♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - This week on Milk Street, we travel to Mexico City.

In addition to the great street food, we also make chicken tinga-- shredded chicken with tomatoes and chipotles-- and then Mexican meatballs with a surprise filling and a spicy chili sauce.

So please stay tuned as we do some of our favorite everyday Mexican foods.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - That was a food cart, right?

- Yes, in the street.

- And it's really popular.

♪ ♪ - Okay, so, Chris, this stall is really representative of Mexico City, and these things that look like ovals are called tlacoyos.

And they are stuffed or filled with fava bean.

♪ ♪ It's a very, very, very traditional one that before the tacos, before all these restaurants in Roma, this was the original food of Mexico City.

It's cool, no?

- Yeah, that's very good.

I like going for a vegan option-- well, cheese-- like, a block away from every part of the pig on your taco.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ So now we're from street food to home-cooked food.

- We're going to go to the Colegio Superior de Gastronomía to visit Sylvia Kurczyn.

She's an anthropologist and she's doing a lot of research on Mexican food and Mexican gastronomy.

So we're cooking with her some tinga.

- Let's cook.

♪ ♪ - (speaking Spanish) ♪ ♪ - Sylvia.

- Yes.

- Muchas gracias.

- De nada.

- How do we get started?

- (speaking Spanish) - So we need to cook the chicken.

- Right.

- (speaking Spanish) (speaking Spanish) - So this is for flavoring, for cooking the chicken?

- Yeah.

- So we're making a quick stock.

- Sí.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - We don't need to chop very finely the tomato for tinga.

- (speaking Spanish) - And she actually never tends to remove the seeds, either.

She's against that, actually.

- (speaking Spanish) - Because that has a lot of flavor?

- (speaking Spanish) - That's the heart.

It doesn't make sense to remove the heart from the fruit.

- So she's a chef, an anthropologist, and a poet.

- (laughing) - That's very poetic.

♪ ♪ - (speaking Spanish) ♪ ♪ (speaking Spanish) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Wow.

- Your face?

- I do like a lot of food here in Mexico.

Sometimes it looks simple, but it's not, it's complex, when you taste it.

I like the sweet, I like the sour.

Can I have some more?

- (laughing) - More?

- You guys can talk, I want to have another one.

Sylvia, thank you so much, muchas gracias.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ You know, when I was in Mexico City, with Sylvia and her culinary academy, I really fell in love with her.

She's, she's an anthropologist, she's also a poet.

Really interesting woman who later in life sort of took to teaching how to cook.

But one of the things she made-- she made quite a few things-- was chicken tinga, which is very simple to do.

You know, in Mexico, they tend to cook their meat separately in water or a pressure cooker and marry it to the sauce at the end, which is what we'll do here.

A lot of flavor, especially with the chipotle peppers.

- Let's make the chicken tinga.

So, to start, Chris, we're using a method, you said, in Mexico, they often do this-- poach our meat, and it is very tender and delicious and moist and flavorful, and then you also have this beautiful kind of broth that you can cook with.

So this has been cooking just at a bare simmer here for 20 or 30 minutes.

These are bone-in skin-on chicken breasts.

You don't want to use boneless skinless, or it'll get overcooked, and the bone and skin add some nice body to the broth.

We want to take it out when it's about 160 degrees.

You don't want to-- thank you very much-- you don't want cook it past that, or it can get kind of tough.

And besides the temperature, Chris, you really do want to keep it at that bare simmer, not a boil, because again, we're looking for moist and tender, and not overcooked.

And you can smell, that's a really, like, rich delicious broth in about a half-hour.

So it's just the water.

We have some onion in there, some salt, carrots, some bay leaves, and that's it.

- This is a technique used all over the world.

Cook chicken in water or meat in water.

You end up with a broth and cooked meat.

We never got the message here.

- Yeah.

- Like, no one called us up and said, "Hey, in 30 minutes, "you can make great broth and cook the chicken and use that in another dish."

It never occurred to us.

- And now it has.

- Now it has.

- And so we're going to take some of this lovely broth.

We just need about a cup.

You could certainly save the rest of it.

When I made this before, I made a really yummy soup with the leftover liquid.

But we're going to strain about one cup to use for the sauce-- okay, great.

And we're just going to let that chicken cool enough that I can put you to work taking off the skin, shredding it up with some forks, and then we'll come back and make our sauce.

- Okay.

♪ ♪ - All right, Chris, so we have our onions with some garlic and a little bit of salt, and they've just been cooking here for two or three minutes.

We just want them to wilt down a little bit.

And then I'm going to add some chopped-up cilantro stems because they stay really tender, they add a lot of flavor.

There's no reason to get rid of them.

We have a little bit of cumin here and also Mexican oregano.

So it's pretty widely available, even in grocery stores.

But if you cannot find it, marjoram makes a pretty nice substitute.

And I'm just going to let this cook for about 30 seconds-- we just want the oil in the cumin and the oregano to be released.

And then we have some canned chipotles in adobo, which are the easiest way to add flavor to anything, I think.

And I'm going to add a little bit of brown sugar, which really nicely offsets some of that heat, and some fresh tomatoes, cored and chopped.

(pan sizzling) And I'm just looking for the tomatoes to release some of their juice.

Chris, could you hand me some of that strained broth?

Now, this is going to really bring the whole thing together.

But we do want it to reduce down.

This is a juicy, yummy dish, but you don't want it too watery.

So we're going to give it five to eight minutes, let it simmer, let all the flavors meld, and then we'll add in our chicken.

♪ ♪ So, Chris, you can see, just five minutes in the pan, smelling and looking a lot more interesting.

So I'm going to add the chicken.

- I have to say, it really does smell great.

- Yes, and I'm pretty excited to turn this into tacos, but we just have to wait one more minute.

We want to let the sauce reduce a little bit more and just kind of cling to the chicken.

But also, this is so moist and delicious from being gently poached that I don't want to overdo it.

So don't reduce this too far if you go home and make this dish, because you don't want to overcook that chicken.

All right, this is looking great.

I'm just going to add a little bit of salt and pepper.

And then those cilantro leaves-- we used the stems, it's time for the leaves.

And now, if you want to hand me those plates.

And if you want to put some tortillas on there.

All right, taco.

I'm going to go easy here so that it's not... - That's a little too easy.

- So it's not a super-messy taco.

- That's it?

All I get?

- You can have seconds and thirds if you'd like.

- Do you come from a really big family?

Is this what they used to do?

They used to have ten kids and they'd give you this much?

- Nope, just me and my sister.

- Okay.

- No, I like to build small tacos, Chris, because then it's, like, more acceptable to have three or four of them, or even five.

- Well, I always overfill it, and then they're hard to eat.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Oh, yeah.

- Happy taco time.

Oh, I'm bringing the plate-- you're brave.

- Mmm.

That's pretty good.

- Mm-hmm.

This is such a versatile filling, too, Chris.

Like, yes, we're having it in tacos, but you can have it with enchiladas.

I think it would be great over rice.

You know, you could use it a few different ways.

- So in Mexico City, very often, you wouldn't just have one filling.

You'd come over for dinner, there'd be a taco party, they'd have five or six different fillings.

It's actually an easy way to cook for a lot of people, right?

- Yeah.

- Just have two or three big pots of food.

- So you're saying... - And this one's easy to make.

- I should have made more.

That compliment from before.

- That's what I'm saying, yeah.

- It was a nice way to lead into, where's the rest of the taco filling?

- I've had my first filling.

So, from Mexico City, chicken tinga from Sylvia.

Very simple recipe.

It also tells you something about how to cook the way they do in Mexico, which is, the meat tends to be cooked separately in water, and then married to the sauce at the end, in the skillet, for just a few minutes.

And then using really strong ingredients along with the tomatoes, in this case, chipotle with the adobo sauce, and that really brings up the flavor without having to cook something for a couple of hours.

So chicken tinga, a go-to recipe, and if you make five other things, we'll have a taco party.

- Absolutely.

- Okay.

- You bring the mezcal.

- Gracias.

- Gorgeous.

- This is a very old part of the city, as well.

We're not so far from Centro.

(speaking Spanish) - Hola.

- Nice to meet you.

- Me llamo Chris.

- Esmeralda.

- Every place I go, it makes some kind of meatball.

- Yes.

- And it tells you a lot about the culture, the way they do it.

- Very simple meatballs, stuffed with a piece of boiled egg and red sauce.

- It's the chipotle sauce that really grabs my attention, yeah.

- It is something that it's more eaten here in Central Mexico, like in Mexico City.

♪ ♪ - This is a very, you know, something would you eat in your grandma's house.

They make a salsa, I think.

There's a tomato salsa, sometimes goes with chipotle, for example.

- Oh, that's a good idea.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Esmeralda, thank you.

- Thank you.

- For having us here.

How do we get started?

- I have pork and beef, and I like to use both.

I think this is going to be not something very rare for you.

What makes it Mexican, it's more the sauce and the chipotle.

And we're using chipotle meco.

Because we have two different kinds of chipotle.

Lots of people don't call it chipotle, it's like Morita or chipotle.

So these are my versions of jalapeño.

This is the green jalapeño, riper jalapeño, this is a red jalapeño, and orange.

It's just different degrees of ripeness.

And then when you dry it and you smoke it, you get Morita.

- Hmm.

- Do you want to smell it?

- (sniffs): Mmm.

- And when you smoke it more, you get chipotle.

- So that's the difference between Morita and chipotle.

- Yes.

- Is how much it's smoked.

I didn't know that.

- Exactly.

- (sniffs): Ah, that's much smokier.

- Yeah, and in here, you can use rice or you can use chicharrón.

- Oh, you put chicharrón in it?

- You can put chicharrón in it, that's actually... - That's quite different.

- A famous recipe, I know.

- I like that, yeah.

- It's like a memory thing, you know?

When I was maybe eight, I can remember eating my grandmother's meatballs with the rice in it, then it's just something...

I don't know, it's something that comes with the Mexican childhood memories.

And these are my spices.

It's only clove, cumin, and cinnamon.

I don't like to buy them powdered.

You can grind it in the, in the blender, but it's not the same.

My cooking mentor, Mónica Patiño, gave me a class of how to grind in the molcajete, because it looks very simple... - It's not simple.

- It's not simple.

- So could you give me the class now?

- The short version is that everything is in the wrist.

- Wrist.

- Everything is in the wrist.

So it's not like holding this thing and grinding.

You have to actually hold it lightly.

So you basically move your wrist more than the whole hand.

- So it's not like whisking, it's looser.

- Yes, it's like Japanese matcha making.

Let's make half with rice and half with chicharrón.

♪ ♪ Okay, so for the red salsa, I like to roast things well, almost burning them.

So I'm just going to put the whole thing in there.

♪ ♪ (blender whirring) (blender stops) ♪ ♪ You can help me out with the rice meatballs.

Would you like that?

- Okay, sure.

♪ ♪ - These are pretty big meatballs.

We're going to try that.

♪ ♪ Okay.

So I am going to burn these leaves.

This is a native Mexican avocado tree leaf.

But it's also like a little bit of a performance.

So this gives it a very ashy, incense-y flavor.

- You love burning stuff.

- (whispers): I love burning stuff.

(leaf crackling) - I noticed you did everything you could to take, you know, meatballs, and turn them into something clearly indigenous.

I mean, burnt avocado leaf... - Uh-huh.

- The chicharrón.

- Uh-huh.

- I mean, you did everything you could to really put personality into it.

- This is just using native ingredients in a contemporary classical dish.

- Can we taste it now?

- Please.

♪ ♪ You see the egg inside?

- Mm-hmm, I see the egg.

Mmm.

- Mm-hmm.

- It's also not that spicy, either.

- Mm-mm.

- Mmm.

I would say, I mean, they're called meatballs.

- Mm-hmm.

- But they've nothing to do with anything Italy.

- No.

- It's just, the flavor profile's great.

That little bit of, I like that little burnt char to it.

- Mm-hmm.

- The chicharrón.

It's Mexican.

- It is.

- It has balls of meat, but it's not meatballs, so... - Exactly.

- Exactly.

- (laughs) - Thank you so much.

This is absolutely fabulous.

- My pleasure.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - When I was in Mexico City, we cooked with lots of folks.

And one of them was Esmeralda, who's a wonderful cook, and she made Mexican meatballs, which is a classic.

The meatballs themselves, one was with rice, and one was with chicharrónes, they were good, but it was the sauce that was really great.

And it had just this great depth of flavor.

It was really interesting.

- You're right, Chris.

This is really all about that salsa roja.

It starts with some charred vegetables, and that's what I have going here.

We have some plum tomatoes, some onion, a little bit of garlic, and we're really trying to get some char on it.

I know in Mexico City, they probably did this over an open flame, right?

We're doing it in a skillet, and we're actually getting a fair amount of char here.

And this is going to be the base of the sauce.

That's where a lot of this flavor is going to come from.

- Actually, it was a very modern apartment.

- (laughs) - A modern kitchen.

So there was no open flame, but they, you know, they could use their comal on top of the stove.

- Right, exactly.

I'm going to transfer them into the blender.

You're going to love this, Chris, because this is a very flavorful but very simple sauce.

So I'm just going to blend this until it's smooth.

It'll take probably less than a minute.

(blender whirring) (blender stops) So we're just going to add a couple of more things here.

I have a couple of chipotles-- a little bit of heat, a little bit of smokiness-- some Mexican oregano, chili powder, and a teaspoon of salt.

(blender whirring) (blender stops) All right, that's it.

Now we have a sauce.

- Is that it?

- It's, well, we're going to cook it a little.

- Okay.

(laughs) - But I'm going to take a little bit of this and use it in our meatballs, because we've got this really flavorful liquid.

We're going to use that to add a lot of flavor to those, as well.

So I'm just going to add this to this bowl of panko breadcrumbs.

We're big fans of panade in our meatballs.

It adds a lot of tenderness and really a lot of moisture in there.

But you do want to let this sit for about five minutes.

This liquid is going to soften these breadcrumbs and make our meatballs really nice and tender.

All right, and then the rest of the purée goes in the skillet.

- You know, so many recipes in Mexico started with charring vegetables, throwing them in a blender with a few other ingredients, and then putting them in a skillet to warm it up.

It's a ten-minute sauce.

- So we have a softened panade here.

This was the way we kind of improved a little bit on the meatball that you had in Mexico.

It's just a little bit more tender.

I'm going to add an egg yolk in here.

A little bit of salt, this is a teaspoon and a half.

You do kind of want to measure your salt and pepper when you're making a meatball, because you don't really get a chance to taste it-- it's raw.

- Hopefully not, yes.

- (chuckles): And three-quarters of a teaspoon of pepper.

And then we like the combination of ground pork and beef for flavor and for texture.

And then it's always best to mix meatballs with your hands.

So this is all set.

If you would grab our sheet tray, we're just going to portion this into 12 portions.

They're about a quarter-cup.

Put them on the sheet-- want to help?

- Portioning?

- Yeah.

It saves time.

- Sure.

Lynn likes to do things together.

You're very, very, like... - (laughs) - "Hey, we're doing this together."

- I just don't want you to be bored.

- Oh, that's true.

- So we're done.

Just kidding.

No, we have to actually add a special secret surprise inside of our meatball.

And did you have it this way in Mexico City?

- Yes, we had hard-boiled eggs, uh, inside.

- It's like a little secret surprise in there.

So you just want to flatten the meat, add a quarter of an egg that's been hard-cooked.

I like to do it almost like a dumpling and seal it in there, - Then smush it?

- And then make it a ball.

If it gets a little sticky, you can wet your hands with some water.

- Okay.

So, we should go wash our hands, and I'm going to pop these in the fridge for about ten minutes, they just need to firm up, and then we'll come back and work on the sauce.

♪ ♪ So I've been simmering the sauce for about ten minutes.

You'll notice it got a lot darker.

It's gotten a little bit thicker.

Now it's time to add the meatballs.

So you want to make sure that the sauce is at, like, a gentle simmer.

You don't want it boiling like crazy.

That can cause the meatballs to toughen.

It also can cause them to break apart a little bit.

So we're going to cover the skillet, put the heat down to medium-low, let these go for about 15 to 20 minutes.

You do want to flip them over halfway through.

I love when I have a cover I can take off, like a big reveal.

- You were made for show business.

- Isn't this show business?

- (chuckles): No, it isn't.

- A couple of meatballs?

- Yes.

Yes, please.

And lots of sauce, though, because... - This is about the sauce.

- Mmm.

- So we did not put the chicharrón in the meatball, but we have some chicharrón to put on the meatball.

This is technically an optional ingredient.

No, it's not.

- (laughs) You're so easygoing and forgiving.

- (laughs): It makes such a nice addition.

It's porky, it's got some crunch to it.

Cilantro?

- Chicharrónes are porky, yeah.

- Yeah.

- So chicharrónes, which, they have big strips of it, are all over the place-- they use it all the time.

And it's, you know, what's great in, like, in a taco, if you want some of that extra texture, just break up and put them in the taco.

Or on your meatball.

- Exactly.

- As is the case now.

So your artistic side came out today, did it not?

- It's crafty.

- Nicely done.

Show and tell and eat.

Mmm.

Boy, is that good.

You know, there's nothing like the blender sauce when you char sofrito-- onions, tomatoes, whatever, chilis, if you like, poblanos-- put them in a blender with a little bit of liquid and other flavorings.

Put them back in the saucepan.

You get all this great flavor, and the whole thing's 15 minutes, you know?

- It's amazing, Really transforms those simple vegetables into something that's not simple but easy.

- Mmm, and the sauce.

I mean, unlike a tomato sauce from an Italian meatball, which is, which is great, but this has depth, it has the chipotles, it has a little bit of garlic in it.

It just is really, really good.

It stands up to the meatballs nicely, you know?

And my kids will like it because there's a little surprise inside.

- Mm-hmm.

- It's like one of those eggs, you know, with something inside?

So, Mexican meatballs and Mexican lasagna, oddly enough, are a thing in Mexico, they're for real.

Esmeralda showed us the recipe.

We changed the meatballs a little bit by putting panade in, the breadcrumbs, a little bit of sauce.

But the sauce is pretty true to her recipe.

We just charred some vegetables, put them in a blender-- really, really great flavor-- and then cooked the meatballs in the sauce for ten or 15 minutes, and you're good to go.

So it's quick, it's easy, and it has a ton of flavor.

So if you want this recipe for Mexican meatballs and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street, please go to MilkStreetTV.com.

All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website, MilkStreetTV.com.

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- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

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Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

♪ ♪ - Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Tel Aviv... - Welcome to Oaxaca's airport.

- Welcome to Beirut.

♪ ♪ (man speaking Hebrew) - (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

♪ ♪ - Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

♪ ♪ - So this is the Eduardo García blender.

- This is the no electricity.

♪ ♪ - Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

♪ ♪ I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something, and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

♪ ♪ - Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

♪ ♪ - This is a generational thing.

It's... it's something that you inherit.

- Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for?

What did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

(laughs): He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪