Adobo para Asado de Boda Potosino de Hacienda

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Cast iron comal or heavy skillet for toasting chiles
• •12-inch clay cazuela or heavy enameled pot
• •High-powered blender
• •Fine-mesh strainer
• •Wooden spoon

Instructions

1. 1

   Clean the chiles

   Wipe the ancho, mulato, and pasilla chiles with a barely damp cloth. Pull off the stems, open the chiles, and shake out the seeds. The ancho should smell like raisins and dry earth. The mulato should smell darker, almost like prunes. The pasilla should be long, wrinkled, and sharp in aroma. If the chiles smell dusty or dead, the adobo will taste dusty and dead. Si no conoces el mercado, no conoces la cocina.

2. 2

   Toast the chiles

   Heat a dry comal over medium heat. Toast the chiles one type at a time, pressing them flat with tongs for a few seconds per side. The ancho takes about 20 to 25 seconds per side, the mulato a little less, and the pasilla is thin, so watch it closely. The skins should puff and turn fragrant, never blacken. Toasting wakes the oils in the chile. Skip it and your adobo tastes flat. Así se hace y punto.

   Burned chile turns bitter. If a chile goes black, throw it out and toast another. You cannot hide that bitterness with chocolate.
3. 3

   Soak the chiles

   Put the toasted chiles in a heatproof bowl and cover them with hot water, not boiling water. Set a small plate on top to keep them submerged. Let them soften for 20 minutes. Drain them well. Taste a spoonful of the soaking liquid. If it tastes clean and chile-rich, you can use a little later to loosen the blender. If it tastes bitter, discard it without drama.

4. 4

   Roast the aromatics

   On the same comal, roast the tomatoes, onion, and unpeeled garlic until the tomatoes blister, the onion browns at the edges, and the garlic softens inside its skin. Peel the garlic. In a small skillet, melt 1 tablespoon of the manteca de cerdo and fry the torn bolillo until golden. The bread gives body to the adobo. Hacienda kitchens had wheat, pork, chiles, and time. That is why this sauce has weight.

5. 5

   Toast the spices

   Toast 1 bay leaf, the cloves, black peppercorns, cinnamon, and cumin seeds in a dry skillet for 30 to 45 seconds, just until fragrant. Do not walk away. Clove takes over when it burns. Rub the Mexican oregano and mejorana between your palms so their oils open before they go into the blender.

6. 6

   Blend and strain

   Put the drained chiles, roasted tomatoes, onion, peeled garlic, fried bolillo, toasted spices, crumbled toasted bay leaf, oregano, mejorana, vinegar, and warm pork broth in a blender. Blend for at least 2 full minutes, until the mixture is as smooth as your machine can make it. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl, pressing hard with a spoon. Straining is not decoration. It removes skins and gives the adobo the smooth body that coats pork properly.

   A blender is allowed here. A bad blend is not. If the blades struggle, add pork broth by the tablespoon, only enough to move the chiles.
7. 7

   Fry the adobo

   Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons manteca de cerdo in a clay cazuela or heavy pot over medium heat. Pour in the strained chile puree carefully because it will sputter. Stir with a wooden spoon and fry for 8 to 10 minutes, until the color deepens from brick red to dark garnet and small beads of chile-stained fat appear at the edges. La manteca es el sabor. Vegetable oil will cook the sauce, but it will not give you this flavor.

8. 8

   Finish the sauce

   Add the chopped Mexican chocolate, grated piloncillo, the second bay leaf, the orange peel, and the salt. Simmer gently for 10 to 12 minutes, stirring often, until the adobo coats the spoon and leaves a slow trail when you drag the spoon across the bottom of the cazuela. Remove the bay leaf and orange peel. Taste for salt. The chocolate should soften the bitterness and round the sauce. It should not announce itself. This is asado de boda, not chocolate sauce.

9. 9

   Use it properly

   For asado de boda potosino, brown 4 pounds of pork shoulder in manteca de cerdo, then add about 3 cups of this adobo and enough pork broth to loosen it into a sauce. Simmer until the pork is tender and the sauce clings to the meat. If using the adobo as a marinade, cool it completely first, coat the pork, and refrigerate overnight. Do not pour hot adobo over raw pork and call that planning. La cocina no es decoración, es trabajo.

Chef Tips

• •At Mercado República in San Luis Potosí, ask for chiles that bend. The ancho should be brick red and pliable, the mulato almost black-brown, the pasilla long and wrinkled. Bad chiles make bad adobo. Start at the market, not the stove.
• •The chocolate is small on purpose. Use about 20 grams of chocolate de metate or Mexican table chocolate. Do not drop in a whole tablet. Mole is not chocolate sauce, and asado de boda is not mole poblano.
• •Manteca de cerdo is not decoration here. The strained chile paste must be fried in pork lard until the fat separates at the edges. That is how the raw chile taste disappears and the sauce gains depth.
• •If you cannot find chile mulato, use 2 extra chile ancho and 1 extra chile pasilla. It will work, but it will not have the same dark fruit depth. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
• •Make the adobo one day before the pork if you can. Wedding cooks know this. The chile, clove, laurel, and chocolate settle overnight, and the sauce tastes more complete the next day.

Advance Preparation

• •The adobo can be made 2 days ahead and refrigerated in a covered container. Reheat gently with a splash of pork broth before adding it to browned pork.
• •The finished adobo freezes well for up to 3 months without the pork. Freeze it in glass or plastic, not in a clay cazuela.
• •The chiles can be stemmed and seeded 1 day ahead, but toast them the day you make the sauce. Toasted chiles lose aroma when they sit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 135g)