I’ve been on the road for over a month, so this edition of “Just The Bill, Please” will be something of a ramble as well. I now occasionally am leading food tours in Oaxaca in southern Mexico. I finished a third one in August and I’ll be back in there in January. My assignment here has been to talk about the food world in Chapelboro, but I have been given permission to stray from time to time. Hence, this month’s offering will have a little of each.
Here in North Carolina we had a splendid wild blackberry season, so almost the last thing I did before leaving town was to help Crook’s Corner with a dessert pop up that featured blackberry-buttermilk sherbet. They hope to finally reopen sometime this winter, so they have had, from time to time, surprise dessert events all summer. Coincidentally, I had a feature in this August’s issue of Southern Living Magazine about blackberries, so they were already on my mind. The sherbet was splendid if I do say so myself. And beautiful too. (Keep your eyes open for a sidewalk sale of persimmon pudding sometime this fall.)
A few days later, I was off to Mexico City again. Rather than just dwell on what I had to eat, I think I’ll spend some time on what I learned about cooking on this trip. I have had Hoja Santa before, both in Mexico at in the homes of friends here. It isn’t used in Southern cooking, but it grows here, so I encourage you to give it a try. It has a faint aroma of sassafras, which is why in Texas it is sometimes called Root Beer Plant. At Las Danzantes, my favorite restaurant in Oaxaca they serve it folded over fresh cheese and quickly baked, with a mild green chili sauce. It was so splendid.
My next big discovery was Poleo. In English it’s called Pennyroyal and is generally used in either tea or as a medicine. One evening at my hotel we were served warmed fresh tortillas with a black bean sauce that was more like soup than a traditional sauce. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I detected a faint taste of mint, and then I noticed tiny flecks of green in the sauce. I, of course, went to the kitchen to ask about this. Graciela, one of the cooks grows poleo in her garden and had brought it to work. Her recipe was simple, delicious, and eye-opening.
The last thing I’ll mention is technique. Our tour spent a day in the cooking school of Susana Trilling and she had lots to teach us. First of all, don’t be afraid of an old-fashioned blender. Most homes that I have visited in Latin America have one of these rather than a food processor. It explains the sauces and drinks that you are served.
Secondly, take the time you need. Like I learned in a French kitchen many years ago, reduction and simmering produce more intense flavors. Mexican cooking takes reduction up a notch over the French. I had never realized that before.
I’ll finish by mentioning the comal, a sort of dry round grill found in most kitchens. I learned to cook tetelas (corn turnovers) on one. You must place them gently on the surface lest you get bubbles in the masa. They are also perfect for dry scorching cacao for hot chocolate, and dried chilies and fresh vegetables for salsas.
The delicious things we had to eat are too many to mention so I’ll stop with one. Graciela made her wonderful Chicken in Mole Verde for us one evening. This is special because mole verde must be eaten at once. Unlike other moles, it doesn’t hold well because it is made of fresh greens and herbs.
Following my usual airline tribulations, I returned home the last week of August. I’m sure that I’ve mentioned before how much I dislike cooking at home for one, so I took to the streets and was delighted to see busy restaurants all over town. I had a delicious Shrimp Puttanesca at 411 West first thing. The next night, excellent grilled quails on a salad of frisée at Glasshalfull. The next evening, upon reflection on what incoming travel bills might reveal I made pasta with fresh tomatoes and butter at my house. I gave you that recipe last summer about this time. It’s always delicious, but I needed something new to offer to end this piece.
I cook supper one evening on each of our tours under the guise of teaching a class. In fact, the kitchen at the hotel is small and its equipment is, well rudimentary, so as often as not our guests wander in and out to watch while drinking mezcal margaritas rather than to take notes or to stir sauces. These impromptu cocktail hours call for hors d’oeuvres, so this time I used livers given to me by the hilarious chicken lady at the market to make a seat-of-the-pants pate. Nothing was really measured but it turned out quite good.
Chicken Liver Mousse á L’Instant
- Enough bacon grease or oil to fry the livers
- ½ pound raw chicken livers
- ½ medium onion, thinly sliced
- 2 pinches of salt
- ¼ cup Bourbon or brandy, plus a splash or two more for finishing
- ½ stick unsalted butter at room temperature
- A couple of scrapes of nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
- 2 or 3 shakes of hot sauce
- More salt to taste
This isn’t called seat-of-the-pants for nothing. When you buy a chicken in the Juarez Market, you get everything but the feathers and the intestines. The feet are declawed and scaled, and the brain is removed from the skull, but you get everything else. The meat was for our casserole and all the rest went into the stock pot, but you can’t put livers in a stock, so there they sat. We used to make something like this at La Residence, so I thought why not? I had onions, the whiskey from a previous event was sitting on the counter. I had found real butter, not easy in a place where most people are lactose intolerant. The seasonings were all in the cupboard. Oh, and lemon in Mexico means lime.
Fry the livers alone until they start to brown, then add the onion and the first salt. The livers need to be well done. The time this takes will depend on their size. Carefully pour in the whiskey. It will probably flare up. Shake the pan around and then use a large spoon to try to dislodge as much of the browned bits clinging to the pan. They add flavor. Set the livers aside to cool. The butter and livers need to be the same temperature before you can proceed. When they are, scrape the livers, any juice and everything you can dislodge from the pan into a food processor (or blender). Pulse a few times to break them up, then add the butter and continue pulsing until thoroughly combined. Add the nutmeg, lime juice and hot sauce and pulse again to combine. Finally, a splash or two more of whiskey and salt to taste. Transfer to a serving dish. Chill for twenty minutes or so to allow the mousse to set up. Serve with toast or crackers and some sort of pickle.
“Just The Bill, Please” is a regular column on Chapelboro.com penned by local culinary legend Bill Smith. Born and raised in New Bern, Bill Smith spent 25 years heading up the kitchen in Crook’s Corner — and over the years, he accumulated the accolades to match his incomparable takes on classic Southern food.
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