For our second Mexican meal, we’re making a representative dish of the state of Jalisco.  Jalisco is a state on the west coast of Mexico which is home to so many of the things that the world associates with Mexico that there is even a saying: “Jalisco IS Mexico.”  Mariachi, sombreros, and tequila all trace their origins to Jalisco.

And Leigh would know Tequila – she has a masters degree in the subject, issued directly from Tommy’s Bar in San Francisco.  There may also have been tequila involved in our acquisition of the “fnerk.com” domain name.

But let’s talk about food.  Specifically, we’re going to be making the rich stew known as birria, which has definitely had a moment recently as folks north of the border discovered that it’s really, really good in tacos.

We’re going for the more old school version, which is a straight ahead stew served with rice. First off we have to make our adobo.  The recipe I found called for four different kinds of dried chilis, but since it didn’t include arbol chiles, which are the chili most closely associated with Jalisco, I added some of those too.  Why not?

Upper left is cascabel, and then from left to right we have arbol, morita, guajilo, and ancho chiles.  The preparation of all these darlings is less complicated than for Oaxaca.  Each one gets toasted for about two minutes in a dry pan, and then they’re boiled together in a pot with some garlic for about ten minutes.

At this point, the apartment is ALREADY starting to smell pretty darn good.  Into the blender goes the whole pot, along with some seasonings like cumin and oregano.

Birria is traditionally made with goat or lamb, but any meat that needs long cooking will work well.  (Dover sole birria is not a good idea.)  We went with lamb, so the next step was to just mix up the lamb and the adobo and shove the whole thing in the fridge for 24 hours to marinate.

After a day, this pan gets tightly covered with foil, and then goes in to roast for 3 hours.  And if we though our apartment smelled good when we were just toasting the chiles… man, by the time this was done cooking, I don’t think I ever wanted it to smell like anything else.

Let’s chop up some raw white onion, make rice, toast up some tortillas…

…and there’s just one more critical thing to do.

(yes,  it’s on the floor.  I needed a neutral background for the picture, and our table is the same color as the bottle.)

We’ve mentioned Heisenbooze on this blog before – alcohol that’s been around for so long that it’s clearly either amazing or disastrous, but you don’t know which until you open the bottle and collapse the wavefunction.  Research indicates that this particular tequila maker was good and then bad, and is now possibly good again, but this bottle was likely from right before good turned to bad the first time.

I dunno – it tasted pretty good to me.  Lots of vanilla and oak.

Leigh was driven home by a work colleague who had car trouble when she got here, so we had a third for dinner. That’s good for US, in that we love company, but bad for YOU, because when we have company, I always forget to take as many pictures as I should.

So here’s our “completed meal” photo, with perhaps less of the stew left than would have made for a better shot.

But I do. not. care. what the pictures looked like, because dear god – this was a meal to die for.  We have a big bag of chiles in the pantry now, and we WILL be making this again. Smoky, spicy, and delicious.

We also made a relatively modern dessert (from the ’90s or so) which also has its origins in Jalisco, Bionicos.

Bionicos is not complicated – it’s a mix of fruit chopped into relatively small pieces, and doused in a sauce made of condensed milk, sour cream, and sometimes yogurt.  This is then covered with crunchy bits like coconut, granola, and nuts. We decided to go with a mix of mango, pineapple, strawberry, and papaya.

What’s not to like here? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, that’s what.

This meal was absolutely stonkers.

Next up, el norte.  After all, lots of planets have an el norte. (Yes, I know I just recently made that joke.  No one’s forcing you to read this, mom.)

Recipes:
Jalsico style Birria
Bionicos