have a really potent salsa.

We have our charred red salsa, and we have our fresh and raw spicy green salsa.

But we need a third, and our third is gonna be made with dried chilies and nuts, which is a huge family of salsas in Mexico.

Today we're gonna use dried guajillo chilies and peanuts.

So we're gonna add our guajillos and garlic to the skillet to develop some char.

So, like the raw salsa I made, this is also a template.

You might really want something smoky smoky like a chipotle chili.

You could toast that.

You can change up which nut you use.

So pumpkin seeds have a nice grassy flavor, and so you'll get something a little more vegetal with them.

I'm teaching you these extra templates, one, because when you're in Mexico, you have multiple salsas on the table.

But two, I think it's a really nice way to allow your guests to customize their meal.

Every bite gets to be a little bit different.

So the aroma's getting really strong, and I see a little bit of blistering on my chilies, so I'm gonna go ahead and take them out of the skillet.

Now while our chilies are hot, we're gonna add some boiling water on top of them.

Just eyeball it and cover it.

This is to soften them.

I went ahead and soaked some in advance, so I'm gonna get these out of the way so I don't get confused, and I'm just gonna go ahead and squeeze them out.

We have our garlic, and we have our guajillos.

We're gonna add three-quarters of a cup of water.

Some oil.

We're using olive oil.

That may seem counterintuitive.

You think of olives in the Mediterranean, but there's a lot of olive oil used in Mexican cooking.

It also has a really nice grassy flavor that we like in this particular salsa.

A little honey for sweetness.

And some lime juice.

And, of course, we can't forget our peanuts.

And then some salt.

(whirring) You can see how nicely the peppers mixed into everything here because we soaked them.

Last, we want to add a fresh element, and that's going to be some fresh oregano.

(whirring) This smells so good.

It smells exactly why you put three salsas on the table.

That fresh salsa was super acidic and piquant and fiery hot.

This is rich and charred.

A completely different topping than either of the other two.

So I can yammer on a hundred times about why you need three salsas, but I might as well just show you.

So we have these beautiful bean and chicken tostadas.

I want Chris's nice charred salsa.

But I think I also want a little bit of the acidity from this green one.

That green raw salsa is perfect.

The bright acidity from the tomatillos against those refried beans and the chicken.

Now, you know, let's try a bite on the other side.

Now, that's the tostada I want on a dreary day like today.

The extra charring from the salsa makes it a much richer experience.

I hope I've convinced you to have some fun with your salsas and to have more than one.

Have a little fun with your toppings.

Speaking of which, in the next segment, I'm going to show you how to make cowboy beans.

They have a very different topping situation.

♪ ♪ - (speaking Spanish): (sizzling) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - We do a lot of traveling at Milk Street, and no matter where we travel, we look for the food that comes out of necessity, because necessity is the mother of innovation.

When you don't have a lot, you coax as much flavor out of every single ingredient that you can.

Mexican cowboys in the north were out, and they had to make dinner over a fire with whatever ingredients they had.

And it all starts with the beans.

Most often you see frijoles charros, or Mexican cowboy beans, made with pinto beans.

But we learned a version from Luis Alberto Llanos Legorreta that are made with black beans.

So here I have a bunch of beans.

It's a pound to seven cups of water, one tablespoon of salt that you soak overnight, or the equivalent, which is eight to 12 hours.

I wanna show you why we soak them.

So here are some soaked beans, and here are some unsoaked beans.

Look how plump the soaked beans got.

So this plumpness is water, right?

And so these are gonna cook faster when I actually go to make dinner than if I start from dry beans.

So here's another batch of beans that are soaked.

I've drained them.

And to the oven, we're gonna add another seven cups of water.

And this time, just half a teaspoon of salt.

So the salt, when we soaked them, was actually to make the beans more tender and so they cook up evenly.

The salt now is to season them, so we use a lot less.

We're gonna bring these up to a nice gentle simmer and have them cook for 45 to 60 minutes.

Often when you cook beans, a little bit of scum, as it's called-- although it's not scum, it's not dirt, it's just saponins from your beans-- rises to the surface.

And if you want to, you can skim it off the top just like this.

Although, secret from me, known as the Lady of the Legume here at Milk Street, because I grow my own beans and I cook them all the time, is that it's not dangerous to just leave it in the pot, but it is more aesthetically pleasing to skim it.

So we have beans, check.

They can last for a long time and ramble around in your saddlebag, and they're not gonna go bad.

We want to add some flavor to the beans, and we're also gonna do that with things that last a long time.

This lard already smells amazing.

The end dish is pretty brothy.

It's almost like a pork and bean soup.

So you wanna remember that all of this intense flavor gets diluted throughout the soup base.

In essence, we're building the broth flavor right now in the skillet.

And now we can add in our bacon and our chorizo.

Okay, there's no pink left in the sausage, so now we're gonna continue building this base.

We're gonna go with some chipotles in adobo.

So this is gonna add smokiness and spiciness.

And some fresh minced garlic.

This is just pantry cooking at its best.

And we wanna add in a little dried oregano.

And now some fresh tomatoes.

Maybe a cowboy out in northern Mexico wouldn't be adding a fresh tomato that would've exploded in his saddlebag.

But you are at home in your kitchen, and that extra juicy freshness of the tomato is really nice in the dish.

Traditionally, a sofrito is something you make the base of a dish and you add things to it.

Instead, we're gonna do the opposite.

So the bean cooking liquid and all of the flavor from the sofrito now have 30 minutes to blend together and become broth.

So it's been 30 minutes, and the broth really has reduced, which means flavor.

One more thing to add-- some chopped cilantro.

Now to tie it back to salsas a little bit.

Salsas are all about that final pop that takes a dish from good to great.

And our topping in this situation is one more layer of pork.

To take this porky dish from good to great, we're using chicharrones, which are pork skins.

They're gonna add an awesome crunch, which this dish needs.

And also, as the broth fills in, the little bits around is gonna crackle, and they're gonna get softer in places and crunchier in other places.

It's the perfect topping.

That broth has so much flavor.

This really is why we seek out the food made from necessity.

Home cooks around the world have always known that with a little culinary know-how, you can coax incredible amount of flavor out of the humblest beginnings.

♪ ♪ - So if you're walking around Mexico City and you see a street stall with big vats of corn kernels simmering away in it, stop and ask what they're making, because if it's esquites, you're going to want to try some.

Our recipe for esquites was inspired by a recipe by Beto Estúa and Jorge Fritz from Casa Jacaranda in Mexico City.

Our version starts with kernels already cut off the cob.

Sometimes in Mexico City, they may grill the corn on the cob first, then cut them off.

But we're going to get our char right in the skillet with already-cut kernels.

This is from about five cobs of corn, more or less.

And now we'll come over here and start on some of the prep for the additional flavorings we'll be adding to that.

The first thing is a whole serrano chili.

Half of this is going to go whole in with the corn as it simmers a little bit later.

The other half will get chopped up to use as garnish on top.

I'm going to leave a little bit of white membrane there because I want a little bit of heat in my esquites.

But if you want even less heat, cut all of the white part out.

Epazote is a very leafy herb with a very firm stem.

It's a Mexican herb.

It's very difficult to find here unless you have a specialty Mexican grocery.

It's a taste that's really hard to replicate.

But Jorge and Beto suggested we use a combination of parsley and basil.

Basil brings that herbal lightness, and parsley brings a little bit of a bitter edge.

So it's as close as we're going to get to that.

Can you hear the corn cooking?

(pan sizzling) It's really great.

This corn is dancing around the stove here.

Okay, we'll add a little bit of butter, then we'll add some water.

That half a serrano that we cut earlier and then our herbs that we chopped.

This is going to simmer away for about five or six minutes.

This continues to cook the corn, softens it, and it adds sweetness.

The longer the corn cooks, sort of the sweeter it gets.

Now, in Mexico, the corn is a little bit different.

It's a firmer, more starchy corn.

There's less natural sugars in it there than there is here.

So they let it simmer away in those vats for a lot longer than we're doing right now.

Now, when you pull it, there's a streak with very little liquid coming in.

You've got a bare streak for a while and then some liquid.

That's what you want.

And right in the skillet here, we'll stir in the Mexican crema.

If you don't have Mexican crema, just use sour cream, which is fine.

Or crème fraîche is really, really good.

Little mayonnaise, which is traditional here.

This is a little bit of cayenne.

And, of course, a little bit of lime juice.

You gotta have that.

We'll serve it with more lime later, but you want the lime to mix in with all these flavors.

Okay.

You've got this beautifully simmered whole half of serrano.

Somebody is gonna wanna eat this.

I'm gonna take it out.

You can always serve it on the side.

Now, in Mexico, if you find a stall that makes this, you'll be given a cup of it with a spoon sticking out of the top, which is fantastic.

But of course, we have to finish off with a little bit of Cotija cheese.

Cotija is a somewhat dry Mexican cheese that has a nice salty tang to it, similar to Parmesan.

This is Milk Street's version of Mexican-style corn with chili and lime, otherwise known as esquites.

Mm.

Mm.

(chuckles) I cannot stress how delicious this dish is.

It has really all those contrasting elements that you want in a single bite of food.

The sweetness of the corn, it's still juicy and popping 'cause it's fresh summer corn.

And then the tanginess of the lime.

A little heat from the serrano chili and then that creaminess from the crema.

And the cheese melting because the cotija melts in there.

And it just makes the most beautiful, well-rounded dish.

And you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season at MilkStreetTV.com.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

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From Vietnamese chicken salad and tiramisu to easy-stretch pizza dough and Austrian apple strudel, the new Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $29.95, 40% less than the cover price.

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