Blogosaurus Vex

March 30th, 2009

This recipe is not my own – it is from Rick Bayless’ Mexican Kitchen cookbook.

To begin, get three good sized garlic cloves or four smaller ones, unpeeled, and two jalapenos:

Now toss those little bastards into a dry pan on medium heat.  The goal is to soften the insides while blackening the skin.  Shake the pan every couple of minutes or so to get all sides of the peppers and garlic blackened.  It’s going to take around 10-15 minutes:

While that’s cooking, get a white onion and chop it in half.  Save one half for something else, and start slicing:

Make it into fine dice:

Then put the dice into a mesh strainer and rinse them under cold water.  Shake off the excess and put the onions into your bowl.  Then grab a nice bunch of fresh cilantro:

And chop it up.  You want to end up with a loose and generously heaped cup of cilantro.  I used the entire bunch and didn’t really bother measuring.  Add it to the bowl with the onion and combine.

When the garlic and peppers are done they will look something like this:

Take them off the stove but leave the heat on.  When they are cool enough to handle, slip the garlic out of their skins and toss the cloves into your food processor (you could also do this in a mortal and pestle).  Chop off the stems of the jalapenos and discard.  I bisect the peppers and use a spoon to scoop out the seeds and webbing, which is where the heat is.  You can leave it in if you like.  Toss the jalapenos into the processor, add a generous pinch of salt (about half a teaspoon), and blend until you get a coarse puree.

Now put about a pound of ripe red tomatoes into the dry pan.  This will be two large or three medium, roughly.  Once again you want to blacken the skins.  Really this step should be done in a broiler for best effect but I don’t have one, so stovetop it is!  In this picture you can see me holding the tomatoes in a line on their sides to get blackening on areas other than the very tops and bottoms, which is the only place they will probably rest on their own:

When they are black all over (or as all over as they get before starting to fall apart), take them out, remove the stems, roughly chop, and put into the processor with their liquid.  Mine aren’t really black enough but I got impatient!

Now process everything for a brief time.  You don’t want a liquid but rather a still-chunky texture.  Mine got a little too processed while I was taking the picture, alas:

Pour the processed mixture into the bowl with the cilantro and onion. Stir.  Add another teaspoon of salt:

And voila!  Very simple and just stunningly delicious.

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