Chicken En Adobo excerpted from Cocina Mexicana: Fresh, vibrant recipes for authentic Mexican food by Adriana Cavita. Photography by Clare Winfield.
Adriana Cavita grew up in a small village in Mexico and was inspired to enter the food industry by her grandmother who ran a street-food business. She has since travelled extensively around the country, from Mexico City the capital (where she was born), across to Oaxaca and the Yucatán.
Visiting the small towns around the coast and perched up in the mountains sparked in Adriana a fascination with traditional cooking methods, and how these vary from region to region. This collection of recipes is built around her experiences, from breathing in the aroma of woodsmoke from a barbacoa (food cooked over open flames), to seeing first-hand the care that goes into preparing seemingly simple dishes, from salsas and moles to tortillas and tostadas.
Adriana’s extensive travels have influenced this collection of recipes. From the northern, more rugged dishes of Baja Fish Tacos and Birria (beef stew), through the centre of the country with a wealth of quesadillas and Pollo en Adobo (chicken adobo), all the way to the southern regions of Yucatan and Oaxaca featuring Tlayudas con Carne Asada (often referred to as the Oaxaca pizza!)
Adriana also introduces the basics of Mexican cooking, including salsas, corn dough, tostadas, and moles and includes a selection of tantalizing Mexican cocktails heralding the popularity of tequila and mezcal. Adriana’s take on traditional Mexican dishes tell a story of her heritage and the people who taught her the craft of cooking and will open your eyes to real, authentic Mexican food.
Chicken En Adobo
This is a very common dish served at birthday celebrations and is usually accompanied with nopales (cactus) that has also been cooked on the grill. I really enjoy cooking this type of recipe as the chicken carries lots of flavour. It is sometimes nice to prepare it on the weekend for a family gathering.
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
½ white onion, cut into chunks
3 garlic cloves, cut in half
6 tomatoes, quartered
8 guajillo chillies/chiles, seeds and veins removed
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1½ tablespoons salt
360 ml/1½ cups chicken stock or water
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
6 chicken thighs, with or without bones
TO SERVE
any of your favourite rice dishes (see page 31)
warm tortillas (see page 26) any of your favourite salsas and sauces (see pages 19–25)
salad SERVES 4–6
Heat the vegetable oil in a saucepan over a medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring continuously. Once they start to take on some colour, add the tomatoes, chillies and spices, still stirring continuously. Continue to cook for 5 minutes, then add the stock or water and cook for a further 15 minutes. Lower the temperature slightly if needed and stir every 2–3 minutes. Leave to cool.
Place the cooled sauce in a food processor or blender with the vinegar and blend until smooth. Pass through a fine-mesh sieve/ strainer for an even smoother adobo.
Marinate the chicken thighs in the blended adobo and leave in the fridge overnight. Take the meat out of the fridge 30 minutes before starting to cook to bring to room temperature.
I prefer to cook the chicken on a hot grill, but you can cook it in an oven preheated to 200°C/180°C fan/400°F/Gas 6 for about 40–50 minutes. I recommend serving the chicken with rice, tortillas, your favourite sauce and a salad.
Note You may not need all of the adobo for marinating. You can keep the rest in a clean jar in the fridge for 4–5 days, or freeze for future use.
Recipe reprinted with permission from Rylan Peters & Small.