Lengua en Encacahuatado Jarocho

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Large stockpot or olla for simmering the tongue
• •Cast iron comal for toasting chiles, tomatoes, and spices
• •Heavy clay cazuela or Dutch oven for frying the sauce
• •High-powered blender
• •Fine-mesh strainer (optional, for a smoother sauce)

Instructions

1. 1

   Simmer the tongue

   Rinse the beef tongue and place it in a large stockpot. Cover with cold water by two inches and add the halved onion, the head of garlic, the bay leaves, the peppercorns, and the salt. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat, skim the gray foam that rises in the first fifteen minutes, then lower the heat until the water barely moves. Cover partially and cook for three to three and a half hours. The tongue is ready when a fork slides into the thickest part with no resistance. Do not rush it. A tongue that fights your knife has not cooked long enough.

2. 2

   Peel and slice

   Lift the tongue out and let it sit only until you can handle it, but peel it while it is still hot. Slit the thick outer skin from end to end and pull it away with your fingers and a paring knife. It comes off in sheets when the tongue is hot and grips like glue once it cools, so work fast. Slice the peeled tongue across into pieces about half an inch thick. Strain the broth and save every drop. You will build the sauce with it.

   If the skin resists, the tongue is either undercooked or has cooled too much. Drop it back into the hot broth for ten minutes and try again.
3. 3

   Toast the peanuts and sesame

   Melt two tablespoons of the lard in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the raw peanuts and fry them, stirring constantly, until they turn deep gold and smell toasted, about five minutes. Scoop them out with a slotted spoon. In the same pan, toast the sesame seeds dry over medium heat until they pop and turn the color of honey. This toasted peanut is the heart of the dish. Encacahuatado is ground peanut, not peanut butter from a jar. Así se hace y punto.

   Watch the peanuts and the sesame both. Burnt peanut and burnt sesame turn the whole sauce bitter, and there is no fixing it later.
4. 4

   Toast and soak the chiles

   Stem and seed the guajillo and ancho chiles. Heat a dry comal over medium and toast them a few seconds per side, pressing them flat, until they puff and smell fragrant. Do not let them blacken. Move them to a bowl, cover with hot water, not boiling, and let them soften for twenty minutes. Boiling water cooks the skin and turns the sauce bitter. Hot water draws the flavor out clean.

5. 5

   Char the tomatoes and aromatics

   On the same comal, char the tomatoes, the half onion, and the garlic cloves. Turn them until the tomato skins blister and split, the onion edges blacken, and the garlic softens inside its skin. This roasting is the backbone of the sauce. Peel the garlic once it is cool enough to handle.

6. 6

   Toast the spices

   Toast the cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and the half teaspoon of peppercorns on the comal for under a minute, just until fragrant. Allspice, pimienta gorda, is native to this coast and to neighboring Tabasco, and it is what gives the jarocho version its warm, dark edge. Grind the toasted spices to a powder.

7. 7

   Grind the sauce

   Drain the chiles. In a blender, combine the toasted peanuts, most of the sesame seeds (save some for the top), the soaked chiles, the charred tomatoes, onion, and garlic, the ground spices, and the torn tortilla. Add two cups of the reserved broth and blend until completely smooth. Work in batches if you must. You want a sauce with no grit, so blend longer than you think you need to.

   For a smoother sauce, pass the blended mixture through a fine-mesh strainer and push it through with the back of a ladle. A home cook in Tlacotalpan would not bother, but it makes a cleaner plate.
8. 8

   Fry the sauce

   Heat the remaining lard in a heavy clay cazuela or Dutch oven over medium heat until it shimmers. Pour in the blended sauce, standing back because it will sputter. Cook, stirring almost constantly, for ten to fifteen minutes, until the sauce darkens, thickens, and the lard begins to rise to the surface in little pools. This is the step that separates encacahuatado from peanut soup. La manteca es el sabor.

   Use a long spoon and a deep pot. The sauce spits as the water cooks out of it. Keep it moving so the peanut does not catch and scorch on the bottom.
9. 9

   Season and simmer

   Thin the sauce with the remaining broth, a cup at a time, until it coats the back of a spoon. Taste for salt. If it tastes sharp, add the piloncillo or a pinch of sugar to round it. Let it simmer gently for fifteen minutes so the flavors marry. The sauce should be glossy and pourable, never gluey.

10. 10

    Add the tongue

    Slide the sliced tongue into the sauce and spoon the encacahuatado over every piece. Simmer gently, never at a hard boil, for fifteen to twenty minutes, until the tongue is hot through and has drunk in the flavor. Add a splash more broth if the sauce tightens too much.

11. 11

    Serve

    Spoon the lengua and its sauce onto warm plates. Scatter the reserved toasted sesame over the top. Serve with white rice, sweet fried plantains, and warm corn tortillas to chase the sauce around the plate. This is a Sunday dish, a make-ahead dish, a dish that says la tercera raíz belongs at the center of the table. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Chef Tips

• •Buy a whole beef tongue from a butcher who sells offal, not a supermarket clamshell. Ask for it untrimmed. Peel the skin while the tongue is still hot from the pot, because once it cools the skin grips the meat and fights you. A clean dish towel and a paring knife are all you need.
• •Use raw peanuts and toast them yourself in lard. Roasted-and-salted cocktail peanuts throw the salt off and the flavor flat. And know that this is one of two homes for the peanut sauce: on the Pacific side, in the Costa Chica towns of Cuajinicuilapa in Guerrero and Pinotepa Nacional in Oaxaca, the Afro-Mexican cooks build their version with chile costeño and chile pasilla oaxaqueño instead of guajillo. Same root, different coast. Cada estado, su propia cocina.
• •The whole dish lives or dies on frying the ground sauce in hot lard until the fat surfaces. It will spit at you. Keep stirring and do not rush it. If the finished sauce tastes sharp, a small piece of piloncillo rounds it out, and a little more tongue broth loosens it.
• •Serve it with white rice and sweet fried plantain, plátano macho maduro fried in lard until the edges go dark. The Afro-Mexican Gulf larder is plátano macho, yuca, coconut, peanut, and sesame. This dish reaches for two of them; the others belong to its cousins, the tamales de yuca and the fish dressed in coconut. The sweet plantain against the rich peanut sauce is pure Sotavento.

Advance Preparation

• •The tongue can be simmered, peeled, and sliced one day ahead. Keep it submerged in its strained broth in the refrigerator so it does not dry out.
• •Encacahuatado is a make-ahead dish by nature. Like any peanut and chile sauce, it deepens overnight. Make the whole dish a day before and reheat it gently, adding a splash of broth to loosen the sauce.
• •Toast the sesame for the garnish and fry the plantains the day you serve, not before.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 610g)