Pollo en Jocon; a Gutemalan Dish Using Green Sauce

Pollo en Jocon is basically a cooked chicken in green sauce. The dish can as easily be made with a beef roast (making it "Carne en Jocon") as with chicken, and I can tell you from experience that green sauce is truly excellent paired with pork also.

A few days back I wrote about making green sauce, or Salsa Verde. The recipe is absolutely delightful, and I really need to make more to keep around. I also promised a picture, which I have here, for this post. Though my husband is mostly unfamiliar with green sauce, being an upper Midwest guy (I am an Ohio gal myself, but got where I am via Guatemala for 12 years), he really liked the flavors of the chicken in the green sauce, so I took that as a big coup; winning his approval.

Pollo en Jocon

Guatemalan sauces very often contain sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds, called "pepitoria". These are in most of the sauces, whether sweet or savory. Things like mole, whether a savory mole over chicken, or a sweet mole over plantains, contain these seeds, toasted and ground. Guatemalan tamales have these seeds in the sauce that is made to go over top of the tamal. Again, the tamales there have 2 versions, a sweet and a savory, and the sauce starts out the same for either one, with the same seeds involved in the recipe. These are a couple of examples, but the use is widespread. 

A word about the sesame seeds: they need to still have the hull intact, which means they are not the kind found in the little jars in the spice section of the grocery. Unhulled sesame seeds are a dull, flat tan color, and not the pretty, shiny, polished little things in the jars. The shiny ones in the jars will not brown properly in the dry skillet. Look for unhulled sesame seed a at your local health food store. 

With that in mind then, I was quite surprised to find that in the two recipes I had found

Carne en Jocon

for Jocon, somewhere in Guatemala (one was a newspaper clipping), neither one had used sesame seeds or pumpkin seeds. Hmmm. One of the two recipes did not even mention using day old tortillas in the sauce, which is a very common thickening agent. Instead of thickening a sauce with flour or cornstarch, in Guatemala they will use cookie crumbs to thicken a sweet mole sauce, or bread, soaked and stirred into a sauce as for Hilachas (or Ropa Vieja), or tortillas, soaked and blended up into a sauce like Jocon. So, in one of the recipes they suggested thickening the sauce If it is too thin, with tortillas. Corn tortillas here in the U.S., made with a lot of additives and preservatives, pressed and sold in packages that seem to be able to last forever - these really will not easily soften and dissolve. To make this easier, keep a small package of Masa harina for corn tortillas in your freezer and pull it out for times like this. It thickens beautifully and gives the authentic flavor needed. Just moisten some corn masa flour with water and stir into the stew and cook until it thickens to your desired stew consistency.

Understand that this dish is supposed to be a stew of a sort. Once the green sauce is made, the rest of the recipe (as I made it) is just cooking the cut up chicken in the green sauce, and then put to cook for a while in this sauce to infuse flavors. 

Pollo en Jocon or Carne en Jocon

Serves about 6

Pollo en Jocon

1 whole chicken, cut up,  (for Pollo en Jocon)
OR 
2 lbs beef stew meat (for Carne en Jocon)
olive oil, for browning
1½ cups (more if desired) Salsa Verde / Green Sauce
1½ teaspoons salt
1 - 2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon unhulled sesame seeds
1½ tablespoons raw, green pumpkin seeds

2 tablespoons corn tortilla flour (Masa Harina or Torti-ya)

Heat a dry skillet over medium heat until very hot, then add in the sesame seeds. Stir constantly, and they will begin to pop and snap. Once they turn a light brown, turn them out immediately to a plate to cool. Add in the green pumpkin seeds and stitrring constantly, toast them until they begin to get browned spots but do not let them burn! Once browned a bit, turn out to the plate with the sesame seeds. Once cooled, place the toasted seeds into a spice grinder or coffee grinder used only for grinding spices and grind fine.
Have the recipe for green sauce already made, either fresh or frozen. Heat some olive oil in a heavy duty oven safe enameled cast iron stew pot or Dutch oven and brown the chicken pieces or stew meat. Pour the green sauce over the meat and add in the salt, bay leaves and oregano. Stir in the toasted and ground seeds. Bring to a boil and cover with tight fitting lid. Place covered pot in a preheated 300 degree oven for 1½ to 2 hours for chicken and about 2 to 2½ hours for beef. Ensure that there is plenty of liquid in the pot, adding water if it gets low during cooking.

Once the meat is cooked through, Stir together the Corn Tortilla Masa flour with a little water to dissolve, then stir into the pot and allow to cook for about 15 minutes more, to thicken. Serve with rice.
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If you would like to thicken your sauce with a corn tortilla or two, soak it in hot water until very soft and then blend or just crumble before adding to the sauce.

My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, trying new things weekly. I would love to hear from you, to help me continue my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.  

Delicious Guatemalan Dessert

Today I made Plantains in Mole Sauce for dessert. Called "Mole de Platano" or "Platanos en Mole" in Guatemala, this is one dessert that I learned to make that has been enjoyed even by some of my family here in the States. I am from the States, and lived in Guatemala in the 1970s. I enjoyed learning to cook all the great foods down there. Makes me really wish my children lived nearer, because at this time of year tamales would be wonderful to make. The recipe makes a huge amount, so it isn't easy to have 60 tamales around. I would be eating them forever. Not a problem except that is a lot of tamales! Guatemalan tamales are at least double or triple the size of a Mexican tamal. One makes a meal, unless you are supremely hungry.

Mole de Platano or Plantains in Mole Sauce

I digress. I guess I have been dreaming of tamales, too. Oh well. Today I made the plantains instead. I haven't made this dessert in quite a while. The recipe calls for some ingredients that you may find strange if you are not accustomed to the Central American penchant for mixing savory ingredients into sweets. It calls for sesame seeds (ajonjoli) and pumpkin seeds (pepitoria), true cinnamon, tomatillos and Roma tomatoes. It also calls for one of the Guatemalan breads that is more like a cookie, made into crumbs for thickening. These cookie-like breads are called Champurradas. That is another very Guatemalan thing; using a bread or crumbs of some kind for thickening a sauce. And lastly is chocolate, which makes the dish. The chocolate used in Guatemala is more like the Mexican Chocolate tablets you can find in some groceries or Mexican groceries. The Mexican or Guatemalan chocolate tablets are large, because they have sugar in them already, along with other flavors such as cinnamon or vanilla.

That is all the sauce ingredients, but then comes the plantains. Plantains are a much larger relative of the banana. They are very starchy and need to be cooked. One of the interesting things about plantains is that they can be used as a vegetable when green, or a dessert once ripe. If you are one of those (like me) who hate bananas once they get spots on the skin, you need to set that mindset aside when it comes to plantains. If a plantain's skin is unblemished, they are really, really green. To have a very sweet and ripe plantain, you must wait until it has nearly blackened. Then it is soft and sweet, and when cooked or fried is tender and delicious. To use as a vegetable, just cook the plantains that are yellow, but with unblemished skin.  They are quite hard still, but can be cooked in water and served that way.

For this dish it is best to have quite ripened plantains, because this will keep them softer in the dessert. If the dessert is refrigerated and the plantains were less than ripe, they will get hard in the sauce and not even heating it all again will help. It is still good, but never quite what it should be. This recipe is really delicious; if you have an adventuresome spirit, please give this recipe a try.

Mole de Platano or Plantains in Mole Sauce

Mole de Platano

or Plantains in Mole Sauce

Serves 6 to 8
3 plantains, very ripe, blackened and soft
2 tablespoons sesame seeds, unhulled variety
1½ tablespoons raw green pumpkin seeds
3 tomatillos, husks removed
3 Roma tomatoes
1 cup water
1 piece true cinnamon stick, about ½” worth
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup sugar
pinch salt
½ ounce unsweetened chocolate OR 1 whole tablet Mexican chocolate
1 large handful of simply flavored cookies, i.e. vanilla wafers, animal crackers, made into crumbs

Dry toasting sesame, pumpkin seeds,
tomatoes and tomatillos; frying plantains

In a dry skillet, toast, moving constantly, the sesame seeds until most of the seeds have popped, but have not turned too brown. Dump the seeds into a blender container. Repeat this process with the pumpkin seeds and then with the crumbled cinnamon stick to release its fragrance and add to the blender. Place the tomatillos and Roma tomatoes into the dry skillet and roll them around until the exteriors are charred and peeling. Add to the blender along with the cup of water. Blend until all the seeds and cinnamon are pulverized.

Pour this mixture into a medium saucepan and add in the sugar. Stir until the mixture begins to boil. Add the butter and salt, the chocolate and the cookie crumbs and cook until thickened and chocolate is melted.
Heat a skillet and add in some cooking oil. Peel the plantains and slice them about ¼-inch thick, on a bias. Fry the plantain slices until nicely browned and completely tender. Add them to the mole sauce as they are cooked. Once all plantain slices are done, mix well with the sauce and serve. Sprinkle with more sesame seeds as garnish.

My passion is to teach people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and help pass along my love and joy of food, both simple and exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, trying new things weekly. Join me at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook and Pinterest.