Kids Make Guatemalan Chicken Pepian

Just when I thought our "food appreciation" classes would be leaving Guatemala to continue our virtual world food tour our friend Grace, who works at the local library, e-mailed that she had located a Guatemalan cookbook. After paging through many intriguing recipes, I decided we must extend our stay another week so we could make this traditional Mayan-influenced dish of chicken in a spicy red sauce: chicken pepian.

The high point of this dish is the sauce, made very simply by processing (in our case grinding in the molcajete) toasted seeds, cooked tomatoes, tomatillos, red peppers, all seasoned with a bit of cinnamon. Like other Mayan dishes we love, there is no cooking oil or added fat involved, yet the flavors are a revelation.

Start by cooking a whole chicken cut into pieces (we used only wing pieces--you could use just legs or thighs as well), in three cups of water seasoned with 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook for about 30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the chicken and set aside, reserving the broth.


While the chicken is cooking, chop two ripe tomatoes and one large tomatillo. Stem and seed two large, dried red peppers (such as California pepper, guajillo, New Mexico, cascabel, ancho--anything of that sort). Place the tomatoes, tomatillos and peppers in a saucepan with 1 cup water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook about 15 minutes, or until everything is very tender.

Meanwhile, in the molcajete (or food processor) grind 1/2 cup toasted sesame seeds and 1 tablespoon toasted hulled pumpkin seeds into a fine powder. Add 1/4 teaspoon annatto paste (available in Latin groceries) and continue grinding until the paste is fully incorporated.


When the tomatoes, tomatillos and peppers are cooked, remove them from the saucepan with a slotted spoon and add to the ground seeds along with 2/3 cup French bread (or other white bread, crust removed) moistened with chicken broth and 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour. Continue grinding until everything is fully incorporated and you barely recognize any pieces of food, except perhaps some pepper skin, as shown here. (If you like a spicier sauce, you may add hot red pepper flakes to taste at this point.)

Scrape the mix into a pan, add 2 cups of the broth from cooking your chicken and 1 stick cinnamon broken in half. Cook over moderate heat until it is reduced to a thick sauce.

Next, strain the sauce either by pushing it with a spatula through a sieve or using a commercial strainer as shown here. The kids loved this part, turning the big wooden pestle round and round until the liquid had been pressed into the pot and all that remained in the strainer was a dry mass of seed and pepper skins. The finished sauce is velvety smooth, yet very rustic and exotic tasting with flavors quite foreign to our American palate. I can't think of any better way to describe it than very Mayan.

Place the chicken pieces in the pan with the sauce, toss to coat thoroughly and cook slowly for about 15 minutes, or until the chicken is heated through and almost falling off the bone. As you can see, it almost looks like barbecued chicken, but without any of the cloying sweetness.

We served this to the kids just like this as their reward for all the grinding they did, saving the leftover sauce. That constituted a snack. Chicken pepian would make a cracking good dinner with brown rice and perhaps some steamed chayote squash. Ladle extra sauce over the chicken so that it oozes into the rice.

The kids begged for seconds. We've rarely tasted chicken this good.

Note: anatto is the very tough, brick red seed from the achiote tree used in cuisines around the Caribbean and also as a dye. Its smell is pungent, but the flavor fairly benign. Annatto can also be found as a commercial food coloring in processed foods such as cheese and margerine.

A New Season on the Farm

This is the first in what we hope will be a regular series of articles about Leigh Hauter and his CSA operation at Bull Run Farm in The Plains, Virginia. Leigh has been farming in the Washington area for 15 years, first at the Cheseapeake Bay Foundation's Clagett Farm in Prince George's County. He was involved in early efforts to bring a farmers market to underserved residents of the District of Columbia east of the Anacostia River. Leigh now has about 500 subscribers to his CSA. His wife Wenonah is executive director of the advocacy group Food and Water Watch.

Signs of life are beginning to appear on the farm. For Leigh Hauter, that means ramping up the heating system in his greenhouse--fixing leaky pipes, lighting the furnace and planting seeds.

A constant temperature of at least 70 degrees is necessary to prompt germination in thousands of pepper and eggplant seeds. Leigh has a fairly new, high-efficiency furnace fired by the wood that grows on the farm. The system runs hot water--90 to 100 degrees--through copper pipes under his seed trays, giving the seeds a nice warm bed in which to sprout and keeping the greenhouse toasty when nighttime temperatures dip.

Leigh is aiming for a last frost date of April 15, so he's planting things now that typically require at least eight weeks in seed trays before they can be safely transplanted outdoors. That means peppers and eggplants by the thousands. He's planted at least eight different varieties of bell peppers--red, orange, purple, white among them--and more hot peppers than he can count. That will mean plenty of visual interest when subscribers open their CSA boxes later in the year.

Leigh is also starting to plant tomatoes. He hopes to be shipping two varieties of cherry tomatoes--Early Girl and Siberian--as early as the middle of June. This is also onion planting time, but Leigh does not plant his own onions. He purchases thousands of plants in bunches from a firm in Indiana. They'll be planted in the ground later.

Also at this time Leigh is planting broccoli. His customers like broccoli and unlike some other brassicas, such as cauliflower, broccoli will withstand a bit of frost. He's planning four successive crops, aiming for 1,000 plants in each spaced one week apart.

Leigh used to start his CSA deliveries in May, but at that time of the year the crops available for harvest are mostly greens. "People don't like six weeks of greens," he said, "so I'm giving them three weeks." Asked if he wasn't including spinach among his early crops, Leigh said, "I have a hard time finding spinach that doesn't bolt in this season." We have the same problem with bolting spinach. Spring in Washington gets too hot too fast.

Leigh Hauter is a former English teacher whose introduction to the farm was keeping bees at the urging of his father-in-law. Leigh sold the honey at farmers markets and has since managed to make farming a full-time occupation. We'll be checking in on him on a weekly basis so that kitchen gardeners in our area can see how a professional grows beautiful, bountiful produce.

The above photo is of the greenhouse seed starting operation at One Straw Farm in Baltimore County, taken last July.

Fiery Pumpkin Seed Dip

Now it can be revealed: One of the most popular things we make is deceptively simple and doesn't even look edible. It's this humble dip made with toasted pumpkin seeds and cooked tomatoes, flavored to a fiery pitch with a roasted habanero pepper. We always make it in a Mexican molcajete, the traditional mortar made out of basalt stone.

Start with the habanero pepper. We have an electric range with large, flat elements. These are perfect for roasting peppers, but you can also use a traditional comal or a heavy iron skillet. Over moderately high heat, lay the pepper on its side and turn occasionally as it cooks, until it is lightly charred all around. Remove the pepper and when it is cool enough to handle remove the stem, slic it open and remove all the seeds. (I like to wear rubber gloves for this part.)

Next, grind the pepper in the molcajete with 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt.

Use your heaviest skillet to toast 1 1/4 cups hulled pumpkin seeds. We buy ours in bulk from Whole Foods. Over moderate heat, toss the seeds frequently. They will begin to pop and turn from green to tan. Be careful not to burn them. Place the toasted seeds in the molcajete and grind away until you have a rough powder. This may take some elbow grease, but if you're like me, you can use the exercise.


Meanwhile, in a saucepan, cook three ripe plum tomatoes in plenty of water. They should be completely cooked through and soft, almost like tomatoes from a can. Set the tomatoes aside to cool and when they are cool enough to handle remove the stem ends and the skin. Place the tomatoes with the ground pumpkin seeds in the molcajete and grind together until you have a smooth mix.

To the pumpkin seed and tomato mix add 2 tablespoon roughly chopped cilantro (or more) and 2 tablespoons chopped chives. Use a fork or a spoon to mix in the herbs.

Present the finished dip in your molcajete garnished with more cilantro. We like to serve it with freshly sliced jicama. The crispy coolness of the jicama acts as a nice foil for the spicy dip. But you can also scoop it up with your favorite corn chips. Have plenty of cold beer on hand to douse the flames.

A Final Flurry of Pickling

It's been a race to get my Pickling Powerpoint ready for presentation at the local historical society this morning. Lots of pickling and photos of pickles. I think we have enough pickles to last us through the winter. Some of the best pickles are the easiest, such as these Middle Eastern-style pickled turnips with beets. They simply marinate in a big jar with a vinegar brine, taking on a pinkish hue from the beets harvested from our garden. We brought some of these pickled turnips to a recent presidential debate party and everyone fell for them--even those who normally don't like turnips. (Well, they hardly taste like turnips after they've pickled.)

Some non-traditional pickles fall into the category of "quick." These fresh chunks of pineapple are tossed with mint leaves, then submerged in a brine made with cider vinegar, brown sugar, cinnamon and fresh cranberries. They can be eaten almost immediately. Pack them into pint jars and stash in the fridge. They'd be a great condiment for the next pork roast, no?

To demonstrate the classic method of pickling with alcohol, I made these pears preserved in Calvados. I have fond memories of bicycling through Normandy (a lifetime ago, it seems) where everything is made of apples, from the crepes to the cider to the brandy. Calvados is highly refined. Another local branch water--chouchen--is sweet and extremely potent. I'll be saving these sultry looking pears for a special occasion, perhaps a holiday dessert buffet.

These are red onions drenched in a brine of vinegar, chipotle en adobo, garlic, orange zest and mescal. Very easily assembled, this condiment is ready to consume the next day but will keep indefinitely in the refrigerator. I see it in a taco stuffed with pork carnitas, or perhaps on the next barbecue sandwich.

These pickled mushrooms remind me of our wedding, back in the last century. My wife and I made most of the food ourselves--mostly pickles, cheeses and other preserved foods that we were able to start weeks ahead, then present on a grand buffet with a basket of assorted breads. It was just the thing for a backyard October feast.

When you are growing your own food--sometimes more than you can possibly consume--pickling presents itself as a vital option. We had four jalapeno plants that produced an abundance of peppers. I recently pulled the plants to create a new garlic bed and found myself looking at two pints worth of peppers. Preserved in a vinegar brine, they will make a nice condiment for spicy foods.

Finally, I am occasionally reminded that you can pickle almost anything, including meats and seafood. Pickled pig's feet, corned beef, pickled herring and of coarse gravlax, or pickled salmon.

The process in fact is extremely simple if you can get your hands on two or three pounds of salmon. Create a dry mix of coarse salt, sugar and cracked pepper and spread it thickly over a fillet of salmon, along with heaps of chopped dill. Make a sandwich with a second fillet, cover the whole thing with a sheet of aluminum foil and weight it down with a big can of hominy. Place in the refrigerator for three or four days, turning the salmon sandwich a couple of times daily. In the end, you will have delicious gravlax. Cut into thin slices and serve with black bread and your favorite, ice-cold vodka.

We are thinking we need to throw a pickle party. What do you think?