Recipe for the traditional Huaxmole
The huaxmole is a traditional dish from the Mixteca-Puebla cuisine in southern Mexico, usually prepared with goat meat, chiles and a kind of special local string beans, called the huaje or guaje. When you can not get goat meat, you can substitute for lamb or beef. The name of this dish comes from the Nahuatl word huaxmolli, literally translated to huaje stew.
To the Mixtecs, huaxmole has a spiritual dimension and is served in the Mixtec communities only at a few special occasions; partly because of the high price of its ingredients. If you really want to try this special dish made by a professional chef, you will have to travel to the cities of Matamoros or Acatlán Izúcar de Osorio, where it will be possible to find it on certain restaurant's menus…
Huaxmole Recipe
Ingredients:
* 2 lb. Lamb shanks
* 1 lb. huajes (fruit of the Leucaena, or edible Jumbie beans from the White Lead Tree), small ones, cleaned
* 1 teaspoon coriander seeds
* 1 lb. red tomatoes
* 8 cups water
* 3 tablespoons oil
* 4 serrano chiles
* 1 onion, quartered
* 1 bunch cilantro
* garlic
* salt
Preparation:
1) To prepare huaxmole, we begin by cooking the lamb shanks, slowly, in 4 cups of water with garlic, the quartered onion and salt, until the meat comes off its bones; reserve separately the broth the meat cooked in.
2) Fry the serrano chiles in a skillet with oil. In the same oil, fry the coarsely chopped tomatoes and the coriander seeds; blend to liquefy these ingredients and strain any excess liquid. Pour back the blended sauce to the skillet, add the cilantro and broth in which meat was cooked and simmer for five minutes. Wait! Before pouring the broth in save one cup of it still cold for the next step…
3) Add the meat to the skillet. Blend the Huajes with the cup of cold broth we saved earlier. Remove the casserole from the burner and pour the blended Huajes in the sauce, not heating it more to prevent the sauce from getting an undesired viscous texture.
Serve your Huaxmole, it is ready...
