Estofado Oaxaqueño de Pollo

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Cast iron comal for toasting chiles and roasting vegetables
• •Molcajete or spice grinder for the whole spices
• •High-powered blender
• •Fine-mesh strainer
• •5- to 6-quart barro de Atzompa cazuela or heavy Dutch oven
• •Heat diffuser if cooking in clay over a gas flame

Instructions

1. 1

   Season the chicken

   Pat the chicken pieces dry and season them with the salt and black pepper. Let them sit while you prepare the sauce ingredients. Bone-in chicken is the right cut here. Boneless breast dries out before the sauce has time to become itself.

2. 2

   Toast the chiles

   Heat a dry comal over medium. Toast the chile ancho and chile guajillo one at a time, about 20 to 30 seconds per side, pressing them flat with tongs until the skins puff and the kitchen smells deep and raisiny. Do not blacken them. Burned chile makes bitter estofado, and no amount of raisins will save it.

   Chile ancho gives the sauce its dark fruit body. Guajillo gives cleaner red color. This is not a hot dish. It is a baroque one. Learn the difference.
3. 3

   Soak the chiles

   Put the toasted chiles in a bowl and cover them with hot water, not boiling water. Let them soften for 20 minutes. Drain them and discard the soaking liquid if it tastes harsh. A good chile gives you sweetness and depth. A tired chile gives you dust. Pregúntale a las señoras del mercado.

4. 4

   Roast the vegetables

   On the same comal, roast the tomatoes, tomatillos, onion, and unpeeled garlic until they are softened and blackened in patches. Turn them as they cook. The tomato should slump, the tomatillo should turn olive green, and the garlic should feel soft inside its skin. Peel the garlic after roasting.

5. 5

   Fry the sweet pantry

   Melt 2 tablespoons of the manteca in a cazuela or heavy Dutch oven over medium heat. Fry the plantain slices until golden on both sides, then remove them to a plate. Fry the almonds until pale gold, then remove half for finishing the stew. Fry the raisins just until they puff, a few seconds only. Fry the bolillo pieces until browned. This is the convent pantry doing its work: fruit, bread, nuts, and fat building the body of the sauce.

6. 6

   Grind the spices

   Toast the cinnamon stick, cloves, allspice, and peppercorns on the comal for 30 to 45 seconds, just until fragrant. Grind them in a molcajete or spice grinder with the Mexican oregano, thyme, and marjoram. Do not leave the spices whole in the sauce. They need to disappear into it.

7. 7

   Blend the sauce

   In a blender, combine the softened chiles, roasted tomatoes, tomatillos, onion, peeled garlic, fried bolillo, fried raisins, half of the fried almonds, half of the fried plantain, ground spices, vinegar, piloncillo, and 1 cup of the chicken broth. Blend until completely smooth. Work in batches if your blender is small. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve, pressing hard on the solids. The sauce should be thick, red-brown, and glossy.

8. 8

   Brown the chicken

   Add 2 tablespoons of manteca to the cazuela and set it over medium-high heat. Brown the chicken in batches, skin side down first, until the skin takes color and releases from the pot. You are not cooking it through yet. You are building flavor on the bottom of the cazuela. La manteca es el sabor.

9. 9

   Fry the sauce

   Lower the heat to medium. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of manteca if the pot looks dry. Pour in the strained sauce carefully. It will sputter. Stir and scrape the browned bits from the bottom. Cook for 10 to 12 minutes, stirring often, until the sauce darkens and the fat begins to shine around the edges. Skip this frying and the sauce tastes raw. No me vengas con atajos.

10. 10

    Braise the estofado

    Return the chicken to the cazuela with any juices on the plate. Add the bay leaves and the remaining 1 1/2 cups chicken broth. The sauce should come about halfway up the chicken pieces. Cover partially and simmer gently for 45 to 55 minutes, turning the pieces once, until the chicken is tender and the thickest piece reaches 165F.

11. 11

    Add the baroque finish

    Stir in the olives, capers, reserved fried almonds, and the remaining fried plantain slices. Simmer uncovered for 10 to 15 minutes more, until the sauce clings to a spoon and the sharpness of the capers has settled into the sweetness of the raisins and plantain. Taste for salt. The final flavor should be sweet, salty, sour, and chile-deep, all at once.

12. 12

    Rest and serve

    Let the estofado rest off the heat for at least 20 minutes before serving. This is not a dish that rewards impatience. Spoon it into a barro de Atzompa cazuela or serve straight from the cooking pot with warm corn tortillas and white rice. The sauce goes on the rice. The tortillas clean the plate. Así se hace y punto.

Chef Tips

• •Buy chile ancho that is flexible, shiny, and smells like raisins and tobacco. If it cracks like dry paper, it is old. You can have perfect technique and bad chiles and still get a bad estofado.
• •The olives and capers are not optional decoration. They are the convent signature. Without them, the sauce loses the salt and acidity that make the almonds, raisins, and plantain make sense.
• •Vinagre de piña is common in Oaxacan market cooking and gives the clean acidity this stew wants. Apple cider vinegar works outside Oaxaca, but know what you are giving up. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
• •Use manteca de cerdo. Vegetable oil will brown the chicken, yes, but it will not give the sauce the same body. La manteca es el sabor.
• •Do not confuse this with mole poblano and do not add chocolate. Mole is not chocolate sauce, and estofado is not mole trying to be easier. It has its own rules.

Advance Preparation

• •The chile-tomato sauce can be made 2 days ahead and refrigerated. Fry it in manteca before braising the chicken, not before storing, so the sauce wakes up in the pot.
• •The finished estofado improves overnight. Reheat it gently over low heat with a splash of chicken broth if the sauce has thickened too much.
• •If making it ahead for a dinner party, hold back a few fried plantain slices and the reserved almonds. Add them during the final reheating so they stay visible and do not collapse completely into the sauce.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 480g)