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In this episode of Hunt Gather Talk, I wanted to expand on something I touched on in an earlier episode, when I talked about the importance of char in Mexican cooking. So I brought in my friend, Chef Patricio Wise, who is from Monterrey, Mexico, to talk about not only Mexican food, but how anyone goes about learning a new cuisine.
Patricio owns a restaurant here in the Sacramento area called Nixtaco, and it is a taqueria like you’ve never seen. All homemade tortillas, recipes and ingredients you almost never see in an American taqueria, and lots and lots of craft beer from local brewers. Before this, he ran a restaurant in Mexico and is, like me, a student of Mexican cuisine.
So if you want an introduction to Mexican cooking beyond chimichangas and burritos, give us a listen!
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Here are some links for further information on this week’s episode:
- We mention a lot of dishes in the episode, and I have recipes here on Hunter Angler Gardener Cook for a lot of them. For starters, here is my venison barbacoa recipe, and the braising part of this recipe is something of a master recipe for braising any meat in a Mexican way.
- We also talk about cochinita pibil from the Yucatan, which I made with javelina (or wild boar), and another Yucatecan dish called chocolomo, which is a stew of venison or beef or some other dark meat — this is one with a serious flavor of char in it.
- For another taste of that charred awesomeness, try making my salsa verde.
- Finally, Patricio and I touch on Mexican mole sauces. I have a recipe for one of the Oaxacan seven moles, mole chichilo, made with venison.
- If you want to get some of the amazing wild chiltepin chiles we talk about, you can buy dried chiltepin chiles online. I also have a recipe for chiltepin hot sauce, which you can make with any small, hot chile.
- We mention a few key books you might want to get if you want to get into Mexican cooking. We recommend Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico by Rick Bayless, The Essential Cuisines of Mexico by Diana Kennedy, and Yucatán: Recipes from a Culinary Expedition by David Sterling.
Enjoy this week’s podcast, and, as always, if you like it, please subscribe and leave a review. It helps me a lot. Thanks!
Great podcast Hank! Please go ahead and become a great Mexican cook with Scottish heritage! Good discussion on masa harina vs. nixtamal. I have found a dry nixtamal at rural tamale factories in Oregon – different and better than masa harina. Otherwise I go to my local factories for fresh masa.
About how to really get into these cuisines. I first learned from family recipes in northern New Mexico (all wheat flour all the time – my grandmother’s chile sauce starts with a roux….) then in 1994 my husband and I took our honeymoon at a cooking school in Oaxaca. Susana Trilling’s place, Seasons of My Heart. We’ve since taught a lot of our friends how to make mole. And hosted many chile roasting parties in the back yard.
Not easy or cheap but we travel to other countries and go to cooking schools there to learn these cuisines. And I have to say, thanks for turning me on to David Sterling’s book ‘Yucatan’. If you can’t travel there, this book is the next best thing. I love the portion of the book on local plants. All the best to you and I hope to make it to Sacramento environs sometime.
Excellent podcast! I am looking to go this direction in my cooking and this gave me a lot of good places to start. Keep up the good work. Looking forward to the next podcast!
Great episode! I’m going to listen to it again and take notes.
There is a problem though – at 59:03 chef Wise gets cut off mid-sentence and the beginning of the show plays again for about a minute and a half, then chef Wise returns in mid-sentence and the show concludes normally. This is the same on both the iTunes copy and the one on the website.