New Mexican Bounty: Tomato Salad + Bean-and-Cheese Turnovers | Cook's Country Full Episode (S16 E11)

Today on Cook's Country, Brian visits Albuquerque and makes New Mexican bean and cheese turnovers with green chili. I tell the story of the tomato clubs and Ashley makes southwestern tomato and corn salad for Bridget. That's all right here on Cook's Country. There are few things better than a road trip through New Mexico in the late summer, especially when it's a food road trip. Hot dang chili. I'm not gonna swear on TV but uh. And when you're traveling through the world's chili pepper capital, you don't need a map to find some great food with a little extra kick. Pull off I-25 into any small town. You guys want to just drive down there and see what's up. You're sure to find locals roasting 40 pound bags of fresh green chilies. All right here we're getting into the thick of it down here. Or drying red chilies on their roofs. I'm looking for a chili roaster. I roll down my window just a little bit. Start smelling. Smelling for the roasted chilies. I visited the land of enchantment to learn what makes New Mexico chilies so special. My first stop, straight to the experts at New Mexico State University. So this is the famous New Mexico number nine? Absolutely. This is the grandmother of all New Mexican type chilies. Denise Kuhn is a senior research specialist at the Chili Pepper Institute and she showed me around their teaching garden. A four acre outdoor classroom. It showcases over 150 different types of chili peppers from four of the five domesticated species. She taught me why New Mexico has some of the world's hottest chilies. The chilies that we grow here in New Mexico, mainly because of our overall environmental conditions, lend more to more concentrated flavors. So New Mexican chilies have a really intense flavor. And what about red chilies? Everything starts off green, correct? The green is the immature mature stage, if that makes any sense whatsoever. And then from the green stage they'll eventually start turning red and that's called the mature stage. The sugar content sky rockets. Vitamin A skyrockets. Heat levels probably kind of taper off, but the sugar kind of counteracts the heat level in the red chili. It feels like it's less hot, but it's probably got the same capsaicin amount as the green chili. All that information was fascinating, but I couldn't eat it. So I set back out on the road in search of some more chili goodness. A little chili stand right there. A giant statue of a guy and a hot dog. Soon enough I found myself in Hatch. Proud home of the Hatch chili pepper. Pretty cool. The town's got like this artsy Key West in the desert sort of vibe to it. Seems a lot of fun. Before I left I washed down a chili cheeseburger at Sparky's with a refreshing red chili mango lemonade. Further up the freeway at the Owl Bar in San Antonio, the chili king himself, owner Adolph Baca, served me up some chili cheese fries. That's exactly what you think it's going to be like. It's pure awesome. And another chili cheeseburger. It's one of my favorite burgers ever to hit my mouth. Smash patty, green chili, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onions. It's like eating a salad with a side of meat. Finally after hours on the road I visited Mary and Tito's Cafe, an Albuquerque institution that's been feeding happy customers for more than 60 years. My father opened it in 1963. He was a retired firefighter and he loved to cook and so he told my mom when he retired he was going to open up a restaurant. Antoinette and her sons Travis and Jordan have been running things since Antoinette's dad Tito passed away in 1990. He just he loved people and he loved cooking and he just loved for people to enjoy what he was making. Tito's most iconic creation is his Mexican turnover. Filled to order with beans cheese or meat they're always smothered in green or red chili. He loved Italian food and he loved calzones and he said I'm going to have my version of a calzone and that turnover is his version of a calzone. We just don't bake it we deep fry it. I had to try some of these Mexican turnovers but first there was a question I needed to have answered. Green or red? Your choice. Your choice? Yeah. It would be a different layer if you want you can go both as well. Okay. And a lot of people do red and green on top. Is there a special name for that? Yes. People like to use the word Christmas. I know I've heard that. A lot of locals roll their eyes at the term Christmas. We do. Teach them. I'm curious what your opinion is. I mean I feel like I should just make a choice. Yeah. Is that how you guys feel? Yeah that's how I feel. I commit. And commit I did with a carne adobada turnover smothered in red chili and a bean and cheese turnover smothered with green chili and just a few other things to keep me filled up. All covered in the pride of New Mexico of course. Green chili is super special it's got a nice grassiness to it a little bit hotter than the red stuff. Man it's super fantastic. As the sun set on my New Mexican road trip thoughts of the people I met and the food I ate lingered like a hot pepper on the tongue. But it's hot. Yeah it builds. I don't know why I'm gonna take another bite but it will. And I knew I'd be back for more. We'll get you right back to the video. Check out Cook's Country's Over 16 seasons and more than 600 recipes are condensed into this cookbook. Jam-packed with every recipe we feature on the show plus stories, tips, and reviews. Go on the road with Cook's Country and tour the U.S. through food. Get inspired by dishes from restaurants, regions, and chefs all over America. All in this one convenient cookbook. To order your copy of the Cook's Country TV show cookbook scan the QR code or visit cookscountry.com to continue your Cook's Country journey. Brian's back from New Mexico and ready to show us how to make those savory turnovers. Yes I am back and I also have a newfound love of green chili smothering everything that I eat. Was it just in your clothes? Yeah it's in my clothes, in my soul, in my body, on my mind. I love it. I love it too. The thing I really liked about the story is how Antoinette said her father was inspired by calzones to make these turnovers and I love that sort of melting pot idea of American food. It's so great and the wonderful thing about Marian Tito's is that everything is made from scratch right there in the kitchen. The recipes are simple yet full of flavor. Really you know from the heart family recipes. I love it. So we are going to make those turnovers here today and we're going to start with our turnover dough. So I have two and three quarter cups of all-purpose flour here in this bowl. To that we're going to add one and a half teaspoons of table salt and a half teaspoon of baking powder. I'm just going to whisk that together to combine. Okay now we're going to work in six tablespoons of lard that we've cut in half inch pieces and chilled. We're rubbing the lard into the flour here until the whole thing looks like the texture of wet sand or something. Okay. This is kind of what we're looking for this kind of look of wet sand here. All right now we're going to add three quarters of a cup plus two tablespoons of cold water. We can switch over to a spatula. Just begin working the flour into the water. We're really just looking for the dough to start coming together. You can see that most of the dry flour has been absorbed. So now we're going to turn this dough out onto the counter and we're just going to knead it a few times to really bring it all together. But that came together really quickly. Yeah. So we're going to divide this dough into eight equal pieces. We're going to weigh the whole dough here. All right. So if you don't have a scale you could just do this by eye. Yeah. All right now we can just take our dough balls and we're just going to run them on the counter here into nice tight balls. Can I do one? Yeah please do. All right. See how easy the dough is to work with. Yeah. Last one. We're going to refrigerate it until we're ready to use it for at least 30 minutes. We're going to cover it with some plastic wrap but you can really make this up to two days in advance. Okay. We're going to start working on our refried bean filling for our turnovers. Here in the skillet coming up to temperature and melting nicely. Four tablespoons of lard that we've melted down over medium heat. And we're going to add one cup of finely chopped onion. Cook that onion until it's nice and soft and it takes about four minutes. Our onions are nice and soft. To that we're going to add two cans of pinto beans that we've drained off here. These are 15 ounce cans. And we're also going to add one cup of chicken broth and a teaspoon of table salt. And while these cook we're just going to start mashing these with our potato masher. We're going to cook these and mash them until we get the consistency of refried beans. It takes about eight minutes or so. Well those look like refried beans. Yeah they taste like refried beans too. But even better. All right so we're just going to give a final taste for salt. Plenty seasoned. Really nice. So we're going to let these go into a bowl here and let them cool completely before we start doing our turnovers. Let's talk about chilies. All right. When you're in New Mexico all green chili sauces are made with hatch green chilies okay. Hatch is a catch-all phrase for any chili that's grown in hatch of which there are over 150 different varieties. So the term is a little bit vague. Interesting. And outside of New Mexico it's hard to get hatch green chilies. So we're going to be using our cousin Anaheim chilies. The chili is a little bit more watery and the base level of heat is a little bit lower. Interesting. So because the base level of heat is a little bit lower we're going to throw in a jalapeno. Ah even up the playing field. Yes. We have two pounds of Anaheim chilies here along with our singular jalapeno. In order to char these chilies nicely we're going to throw them under the broiler. The broiler is set to high and the oven rack is about six inches from that broiler element. I'll let them go on both sides for about five minutes per side until the skin is nicely blackened. Julia look at these gorgeous chilies. Oh I can smell them. So we're going to throw these into the bowl here. I'm going to let them cool down for a bit. Now a lot of people will think that when you put the chilies in a bowl covered with plastic wrap that's to help the skin steam off and that's not really true because look at these skins right now if you look at them the wrong way they'll fall off. What we're doing by covering the bowl is we're trapping the steam and we're continuing to cook the flesh of the pepper which is important because you want it to be nice and soft and tender. Okay so we'll just let this sit for a good 10 minutes until they're cool enough to handle. Okay it's been 10 minutes we can uncover our chilies here. Get that, you know. Oh it smells grassy but a little bit charred. So we're just going to begin peeling the skins off. Now you can do this a couple ways. I have a spoon here for you. I like to just start it off. Like I said you barely even need the spoon they'll almost peel themselves. Oh yeah. Is one of these bowls for skins? Yep. All right. Just throw your peeled chilies up there in the corner and one thing you never want to do is you never want to wash them. Yes. You never want to remove all that kind of roastiness that you've just imparted on those chilies. Now we'll give them a chop. So I'll just remove as much of the seeds as we can. Now with the jalapeno we're going to leave the seeds in. So we're just going to chop off the stem and then we're going to go ahead and dice this into a quarter inch dice with the seeds in there. Again leaving the seeds in there gives us a little bit of extra heat which will mimic those New Mexican hatch chilies. All right and we'll just chop all these up into quarter inch pieces. All right so we're going to clean up. I'm going to wash my hands and get back and start making our green chili sauce. Okay. We're ready to build our green chili sauce now and I have two tablespoons of lard we've melted over medium heat there. To that we're going to add one cup of finely chopped onion. I'm going to let this cook down until it's just beginning to soften about three minutes. Our onions have been cooking for about three minutes and they're just beginning to soften. To that we can add three minced garlic cloves. All of that cook for 30 seconds to get all fragrant and now we're going to add a tablespoon of all-purpose flour and this is really just to help thicken our green chili sauce. So we'll cook that for a minute to take the raw edge off the flour. Now that that flour has been cooking for a minute we're going to add a cup of chicken broth, a teaspoon of table salt, and all of our anaheims and our singular jalapeno. So we're going to let this come to a simmer. Reduce the heat to medium low and we'll let it cook for a good six minutes until it's nicely thickened and tightened up. It is finally time for us to roll out and fill our turnovers. So Julia if you want to give me a hand. Yes please. Start off by flouring your counter. All right thank you sir. A dough ball for you and a dough ball for me. Oh yeah these are nice and cold. Yeah so a little flour on top. Now we're going to roll these out into seven inch circles. I always like to start off by just pressing it flat with my hand then we can switch over to the rolling pin. All right any tricks here? I typically just roll from the middle outwards in one singular direction and I turn the dough a quarter turn each time. Okay yeah I'm good. All right great. Now we're going to add the cheese. So I'm going to go with a quarter cup of cheese for each one of these. Okay. So measure out the cheese, put it in your hand, I'm going to give it a squeeze. All right. Okay that's just to keep the cheese put while you fold it over. Okay. So this is a mild cheddar. We have all day we have about two cups of cheddar. Okay. Now we're going to add our beans. So we're going to add a quarter cup of our refried beans that have been fully cooled. Right on top of the cheese? On top of the cheese. All right. We're adding a quarter cup of refried beans to each one of these. Right now you have a little bit of water. You just want to take your brush and brush the edge of the dough with a little bit of water. All right. Now we want to fold the turnover over top of our bean and cheese mixture here. All right. And press on the far side just to seal it. Okay. When I'm doing this I also like to kind of press down and push the filling outwards to the sides because it tends to group up in the middle. Yeah that's a lot of filling. That's a lot of turnover. It is a lot of turnover. Then just go ahead and press it to seal. All right. All right and then we're going to go back to our water and slightly moisten the edge of this arc here. Okay. When you add too much water here it's going to make a little bit difficult to crimp. So you want to begin by folding over the corner and I like to just kind of push it over my finger and pull back push it over my finger. A lot like making a pie dough crimp. Right. It looks really nice actually. Yeah. All right. That looks really great. Well thank you. I got a little funky at the end but. It's all right. You're first timer. Exactly. All right so we'll continue rolling out the remaining doughs and filling them. And you know the great thing about these is you can make them a good 24 hours in advance and keep them in the refrigerator. Nice. Let's keep on rolling the dough. Keep on filling them. Okay. I have two quarts of peanut oil coming up to 375 degrees. Before we drop our turnovers in though we want to put a little bit of an air hole in the top of each one. About a half inch air hole for the steam that's created while we're frying them. We'll check our oil temp. Looking for 375 degrees. There we go. Perfect. Now we could add four of our turnovers. We'll just lay them in there nice and easy. Okay. We'll let these fry until they're nice and golden brown. Takes about three minutes per side. So these have been frying for three minutes and we'll just give them a flip. Oh those are beautiful. So yeah nice and golden brown already. Another three minutes on the second side. All right so these have been frying for a total of six minutes. They smell delicious. And they look delicious too. Goodness those are gorgeous. Oh I can see those little blisters in the dough. Okay and we'll just drop the remaining four turnovers in the hot oil and let them go for a total of six minutes. Three minutes per side. Okay. Here's our finished green chili sauce. You see it's thickened up nicely. Oh yeah. Nice and warm. It's beautiful. Yes. I love the golden color of these. These fry up so nice. And that blistery top. Love it. All right we're not done yet. We are going to smother our turnovers with the green chili. Oh yum. I get a nice layer on top. So it's as much about the sauce as it is the filling. Oh absolutely. Again we're in New Mexico. How dare you. Mmm. Oh there's the kick. That's good. So good right. Oh man the flavor of those chilies. It's so grassy. And you get some of that smokiness from that the broiling that we did. Yep. The refried beans are so good. So good and the cheese is all melty and that dough is perfectly crisp. Look at that. Oh Brian I could see why you wanted to come home and make this. This is incredible. Thank you. If you want to make Brian's favorite dish from Mary and Tito's down in Albuquerque start by making a simple handmade dough. Roast and chop peppers to make a green chili sauce and wrap the dough around refried beans and cheese and shape into turnovers. From Cook's Country with special thanks to everyone at Mary and Tito's. New Mexican bean and cheese turnovers with green chili. Did you know that with our digital all-access membership you can stream every season of Cook's Country and gain access to more exclusive content from the entire America's Test Kitchen family. That's anytime anywhere and always ad free. That's right with our digital all-access membership you'll unlock our delicious and rigorously tested recipes along with expert equipment and ingredient reviews available at home or on the go with our mobile app. For more Cook's Country favorites scan the QR code or visit CooksCountry.com to start your free trial. Okay let's get back to cooking. Sounds good. You don't need me to tell you that fresh from the vine tomatoes taste amazing. You also don't need me to wax poetic about the beauty of an heirloom variety or to convince you that tomatoes are easy to grow in your garden. So instead let me tell you about how tomatoes once empowered young girls with self-confidence and income of their own. I'm talking about the tomato clubs. In 1910 a young school teacher in western South Carolina named Marie Samuella Cromer founded the first tomato club to teach farm girls how to grow can and market their own tomatoes. She wanted the girls to quote not simply learn how to grow better and more perfect tomatoes but how to grow better and more perfect women. Between 1911 and World War I tomato clubs spread across the southern U.S. The clubs provided rural students with a way to keep learning even when they weren't in school. It also provided a way to earn money while staying out of dangerous factory jobs. Each girl farmed a tenth of an acre which would produce more than her family could use so that she could market and sell the rest. Club members worked together to brand and price their products and negotiate with retailers. Many girls put this money toward educational expenses like books and tuition and here at Cook's Country we celebrate the power of the tomato by showcasing it in a beautiful southwestern tomato and corn salad. The end of the summer means it's a race for me to eat as much of that beautiful summer produce as I possibly can and I'm really excited today because Ashley's here and she's going to make me a salad that features two of my favorite juicy ripe tomatoes and gorgeous luscious corn. I hear it's got a little southwestern kick to it. It sure does. Oh yeah. So as you know tomatoes especially in August around here in New England don't need much of anything to make them as delicious as they really are. So this salad is really going to highlight all of the best flavors of fresh tomatoes and some fresh corn right in their peak season. Fantastic. Sold, sold. So first what I'm going to do is I've got one and a half pound of heirloom tomatoes. You can use mixed tomatoes but I am such a fan of heirlooms. All that matters here is that they're ripe and you know they're ripe when they are good and heavy they're full of juice and the smell you can't beat that fruity tomato smell. So I'm going to cut these into half inch wedges first. I'm going to cut these in half crosswise. Okay. This salad is as simple as it gets. Okay. So just as I go I'm just going to kind of arrange them on a single layer on this platter and because I'm using a few different colors I'm going to have a chance to get a little creative and kind of mix and match. Same thing half inch thick wedges. I really love the black tomatoes especially they're a little bit sweeter often. Oh yeah. All right last one. So pretty. Beautiful. Next step Bridget? Salt and pepper. Okay. It's important to season the tomatoes at this stage because you want to season as you go. So I have some corn here but you'll notice I don't have any pots or pans out. Right. So we're going to be eating this just cut off the stalk. And we can do that because? It's fresh. That's right. And it's ripe. So what I'm do is with my flat side of the corn here I have this dish towel. Any kind of towel will do. What you want to do is use the towel to collect every single kernel of corn. Okay. Just run my knife flat all the way down. And guess what I'm going to go directly on top of the tomatoes. Oh nice. All right. So we need to make a little bit of a dressing. So I have a quarter cup of some extra virgin olive oil. And you want to use good extra virgin olive oil here if you have it. Then I have some minced jalapeno. This is one tablespoon. And I have a tablespoon of some minced fresh shallot. Nice. I have some lime juice here. Two teaspoons. Finally I have some salt and pepper. I have a half a teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of pepper. Okay. So I'm just going to whisk this together until combined. I'm going to spoon this beautiful dressing over the tomatoes, over that corn. Our last two ingredients. This is queso fresco. It's also sold as queso blanco. It's a cow's milk cheese. It has a little bit of that tangy flavor. But it is so delicious and crumbles beautifully. So this is two ounces. Finally I have some whole cilantro leaves. Gorgeous. This is two tablespoons. And just put them all over the salad. You ready for some salad? I've been ready for this for a while. This is gorgeous. If you don't mind, I would love to serve you some salad here. I almost don't want to eat it. I know. It's so pretty. I know. How impressive is this? It's just so simple to do. Yeah? Yeah. All right. I'm going to tuck into these tomatoes here. A little bit of cheese. Vibrant. The jalapeno, the shallot. It doesn't only give you flavor. It also gives you really beautiful crunch. Nice texture. The corn are like little sweet croutons in the salad. Yes. Nature's crouton. If you ask me what kind of food I would marry, it would be a ripe tomato. It would? Yep. Yeah. I can see why. You did good. Thanks, coach. Thank you. Well, if you want to make this beautiful salad that celebrates the very best of summer, it starts with seasoning wedges of ripe tomatoes directly with salt. Sprinkle with freshly cut corn kernels. And then spoon a lime jalapeno dressing all over the salad. So from Cook's Country, a beautiful salad straight from the garden. It's a southwestern tomato and corn salad. You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with product reviews and select episodes. And those are all on our website, CooksCountry.com slash TV. We hope you enjoyed this video and tune in for more. Hit those like and subscribe buttons so you never miss a single one. And if you're ready to take your cooking to the next level, try our digital all-access membership where you can stream every season of Cook's Country anytime, anywhere, and always ad-free. Plus, you'll gain unlimited access to all of America's Test Kitchen fail-proof recipes, unbiased reviews, fresh episodes, exclusive offers, and more. Just scan the QR code or head over to CooksCountry.com to sign up for a free trial. 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