Pulique

As tradition built it

Pulique

Sololá, Chimaltenango, Quiché; pre-Hispanic origin

Ingredients

• 3 lb meat, game meat traditionally
• 1 head onion
• 2 lb tomato
• 4 oz miltomate
• 2 cloves garlic
• 5 chile guaque
• 1 achiote, for colour
• 1 lb masa, to thicken
• as available carrot (colonial mestizaje addition)
• 2 lb potato (colonial mestizaje addition)
• 0.5 lb peas (colonial mestizaje addition)

Method

1. Build a recado of onion, tomato, miltomate, garlic, chile guaque and the meat, with achiote for colour.
2. Thicken with masa.
3. Add carrot, potato and peas as the colonial mestizaje regional variation.
4. Serve in a clay bowl with tamalitos or rice.

Notes

No source this chapter could reach gives measured quantities for pulique, only named ingredients and method, and this chapter says so rather than inventing figures to fill the gap.

What a modern chef changes

Recado clarified, meat cooked apart

Method

1. Build the recado base with toasted, spice-ground chile guaque and stone-mortar-pounded aromatics, then finish it in a high-power blender and pass through a chinois for a properly smooth sauce.
2. Cook whichever meat is used sous vide separately from the vegetables, adding it to the finished, thickened sauce only at the end, so the meat stays tender rather than simmering to greyness alongside the vegetables the way a single-pot version tends to.

Notes

Given the real absence of a documented traditional quantity, this elevation is offered as a technique framework for the reader to apply their own judged proportions to, honestly, rather than as a rescaling of a recipe that does not survive in the sources this chapter could reach.