Mesoamerica · Volume 06, The Maya Highland Corn World
Jocón
Huehuetenango, Guatemala
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Jocón
Huehuetenango, Mam Maya; ICH of the Nation, 2007
Ingredients
An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.
- 2 lb chicken, creole hen for preference
- 1½ lb tomatillos
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 2 tbsp sesame, ground
- ¼ cup pepitoria, ground
- tortilla
Method
- Boil the chicken, creole hen for preference, together with the tomatillos.
- Blend with cilantro and the reserved broth.
- Thicken with ground sesame, pepitoria and tortilla.
- Strain and simmer roughly ten minutes until it thickens properly.
Notes
The government's own cultural directory gives the name as deriving from K'iche' "jok'om," green sauce or five greens, a plausible but not independently confirmed etymology.
What a modern chef changes
Sous vide poach and chinois clarity
Rung 01
Method
- Poach the chicken sous vide to a precise, still-moist doneness, reserving the poaching liquid as the base broth rather than boiling the meat through and risking it toughening.
- Blend the tomatillo, cilantro and thickening seeds in a high-power blender, then pass through a chinois for a green sauce with real clarity rather than the slightly grainy result straining by hand tends to leave.
- Toast the sesame and pepitoria in the spice grinder before blending them in, the same toasting logic that underpins pepián above.