Mesoamerica · Volume 01, The Highland Mole and Maize World
Chiles en Nogada
Puebla, Mexico
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 30 minutes
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Chiles en nogada
August and September only . 30 minutes
Ingredients
- 10, medium, roasted, peeled, seeds and veins removed poblano chiles, roasted and peeled
- 500g, loin, diced pork, for the picadillo
- 500g, loin, diced beef, for the picadillo
- 100g each of raisins, almonds and pine nuts dried fruit
- 500g each of apple, pear, peach and plantain fresh fruit
- 1 cinnamon stick, 5 cloves, 5 black peppercorns spices, for the picadillo
- 400g, shelled walnuts, fresh, for the nogada
- 1 litre, whipping cream cream, for the nogada
- 30g pomegranate seeds
- to taste parsley
Method
- Stuff the roasted, peeled poblanos with a picadillo of pork and beef, dried and fresh fruit, and spices.
- Bathe the stuffed chiles in the walnut cream sauce, nogada.
- Finish with pomegranate seeds and parsley. Fresh walnuts and pomegranate are both genuinely available only in August and September in central Mexico, which is why the dish exists in a narrow annual window rather than year-round.
What a modern chef changes
Confit filling, strained nogada, charred seed
Rung 04
Method
- Confit the picadillo's meat sous vide before finishing it in the pan, for a moister filling than the traditional simmer-and-reduce method reliably gives.
- Strain the walnut sauce through a chinois after blending, for a genuinely silken nogada rather than one carrying visible walnut fibre.
- Char the pomegranate seeds briefly and directly on a Big Green Egg's hot zone for a few seconds before scattering, just enough to bring out a faint smoke note against the sauce's sweetness without cooking the seeds through.