Tomatillo

For this version, make a basic tomatillo salsa, then puree it with avocado. This recipe makes extra salsa you can serve on its own along with tortilla chips. The salsa’s acidity preserves the color of guacamole; it can be refrigerated, in an airtight container, up to 1 day.

Cilantro’s pungent fragrance partners well with fruity tomatillos in a lively pesto. The mixture offsets the spiciness of the cumin and jalapeño in this delectable soup.

There are never any leftovers of this flavorful pie at Mrs. Rowe’s Country Buffet. Because green tomatoes have such a short season, customers have many long months to look forward to this pie, with its robust spice and vinegar essences perfectly mingled with an underlying sweetness. The flavors unfold with every bite. Longtime regular customers know to get to the restaurant early enough to enjoy a slice. If the green tomato season slips by, try tomatillos instead. This pie also works as a side dish with pork chops or chicken.

Tomatillos are a member of the nightshade family, which includes New World tomatoes and potatoes and such Old World relatives as eggplants. Although those wide-ranging kin have become familiar around the globe, tomatillos remain something of a country cousin, not much appreciated or grown outside Mexico and its neighbors to the south in Central and South America and to the north in California and the American Southwest. Tomatillos are an everyday must in Mexican cooking and dining, however, especially for one of Mexico’s great table sauces, salsa verde. Here the sauce, usually used as a dip for tortilla chips, becomes the medium for simmering meatballs. Make this recipe in summer, when tomatillos are in season. Canned versions are available, but they should be reserved for thickening chile verde and the like, much as okra is used in southern cooking.

Brian mastered mole verde under the tutelage of Brenda Godinez, a Cakebread staffer who creates exquisite flower arrangements for the winery. Brenda taught Brian that a proper mole requires many steps: almost every ingredient needs to be fried or toasted first to deepen its flavor. The mole verde, or green mole, relies on fresh chiles, tomatillos, and cilantro for its emerald color. When well made, the mole is velvety smooth. This recipe features chicken, but we sometimes use duck legs or pork. Truly, the spotlight is on the sauce. Serve with rice and a salad. Note that this recipe makes twice as much mole (the sauce, not the chicken) as you need to serve six people. But why make mole in small amounts? It freezes well, giving you a running start on the next dinner.

Make the Pork Tenderloin with Sautéed Apples and Leeks on page 205, and then use the extra roasted tenderloin in one of these recipes (page 206)—one with Asian flavors, one with Mexican.

A fresh salsa verde, or green sauce, made with tomatillos is a perfect condiment for almost any meal (I like it on grilled chicken tacos), and just as good as a dip for tortilla chips.

Taquitos, also known as flautas where I grew up, are corn tortillas that are stuffed, rolled, and fried. Shredded chicken or beef is the traditional filling, but here I use mushrooms and pair them with a tart tomatillo salsa for a great vegetarian dish.

There are as many green sauces in the world as there are red ones, and this is one of my favorites. Fresh tomatillos are best for this dish, and those, like pepitas (pumpkin seeds) are increasingly easy to find. Though it’s probably at its best with Arroz a la Mexicana (page 517), you can serve this with almost any rice dish.

When dried—as you will usually find them—pasillas are often called chile negro, or black chile. They are thin, small, shriveled, and very dark. They are also earthy and not especially hot, so they yield a rich, densely flavored sauce traditionally used with lamb, beef, and chicken. If you want some heat, soak a dried chipotle or two with the pasillas. If you can find fresh tomatillos, use them in place of the tomatoes. Slip off the papery husks and add a little water to the sauce.

A raw salsa, with nice strong flavors. Best with tomatillos, but still good with not-too-hard green tomatoes. I like to mix a little just-ripe red tomato in as well.

I remember a time when gazpacho became very trendy and was on every menu. I decided to come up with a different version—even with a different color. It was José Andrés of Jaleo in Washington, D.C., who made the best Spanish gazpacho I ever tasted, so I borrowed his technique of frying the bread in olive oil. The toasted flavor and richness of the fried bread helps mellow the acidity and round out the flavors of the other ingredients. The shellfish garnish is not necessary but makes the dish a little more elegant and sumptuous.

This sauce is wonderful served on its own, but paired with Red Chile Sauce (opposite) and served with eggs (Blue Corn Fried Eggs, page 219) or fish or pork or chicken, it becomes known as Christmas. Why? Christmas is known for its red and green colors! In New Mexico restaurant lingo (Sante Fe to be exact), Christmas means a plate of half-red and half-green chile sauces. The New Mexico terminology has spread to some other states in the Southwest, such as Arizona and Texas.

Fish tacos originated in Mexico’s Baja California and spread up the coast to southern California. Versions featuring deep-fried fish are the most common, but I prefer to grill light, flaky red snapper for these tacos. The grill gives the fish a touch of smoky, charred flavor, which balances the fresh garnishes of tart tomatillo-avocado relish and crunchy red cabbage slaw. Cabbage is a traditional garnish for fish tacos and keeps its crunch factor long past the point when lettuce would have wilted. I make my slaw from a mix of delicate, pale green napa and deep purple red cabbages. Sweet basil may seem an unexpected choice, but its flavor complements the citrus juice in the slaw’s vinaigrette and offsets the assertive cilantro in the charred tomato salsa.

Horseradish is the common link between the ketchup-based cocktail sauce you are used to and this, its Bar Americain reincarnation. Tart tomatillos are roasted and blended with garlic, red onion, jalapeños, and cilantro for a sauce indebted to the flavors of the American Southwest. The secret to its bright green hue is the addition of blanched and chopped spinach—the flavor isn’t noticeable, but the color certainly is.