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cooking · 2026-02-11

Tu Casa Mi Casa

I am not only parroting these people's recipes, but I am using their book titles as my post titles now. The book was written by Enrique Olvera of Pujol (CDMX), Cosme (NYC), and Damian (LA) fame. I have written about Pujol in my Michelin Stars and Stories piece, which was quite the letdown in the elevated Mexican food space for me, but the recipes in the book are very much the opposite. It is much closer to an approachable introduction to Mexican foods, focused on traditional ingredients and cooking methods, with minimal flair.

Everything we made was quite simple, though doing it all at once adds a bit of chaos.. Planning ahead is certainly possible, but it is not my forte. If you want to do this in one fell swoop, read the recipes, prep the ingredients, and identify the spots where you can multitask. You will have a very good dinner in an hour and change.

The stars of the show were chicken tinga and hamachi, but we are going to start with the role players.

The Sauces

There are a good few salsa recipes in the book, but a classic verde (green) sauce and a slightly less classic bone marrow habanero sauce spoke to me. The green sauce has a moderate kick, tolerable for most people familiar with Mexican food, and the habanero sauce - if you leave the seeds in - is hot. I added one more habanero than the recipe suggested, probably due to a constant need to prove my spice tolerance ever since a friend discouraged me from adding the hottest sauce on a sandwich menu only to walk to the counter directly after me and request that sauce on his sandwich.

Cooked Salsa Verde
Weights
  • 5 big tomatillos, husked
  • 1/4 large onion
  • 2 serrano chiles
  • 1 garlic clove, unpeeled
  • 20g cilantro
  • Salt, to taste
Instructions
  1. Prepare the ingredients
  2. Place the tomatillos, onion, serrano, and garlic in a hot frying pan
  3. Move them around a bit occasionally
  4. Wait until they're charred ~on all sides
  5. Remove from heat
  6. Once cool, put all the ingredients in a blender
  7. Add the cilantro and a bit of salt
  8. Blend until chunky
  9. Taste, add more salt if necessary, pulse more if adding salt
Bone Marrow Habanero Sauce
Weights
  • 1 lb bone marrow bones
  • 230g white onion, thickly sliced
  • 5 habanero chiles
  • Salt, to taste
Instructions
  1. Prepare the ingredients
  2. Preheat the oven to 450F
  3. Place the bones, habanero, and onion on a baking sheet
  4. Put in the oven and roast until caramelized
  5. Scoop the marrow into a blender
  6. Add the charred onions and habanero
  7. Add a little salt
  8. Blend until smooth
  9. Taste, add more salt if necessary, pulse more if adding salt

The salsa verde recipe ratios worked wonderfully. The flavor seemed ideal and it was easy to control the chunkiness in a normal sized blender.

There was a bit more going on with the habanero salsa. This was harder to get into the consistency that I had targeted, likely due to the limited amount of oil or liquid from the bone marrow. At first taste, it was very good, if not a bit heavy on the bone marrow flavor, but it was too chunky. I slowly added oil and blended to get a better consistency. It still was a bit chunkier than I had liked, so I thinned it out quite a bit with water. In the end, this process worked, but unsurprisingly, I felt that the flavor profile was considerably better before thinning it out. I loved the sauce, and it was quite spicy, so I plan to think through the best way to preserve more flavor while getting the desired consistency.

The "Corn" Aquachile

We are talking about aguachile as the marinade here, rather than in the way it is typically discussed with a specific seafood. We opted against the corn, mostly in the interest of time, so this aguachile is essentially just a thin marinade for our hamachi.

Aguachile
Weights
  • 3 small tomatillos, husked, rinsed, cut into chunks
  • 1 cucumber, preferably English (seedless), cut into chunks
  • 2 small celery stalks, cut into chunks
  • 1 serrano chile, stemmed
  • 20g cilantro stems
  • 4 tablespoons key lime juice
  • 1 avocado, cubed
  • 1/2 small white onion, thinly sliced
  • Salt, to taste
Instructions
  1. Prepare the ingredients
  2. Blend all the ingredients
  3. Strain the ingredients through a fine-mesh strainer (over a bowl)

An incredibly simple recipe, as you can see, with most of the work being in acquiring and juicing key limes. You will want to make this as close to serving as possible.

The Hamachi

Buy hamachi from a fish broker that you trust. Sprinkle some salt on it shortly before slicing and serving. Slice it thin - certainly thinner than we did - and pour that aguachile over it.

Our plating methodology was not ideal, but you only get so many opportunities to put fish on the fish dishes. I should have plated them vertically instead of horizontally, but we were moving quickly at that point. It's fine.

The Chicken Tinga

Chicken Tinga
Weights
  • 1 lb boneless, skinless breasts
  • 2 large white onions, 1 halved, 1 sliced
  • 6 garlic cloves, 3 whole, 3 sliced
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 4 dried - or canned - chipotle chiles, "chopped to a paste"
  • 9 plum tomatoes, roughly chopped
  • salt, to taste
Instructions
  1. Prepare the ingredients
  2. Put a medium pot on the stove
  3. Add the chicken, onion halves, whole garlic, and some salt to the pot
  4. Add water to cover the ingredients
  5. Bring this to a simmer
  6. Cook, simmering, for about 30 minutes
  7. While cooking, periodically remove the shit that floats to the top
  8. Check the temperature of the chicken, and keep cooking accordingly
  9. Once done, remove the chicken, and let it cool
  10. Reserve the "broth" that the chicken cooked in
  11. Once cool, shred it with your hands or forks or however you desire
  12. Get a new medium or large pot, and heat some oil over medium heat
  13. Add the sliced onions and garlic, and cook until translucent
  14. Add the shredded chicken, chipotle chiles, tomatoes, and 1 cup of the reserved broth
  15. Cook until the tomato breaks down and changes to a "brick" color
  16. Season with salt, to taste

We used dried chipotle chiles, and it became clear that when Olvera refers to a “paste,” he’s talking about the canned version - even though he recommends dried. I threw the dried ones into a food processor and added water until it resembled a paste.

To eat, Olvera recommends rice or a tostada. I couldn't help but think about Jenni's Quesadillas in Mexico City when making these, where they throw the nixtamalized corn onto a comal, throw on some cheese, toss the tinga in there and fold it over. Of course, we did not do that either since feeding four people in that manner is not particularly productive and would require each person to make a single "quesadilla" one by one. Instead, we just threw the tortillas into a pan with some cheese and used those. We topped these with crema and our sauces.

It’s worth finding a tortilleria or Mexican grocery store near you that gets fresh tortillas daily. They’re just better.

From the Creator

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