For Chrismas, C & A gave us “Mexican Everyday” by Rick Bayless. Considering the lack of good Mexican restaurants in our neighborhood, and my lack of knowledge about Mexican cooking, it was a most welcome gift. And also welcome because, in this time of year, in the lull after the holidays, in the bright snow-covered days of the middle of winter, I love spending late weekend afternoons in the kitchen.
Last weekend we inaugurated the book by making two recipes. First, a mixed-berry Skillet Upside-Down Cake which we enjoyed with some of our neighbors over Banangrams, and then for our New Year’s dinner, Chicken in Oaxacan Yellow Mole with Green Beans and Chayote.
Everyone loved the cake–it was simple and light, yet somehow felt more rich and more generous than it was. Over the past two years I’ve been baking almost exclusively from Martha Stewart’s “Baking Handbook,” whose recipes are delicious, buttery, and labor intensive. As much as I enjoy that sort of fussy baking, this cake was a great contrast. It’s half whole-wheat. It’s mixed by hand, and quickly. The finished result is practically eaten straight from the oven–you just invert it onto a plate, admire the jammy berries still bubbling on the top (they look like chocolate), and devour with friends over tea.
Many of the recipes in “Mexican Everyday” contain riffs, or suggested variations. I appreciate the encouragement to approach cooking from a more improvisatory mind. The skillet cake recipe called for pineapple. I went with the frozen berry riff, and used a blend of blueberries, raspberries, and marionberries.
According to Bayless, the yellow mole is much quicker and simpler than other moles. For me, it was plenty complicated. It sent me around town on a hunt for previously-unknown ingredients: dried guajillo chiles, Mexican–as opposed to Turkish–oregano, masa harina, and hoja santa leaves (I never did find these last two). It required a blender, a strainer, and faith. The result was worth the effort: a nuanced, warm, pretty, red-not-yellow sauce, more of a thick broth in which I braised chicken, potatoes, green beans, and chayotes.
Chayotes were another new-to-me ingredient, and were unexpected and sweet. Though they’re a kind of summer squash, the raw flesh is crisp like an apple, and after cooking they taste somewhere between a potato and a turnip. Hooray for new squashes, new recipes, new snow on the ground, and a new year!