cook: camarones en pipián rojo

When I was in Palm Springs for spring break, I ate my new favorite Mexican dish, Shrimp in Pipián Sauce, at the restaurant El Mirasol at Los Arboles, a boutique hotel. And I wanted to re-create it at home. When I looked online for the recipe, all seemed to refer to Pati Jinich's Mexican Table: The Secrets of Real Mexican Homecooking, which I went to the trouble of checking out from the public library.      

I thought wrongly that the ancho and guajillo chilies Jinich use are fresh, and so I further sought on the internet the same recipe but using dried peppers. But I pretty much followed Jinich's recipe for Sunday dinner.  When I read the recipe again, I realized, no the chilies in the recipe are likely dried. While at the store, I did see guajillo but didn't see ancho peppers and googled what could substitute and so bought Pasilla peppers though there were other peppers like Californian Seco and New Mexico Arbol chilies. I guessed that the Guajillo were the milder peppers and pulled the stems, seeds and membranes off three of them and the same from one of the Pasilla chilies and then charred them on my hot cast iron for 15 to 20 seconds until fragrant.  They smelled really pleasant--floral and savory.               

Then I covered the fragrant and toasted chilies with water and simmered for 10 minutes. Next I toasted the pepitas or pumpkin seeds.

 

But I needed to have toasted more pepitas and so added more along with sesame seeds, which I toasted for 3 to 4 minutes. They audibly popped on the pan or later in the cooling bowl.

 

I reserved the toasted pumpkin and sesame seeds with a quarter cup of dry roasted peanuts. Then it was time to char the aromatics and tomatoes. I don't have a comal and so used the same cast iron for toasting nuts and seeds for also searing a few Roma tomatoes and one small heritage tomato, a thick slice of red onion and couple cloves of garlic, not peeled.

Oh! I had forgotten to toast for 15 to 20 seconds, a couple cloves and so added them to the cast iron along with the charring vegetables. Once all the ingredients were toasted and charred, they went into the Vitamix blender along with the cooking liquid of the peppers and a bit more water, a sprinkling of cinnamon, a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and a few teaspoons of brown sugar.

 

I tasted the pipián paste, and oh was it tasty. This sauce was not that much harder than enchilada sauce, and it definitely tasted complex and delicious. I bought shrimp in their shells, which I then peeled.

 

I put all the shrimp shells into a pot with water to cover and simmered for 20 minutes before straining and reserving.

 

I then put much of the pipián paste into a fry pan with a tablespoon of vegetable oil and fried for a few minutes.

I then poured my simmering seafood stock into the frypan of pipián sauce, stirring and scraping bits off the bottom of the pan, and then put the shrimp into the sauce to cook for 3 minutes.

 

It smelled terrific, and luckily I had made Mexican rice and beans a week prior.

 

I did not serve the meal with tortillas, but the tortillas....

....would have been good for sopping up that delicious pipián.