Chicken Tortilla Pie

(This caps off a week of Mexican-themed content, including a recipe for Roasted Tomatillo Guacamole, my Tartan Mula cocktail and a review of the newest D.C. outpost of Rosa Mexicano, plus a look at the citrus juicer, an essential piece of equipment for these recipes.)

Restaurants are often a good source of inspiration for home kitchen creativity.

During a recent visit to the new Rosa Mexicano in Friendship Heights, Chris really enjoyed an entree of chicken tortilla pie. The dish was corn tortillas layered with pulled chicken, Chihuahua cheese and a poblano cream sauce.

For my take, I wanted something similar, although with a little more complexity. I decided to alternate layers of chicken, cheese and peppers with a spicy black bean puree.

Getting the various components ready is the biggest challenge for this dish. You can do them one at a time, but it will take a while. I recommend getting the beans started first so they can cool a bit before pureeing them in a food processor. The chicken doesn't require much care either, so it can get started early too.

I'd never cooked a poblano pepper before. In fact, I didn't know what one looked like and had to ask a produce clerk for help. It's a good thing, as I almost picked up a cubanelle instead.

For the chicken layer, I wanted something with a cheese sauce, but I didn't want it to be too rich. So I shied away from using heavy or sour cream and instead melted the monterey jack in some bechamel. The texture was just right when mixed with the sauteed onion, chicken and diced poblano.

To layer the pies, I started with a tortilla, then a layer of chicken, another tortillas, then a layer of bean puree, and then all that repeated again with extra cheese on the final top layer of bean puree.



Chicken Tortilla Pie


Makes two pies (enough for four servings)

Black bean puree:

1 tbsp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. chipotle chili powder
seasoned salt to taste
Juice from 1/2 lime

Poblano-chicken-cheese filling:

3 tbsp. olive oil
3/4 lb. chicken breast cutlets
Seasoned salt and fresh-ground black pepper
1 poblano pepper
Olive oil spray
1 sweet onion, diced
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 tbsp. flour
1 cup milk (skim is fine)
2 cups shredded Monterey jack cheese

8 corn tortillas
2 cups shredded Monterey jack cheese
1 avocado
Juice from 1/2 lime
2 tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro

1. Make the black bean puree. Heat olive oil in a small sauce pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute until soft and fragrant. Add the beans, spice and lime juice and reduce heat to simmer until the liquid has been absorbed or evaporated off, about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool slightly then puree cooked mixture in a food processor.

2. Cook the chicken. Heat 2 tbsp. olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the chicken breasts and season with seasoned salt and ground black pepper. Cook for 5 minutes, flip breasts, and cook for another 5 minutes until breasts are browned on both sides. Set aside to cool and then chop into 1/2-inch size pieces.

3. Prepare the pepper. Preheat the oven broiler with the rack in the highest position (about 4-5 inches from broiler). Cut the pepper in half to make two long pieces, removing the seeds as desired to moderate hotness (I left about half of them in). Place the two pieces of pepper skin side up on a baking sheet, spray with olive oil and broil until the peppers start to black in places (watch carefully, cooking time will vary and it won't take very long). Set aside to cool and then chop finely.

4. Preheat the oven to 375 F (since it was just used to broil the pepper, it should heat up quickly).

5. Make the bechamel. Heat the last tbsp. of olive oil in a large skillet. Add the onion and oregano and saute until the onion is softened. Season as desired with seasoned salt and fresh-ground black pepper. Add the flour and stir with a whisk to cook it a few minutes. Add the milk to the pan and continue whisking until the mixture starts to bubble and thicken. Reduce heat to medium-low.

6. Stir half of the shredded cheese into the bechamel until it melts and is smooth. Add the chopped sauteed chicken and chopped blackened poblano pepper.

7. Assemble the pies. Spray a large baking sheet with olive oil. Assemble the first pie on one end of the baking sheet in the following order: 1) corn tortilla, 2) chicken-cheese mixture (use about 1/4 of the mixture, 3) corn tortilla, 4) bean puree (use about 1/4 of the puree), then repeat steps 1 through 4 to make an eight-layered pie with two layers of bean and two layers of chicken. Top the final layer of bean puree with about half of the remaining cheese. Repeat to make a second pie on the baking sheet next to the first pie.

8. Bake the pies in the hot oven for about 25 to 30 minutes until the cheese on top has melted and browned a bit.

9. While the pies are baking, prepare the guacamole. Peel avocado and place flesh in a medium bowl. Add lime juice and mash together (I like to use a pastry blender). Mix in half of the chopped cilantro.

10. Once the pies are done, serve them them topped with a big dollop of guacamole and some chopped fresh cilantro.

Rosa Mexicano (Friendship Heights), Washington, D.C.

2015 Update: The Friendship Heights Rosa Mexicano has closed. The downtown location remains open.

Unlike food critics who have to, most diners who have a bad experience during a first visit to a restaurant do not go back. Why would they? With hundreds of options vying for your hard-earned cash, it's a more reasonable gamble to try your luck somewhere else.

Unfortunately for restaurants though, this means one bad night can turn any first-time diners into one-time diners. Maybe this doesn't seem fair--that server who ruined your meal may have been new and not long-lasting--but it's the way it is.

My first meal at the downtown D.C. Rosa Mexicano did not leave a very good impression. I thought the meal was overpriced for rather ordinary enchiladas. The supposedly famous table-side guacamole? Not as good as the table-side guacamole served a block away at Oyamel. This was probably 8 years ago, and I hadn't been back since...until recently.

In the ensuing years, the restaurant has apparently thrived. The downtown location always looks busy, and a second opened at Maryland's nearby National Harbor. Then, just a few months ago, a third local location opened not far from my house. I decided to act in atypical diner fashion and give the Manhattan-based another chance.

I'm glad I did. Chris and I have been to the new Friendship Heights location twice and had great dinners both times. That table-side guacamole may be no better than what Jose Andres serves at Oyamel, but it scores points for being served with warm, freshly made mini corn tortillas, which also taste delicious with the chipotle house salsa.

So far, our entrees have been uniformly good. My grilled salmon served with sweet corn, kale and pancetta was cooked just right and given a nice spicy-sweet kick by its habanero-fruit white wine sauce. Even better were the short ribs. So tender and served with a savory but not too spicy tomatillo-tomato-chipotle sauce. For those that either love or loath heat, both of these dishes are marked as "medium" spicy, but frankly neither are really spicy--certainly far less spicy than the green salsa served with the guacamole.

Another winner is the chicken tortilla pie, a comforting layered dish of shredded chicken, cheese and roasted peppers served with poblano cream sauce. It's so good that I was inspired to make my own take on the dish (which I will write about tomorrow). Other dishes I've yet to try that tempt me to make return visits: the marinated pork shank and the roasted duck with mole poblano sauce. There's also a brunch, which could be enticing too.

As for drinks, although their frozen pomegranate margarita claims to be the house speciality, I prefer the simpler tradicional: silver tequila with fresh lime and agave served on the rocks. Haven't yet sampled the desserts; we're always too full.

Rosa Mexicano replaces Bambule, a Spanish restaurant that we never tried. No matter. Rosa makes a nice addition to the somewhat starved-for-good-restaurants retail mecca of Friendship Heights.

 

Cocktail: Tartan Mula

The other weekend while out at District of Pi, a friend ordered this amazing cocktail made with mezcal and spicy ginger ale. It was so delightfully smoky. I wanted to try to make something like it. Sadly, my local liquor store didn't have the right kind of mezcal, so I'll have to keep looking. I made this instead, inspired by its smoke and ginger flavors.

Tartan Mula
1 oz. blanco tequila
1/2 oz. single malt Scotch
1/2 oz. lime juice (juice from 1/2 fresh lime)
4 oz. ginger beer
Lime wedge (optional garnish)

1. Fill rocks glass halfway with ice. Add all ingredients and stir to combine. Serve with lime wedge.

Food (Section) Fight!: Week 14

Food (Section) Fight! is my weekly look at The Washington Post's Food section and The New York Times' Dining section with my verdict on which section had the better content for the week.


Washington Post
I think maybe Tim Carman and I aren't on the same wavelength. Today's Food section starts with his feature story about how Washington doesn't eat breakfast anymore, a story I read while...perusing the Food Section over breakfast. I eat breakfast everyday with none being more special than Wednesdays (since it's breakfast with the Food Section, duh). In addition to telling us how restaurants like the four-star  Michel Richard Citronelle have ditched breakfast, he quotes a nutritionist who seems to think it's healthy to skip breakfast, and that the mantra to eat breakfast was a cereal marketing ploy. Perhaps. But I feel like these are examples in search of a narrative. There are plenty of restaurants in D.C. that offer breakfast. There's also plenty of evidence that eating breakfast is healthy. It's an interesting story, but I'm highly skeptical of its generalizability.


The other cover story, by Candy Sagon, is also amusing, but not very illuminating. It's about how bad food smells in a house for sale could keep buyers away. She talks about how she and her husband went without home-cooked broccoli, cabbage and organ meats (who cooks organ meats at home?) while they were trying to sell their house. Ultimately, she suggests keeping store-bought cookies warm in the oven to make good smells in the house. I suppose that's good advice, but I think you could just as easily open some windows and run your kitchen fan and everything would be fine.


Among the things I liked in today's Food section: this recipe for Lemon and Honey Chicken, which despite the fact that it's supposed to not make your house smelly, but just sounds really tasty. Stephanie Witt Sedgwick's Nourish recipe also sounds really good: Red Wine Chicken and Mushroom Stir-Fry, which she likens to a stir-fry version of coq au vin. Beer Madness concludes, and the winner is Maui Brewing Co's Coconut Porter. Good luck finding that! (Rodman's has Maui Brewing Co. beer, but I didn't see this particular one there this afternoon.) Finally, Jason Wilson has an interesting story about blending cognac, including a discussion about his own experience blending one, which revealed his rather expensive taste. Here here Jason.


New York Times
I really enjoyed Patricia Leigh Brown's lead story about a conference at the Napa Valley Culinary Institute of America Greystone Campus for healthcare professionals to learn how to cook. To me, that makes a lot of sense. If obesity is linked to a lot of health problems, then teaching doctors how to cook will allow them to give better advice to their patients. Telling people to eat healthier is not effective advice when you don't know how to do so yourself. 


Andrew Scrivani's story about repurposing leftovers into new dishes is amusing and his Greek-style dinner pie made with leftover greens looks quite tasty. Melissa Clark's Pink Grapefruit and Radicchio Salad with Dates and Pistachios sounds good too. Looking at the picture, I thought there was bacon in it, but I guess those are just dates (but wouldn't bacon be good in this too?). Lastly, I was pleased to see a mention of a Portland, Oregon, restaurant, Pok Pok, whose chef, the James Beard Award-winning Andy Ricker, is opening a New York City outpost in Brooklyn, Pok Pok NY. 


Verdict
The New York Times. Although it's not a knockout week for the Times, I found more stories that interested me in the Dining section this week than in the Post.


Score
The New York Times: 8
The Washington Post: 6

Roasted Tomatillo Guacamole

 Guacamole is one of life's great comfort foods. With the weather warming up, a bowl of fresh guac with some salty tortilla chips and a frosty margarita feels more and more appealing.

Making guacamole is pretty simple and, apart from the two required basics (fresh avocados and salt), additional mix-ins make it a versatile treat. Fresh citrus juice, tomatoes, herbs and spices shape its flavor profile. For a long time, I made guacamole frequently (like every week), and my additions were lime juice, seasoned salt, cumin and chipotle chili powder, as well as tomatoes or cilantro if I happened to have them. Just don't overdo it: you want the avocado to be the dish's true star. One popular additive I don't endorse: sour cream. I know some people like this, but I think it ruins it.

About the trickiest part is making sure the avocados are ripe. When unripe, their flesh is tough, which makes peeling and chopping them a pain. Plus you don't get that nice creaminess to the mixture. Overripe and they turn brown and mushy, which makes them unappetizing. To ripen them, just leave them out on the counter in a paper or plastic bag (don't put them in the refrigerator). Hitting that sweet spot can be tricky. If the avocado at the store is pretty green, you'll probably want them to set out for 2 or 3 days. If they're darker green toward brown but pretty firm, maybe just a day. If they feel at all squishy, don't buy them--they're overripe.

To peel them, I run a paring knife all the way around the avocado the long way, cutting through the flesh to the pit. Then I twist both halves; the pit will remain on one side. If the avocado is ripe, you can remove the pit with your fingers. If it's a little early, you might have to cut it out. I then cut the two halves in half again and peel off the skin with my fingers.

For this version, I chose to up my game by adding roasted tomatillo. Tomatillos look like little green tomatoes with a light brown papery wrapper. The wrapper comes off pretty easily, but the inside of it is sticky, so you'll want to wash the tomatillos after peeling off the outer skin.

Roasting them is pretty simple: just broil them for about 7 minutes. They'll turn nice and black on top, adding a depth of flavor and bringing out their tangy sweetness.

You can peel off the charred skin or just leave it on (I did) and chop the cooked tomatillos along with the other ingredients.

Traditionally, the avocado is ground in a rough stone bowl, the molcajete. Lacking that, as well as a mortar and pestle, I've developed what I think is a rather ingenious blending method: using a pastry cutter. It's really quite perfect, mashing the avocado into a creamy pulp while still leaving some nice-size chunks.

Roasted Tomatillo Guacamole

5 tomatillos, outer skin removed and washed
3 ripe hass avocados
Juice from 1 lime
2 tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 cup finely chopped sweet onion
1/2 tsp. chipotle chili powder
Seasoned salt to taste

1. Move oven rack to position 5 inches from broiler and preheat broiler. Put tomatillos in a rimmed baking sheet and broil until softened and charred on top, about 7 minutes (watch to prevent burning). Set aside until cool and then chop coarsely.

2. Peel avocados and place flesh in a medium bowl. Using a pastry blender, mash and chop the avocado until it reaches a desired consistency (I like mine to be fairly chunky; keep going longer if you want it smoother).

3. Add remaining ingredients and stir to combine. Serve with good quality tortilla chops. Also good as a dip for fresh vegetables.

Equipment: Citrus Juicer

To some, a citrus juicer may not seem like essential kitchen equipment. If you don't make a lot of things with fresh lemon or lime juice, perhaps it's not for you. But for me, it's absolutely great.

I use fresh citrus juice frequently in cocktails as well as many recipes (including all three recipes I'm posting this week). This tool saves time, mess and waste. There's really no downside.

Trying to squeeze citrus with your bare hands can be tiring; this gives you good leverage to work quickly. By hand, you often end up squirting on the counter, on the wall or even in your eye (ouch). This is designed to contain the squirt and drain the juice only where you want it. The green middle piece allows you to size the inner bowl to make a better fit for lemons or limes, so there's little "unsqueezed" juice left in the fruit. Plus it's just really efficient. You can juice your way through a whole basket of citrus in no time, without having to roll them on the counter or microwave them to get a good result.

Lemon Cake with Honey-Mascarpone Frosting and Ginger-Brown Sugar Ice Cream

When I tell people that I make my own birthday cake they have this surprised look on their face, but for me it makes perfect sense. I love to cook and making a cake is a treat. It's my party and I'll cry if I want to...or make my own cake!

This year, I decided I wanted to combine the flavors of lemon, honey and ginger. This is a classic combination that works well in hot tea and cocktails (see my Indochine Bee's Knees from earlier in the week). After considering several options, I decided the best course would be to put the lemon in the cake, the honey in the frosting and the ginger in the ice cream.

Finding a good cake recipe proved to be tricky. America's Test Kitchen's Lemon Layer Cake is layers of white cake sandwiched with lemon curd. I wanted the lemon flavor in the cake itself. Such cakes, however tend to be bundt cakes or loaf cakes, like Ina Garten's Lemon Cake. Still not quite right. I'd have to improvise.

In the past, I've had a lot of luck with America's Test Kitchen's recipe for Yellow Layer Cake. I decided to adapt this recipe by swapping out the milk for lemon juice and buttermilk. Buttermilk is an obvious choice: it's tangy flavor would compliment the lemon. Some recipes that call for buttermilk suggest substituting milk and lemon juice if you don't have buttermilk. I upped the moisture ratio a bit, adding 3/4 cup of buttermilk and lemon juice. Although one must be careful when changing ratios in baking, my thinking was that the extra 1/4 cup of liquid might mean baking the cake a little longer and wouldn't make a huge difference, which turned out to be the case.

For the frosting, I decided a cream cheese frosting would be the way to go, since a powder sugar frosting might be too sweet. But instead of regular cream cheese, I chose mascarpone, which has a richer texture and more neutral flavor. Doing so provided a better showcase for the honey flavor, which regular cream cheese might have muted.

I had a little timing problem with frosting the cake. I made the frosting too soon and when it was ready, the cake wasn't cool yet (and, FYI, it's not a good idea to frost a warm cake, as it will activate the butter and you'll have a runny mess). Since the frosting is basically cream cheese, I put it in the fridge. But then once the cake was cool, the frosting was hard. Arg. So I had to let it sit out anyway and I think the cool and reheating caused some separation with the honey, giving it a lumpy texture. It still tasted wonderful, but I would recommend setting the frosting ingredients out while the cake is in the oven (so they come to room temperature) and then making the frosting once the cake is cool.

Finally, there was the ice cream. I've had such success making ice creams from Jeni Britton Bauer's Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home that I knew I wanted to use her technique, even though she doesn't have a recipe that exactly matched what I wanted to make. Her technique is very adaptable though: the basic formula starts with cream, milk, sugar and corn syrup which is first cooked then combined with cornstarch and cooked again, then finally whisked together with cream cheese and salt before chilling and processing. Flavors that need to be steeped are added in the first step, other flavors that aren't cooked can be added with the cream cheese and any added solids (like chocolate chips or cookie crumbs) would go in during the processing. Seems easy enough.

To infuse the cream mixture with ginger flavor, I added a heaping 1/4 cup of roughly minced fresh ginger root. A last minute brainstorm led me to substitute brown sugar for regular sugar. Since brown sugar contains molasses, I thought this might nudge the ice cream toward a molasses ginger cookie without putting in so much molasses that the ice cream would overpower the lemon cake. Once the cream/ginger mixture was boiled for a few minutes, I let it steep for about 10 minutes before straining out the ginger solids. Some ginger ice cream recipes I consulted (including Jeni's Celery Ice Cream with Candied Ginger  Rum-Plumped Golden Raisins) add chopped crystalized ginger when processing the ice cream. I tasted the ice cream mixture before freezing it and decided it was sufficiently gingery, so I did not do this.

The resulting cake and ice cream delivered the flavors I wanted in nice balance.


Lemon Layer Cake
Adapted from Yellow Layer Cake recipe by America's Test Kitchen

4 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 3/4 cup cake flour
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
16 tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into pieces, soft but still cool

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 350 F. Grease two cake pans with butter, cover pan bottoms with buttered parchment rounds. Flour pans and tap our excess flour (tip: to reduce flour waste, I tap the excess flour from the first pan into the second).

2. Whisk eggs, lemon juice and buttermilk in a medium bowl. Measure out 1 cup of this mixture. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in stand mixer bowl and beat on lowest speed for about 30 seconds to blend. With mixer running, add butter a few pieces at at time. Mix until mixture clumps together and looks like sand and pebbles (will be about the time you finish adding butter). Add the reserved 1 cup of egg mixture and mix for about 5 seconds to incorporate, then increase speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, about a minute. Add remaining egg mixture in a slow stream with the machine running, about 30 seconds (careful, it splatters easily). Stop mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Beat on medium-high for another 15 seconds to thoroughly combine. Mixture will appear a bit curdled.

3. Divide batter into prepared cake pans and smooth batter with spatula. Bake until cakes are light brown and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the center, about 25 minutes. Cook on racks for about 10 minutes, then loosen cakes with a knife (tip: use a plastic one to avoid scratching nonstick cake pans), invert onto racks, remove parchment and allow to cool completely before frosting.

4. To assemble cake: place first cake layer on cake plate flat side down. Smooth about 1/2 cup frosting on top of cake (tip: I like to use an offset spatula for frosting cakes; it doubles as a nice serving instrument). Place second cake on top of frosted layer with flat side up. Smooth about 3/4 cup of frosting on top and use the rest to frost the side. Cake should be kept in refrigerator.

Honey-Mascarpone Frosting
Adapted from Darjeeling Dreams' Honeyed Frosting recipe

5 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
8 oz. mascarpone, at room temperature
2/3 cup powdered sugar
3 tbsp. honey (I used wildflower honey)

1. Beat together butter, mascarpone and powdered sugar on low for a few seconds to combine and then beat on medium-high until mixture is thick and fluffy. Add honey and continue beating another minute to incorporate. Use frosting immediately on cooled cake layers.

Ginger-Brown Sugar Ice Cream
Adapted from the technique of Jeni Britton Bauer in Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home

2 cups whole milk
1 tbsp. plus 1 tsp. cornstarch
3 tbsp. cream cheese, softened
1/8 tsp. salt
2-3 inches of fresh ginger root
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
2/3 cup light brown sugar
2 tbsp. light corn syrup

1. Whisk 2 tbsp. of the milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl (I use a 1-cup liquid measuring cup). Set aside. Whisk the cream cheese and salt in a medium bowl until smooth.

2. Whisk cream cheese salt in a large bowl (I use an 8-cup liquid measuring cup).

3. Peel and chop the fresh ginger until there's a heaping 1/4 cup. Add to a 4-quart saucepan with the cream, brown sugar, corn syrup and remaining milk. Bring to a rolling bowl over medium-high heat. Boil mixture for 4 minutes, watching carefully and stirring frequently to avoid boiling over. Remove from heat and let steep for 10 minutes.

4. Slowly whisk in the cornstarch slurry and return mixture to medium-high heat to boil for an additional minute to thicken. Remove from heat, strain to remove ginger pieces, and gradually whisk hot mixture into cream cheese until smooth. Pour mixture into a large gallon-size zip lock bag and submerge sealed bag in an ice water bath. Once cooled, you can store this mixture in the fridge for awhile or proceed with processing the ice cream in step 5.

5. Pour mixture into an ice cream maker and process until thickened and frozen, about 25 minutes. Transfer to a storage container and freeze fully in the freezer.