Denver chef brings new culinary twist to Mexican American pozole traditions

DENVER — Christmas simply isn’t Christmas with out the festive meals we grew up with, and for a lot of Mexican People in Colorado, which means a steaming pot of pozole.

“These are the meals that I grew up craving,” mentioned Chef Jose Avila Vilchez, who runs La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal in Denver’s Ballpark District.

Chef Vilchez grew up consuming pozole in Mexico Metropolis. Each Thursday, he went together with his mother and brother to take pleasure in two-for-one specials on the normal soup.

However when he moved to Denver greater than a decade in the past, the pozolerias of his childhood had been nowhere to be discovered.

“Pink posole is a factor. So, in 100% of the Mexican eating places right here, that is what you’d discover, a pink pozole, but it surely was extra for as a filler than as a important dish,” he mentioned.

So, he opened La Diabla to serve up flavors many Coloradans haven’t tasted earlier than.

Whereas pink pozole is a nonetheless a favourite, Chef Vilchez additionally studied recipes from throughout Mexico to make inexperienced, white and even black pozole.

“Our pozole negro, it is a distinctive factor. That is one thing that we invented,” mentioned Chef Vilchez, who drew inspiration from a mole recipe standard in Yucatan. The black shade comes from chilmole paste and charred rocoto chiles.

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“The flavour is simply superb, even simply the broth,” he mentioned.

However even with these revolutionary and different broths, on the coronary heart of every dish is pozole’s historical historical past.

“Pozole is a ceremonial dish,” Chef Vilchez mentioned.

The Aztecs ready pozole from corn — which they thought-about sacred — and human flesh sacrificed in non secular ceremonies. After Spanish colonizers got here to the Americas, the Mexica folks stopped practising cannibalism and changed the meat in pozole with pigs and chickens.

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Because the pot boiled, the froth effervescent to the highest gave the dish its identify – the Nahuatl phrase for foam is “pozolli.”

“Despite the fact that we misplaced a variety of dishes that they used to make again within the day, the Mexica’s pozole nonetheless is like… a celebration,” Chef Vilchez mentioned.

A whole lot of years later, the star ingredient in pozole stays the identical: Corn. And Chef Vilchez makes use of the normal strategy of nixtamalization to melt the kernels.

He sources high-quality corn and places it in a pot of boiling water and cal (calcium hydroxide), which creates an alkaline resolution that partially dissolves the corn’s exhausting pores and skin and transforms the corn’s style and texture.

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“After you have, like a mom pozole, per se, like a white broth, then you may add the salsa,” Chef Vilchez mentioned.

He additionally provides in greens like thinly sliced radishes, cabbage, onion and lettuce, in addition to meat like hen or pork.

Whereas Chef Vilchez serves pozole year-round, many individuals affiliate it with holidays.

In Mexico Metropolis, he grew up consuming pozole on Mexican Independence Day, “particularly if in case you have the pink, the white and the inexperienced, identical to the Mexican flag,” he mentioned.

However right here in Colorado, and in a lot of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, pozole is hottest round Christmastime.

As a selfmade household meal, “you make the pozole, and that pot stays within the kitchen. It by no means leaves. You make it there. You let it do its factor, and as soon as it is prepared, you begin serving from the pot,” Chef Vilchez mentioned.

For Cristóbal Garcia — who was born in Valparaíso, Zacatecas, after which grew up in Colorado the place his mom’s household has lived for eleven generations — pozole may be very a lot tied to Christmas.

“Throughout the holidays main as much as Nochebuena, or what we all know right here as Christmas Eve,” Garcia mentioned his household celebrated Las Posadas with pozole and tamales.

“It is about connecting with your loved ones, connecting with your pals, connecting along with your neighbors,” he mentioned.

Since his father immigrated from central Mexico, his mom grew up in Colorado and his spouse’s household is from coastal Sinaloa and northern Chihuahua, he’s loved tasting many various recipes for pozole.

“My mother-in-law makes it with a inexperienced chile base, and she or he makes it with hen generally as an alternative of with pork,” he mentioned.

Whereas his sisters cook dinner their Abuelita’s recipe for pink pozole handed down for generations, and now shared with you within the recipe under or for obtain right here:

For Garcia, who directs the Metropolitan State College of Denver’s First-Era Initiatives, celebrating with these conventional meals is an opportunity for Coloradans to replicate on tradition, id and the state’s historical past.

“Generally folks say, ‘ni de aquí, ni de allá‘ [not from here nor from there]. And I say, ‘soy de aquí y de allá‘ [I’m from here and from there],” he mentioned.

Whether or not you cook dinner your personal pozole or savor a bowl from a restaurant like La Diabla, each Garcia and Chef Vilchez hope Coloradans will spend time communing over a flavorful meal.

Chef Vilchez mentioned he’s been “blessed and tremendous humbled” to obtain awards just like the James Beard and the Michelin Information’s Bib Gourmand awards. Nevertheless it means much more to him when clients say the meals brings again heat reminiscences of meals shared with their households.

“If you contact somebody’s soul like that… it is only a totally different connection on a private degree,” he mentioned.