Not everyone thinks about drinking wine when they eat spicy foods such as Mexican, Thai or Indian, but the truth is that wine can work quite well with these types of food.  The mistake that most people make with spicy foods is that they choose the wrong wines, not that wine can’t or doesn’t pair with the heat.  Below is a four step process to finding a tall glass with a stem next to your upcoming plate of tacos, enchiladas or chicken en mole.

The first thing that one has to do is abandon all thoughts of Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon.  Though these are the most popular white and red wines in the world respectively, they are not suited to spicy foods at all.  While there are some gifted sommeliers out there that can pair these two highly popular wines with foods containing chiles, it is not advisable unless you’ve tasted both the food and the wine beforehand.  Essentially, oaky wines like Chardonnay (although many other wines are oaky), and tannic wines like Cabernet Sauvignon (certainly not the exclusive rights-holder to tannin) are the worst possible wines to pair with spicy foods.  They literally make both the food and the wine taste worse.

The second thing on the checklist is giving up the notion that slightly sweet or off-dry wine is unsophisticated, or kid’s stuff.  The fact is that we chefs often pair slightly sweet elements with spicy foods in order to temper that chile heat.  This is evident in the classic pairing of sweet, ripe tomatoes with chiles that is ubiquitous to Mexican cooking.  Off-dry wines can function in a similar way, and provide the palate with a refreshing cleanse from the heat of the chiles.

Third, keep the alcohol low.  Alcohol can set the mouth aflame after some chiles.  While this can be a highly pleasant sensation with tequila, highlighting some of the tequila’s peppery flavors, it really backfires with wine.  Alcohol in wines tends to taste “hot” and bitter when paired with chiles.

Lastly, don’t forget the bubbles.  Sparkling wines literally wash the palate clean.  Think of them almost like little scrub brushes which rinse away the chile heat in a physical way.  You’re not limited to expensive French champagne here either, in fact save the fancy stuff for something else.  Prosecco and Moscato from Italy, Cava from Spain, and all manner of New World sparklers can do the trick just fine for a quarter of the price.  Again, be bold and try an off-dry sparkling wine with the spiciest of foods and you’ll find that you might just be able to take that much more heat.

Some suggestions to successful spicy food and wine pairing include Chenin Blanc, Gewürztraminer, Grüner Veltliner, Muscadet, Pinot Gris, Riesling and Vinho Verde for whites.  For reds try Beaujolais, Pinot Noir, Spanish Rioja, Australian Shiraz, Syrah and young, California Zinfandel.  Next time you’re at Barrio, don forget that we have all of these wines and many more. We have hand-selected them to pair with the food there and we really want more people to enjoy this unique experience, so give it a try.

We’ve all seen this type of cheese on a menu in our favorite Mexican restaurant…so what the heck is it? Cotija (pronounced Ko-Tee-Ha) is a hard cow’s milk cheese that comes from Mexico and is named after the town of Cotija de la Paz in the state of Michoacan. Cotija comes in two primary versions. One is dry and firm and is similar to a Parmesan while the other is a bit more moist and similar to Feta.

Both are delicious and add a salty, deep and robust flavor that is perfect to use in tacos, soups, salads or over beans. At Barrio, we utilize this cheese as an ingredient in many of our tacos, chopped salad, taquitos and many of our daily chilaquiles and specials.

Many people ask us for recipes from Barrio. While we are always happy to provide people with these, there are times that we get a bit nervous that the guest will have trouble duplicating the flavors without committing a great deal of time to the process. One of the reasons for this is caldo, which is an all-purpose broth that we use for dozens of preparations. It is made from chicken bones and meat, onions, carrots, chiles and spices such as coriander and cumin. This broth is simmered for hours, meticulously skimmed of fat and impurities, and then strained through a very fine mesh sieve known as a chinois.

This time consuming operation essentially just creates another ingredient that we use around the Barrio kitchen. We use this broth as the liquid for our pozole, we braise meats in it to make taco fillings, and we use it on the kitchen line to moisten vegetables and meats. The caldo is different from a traditional French chicken stock which is made with bay leaves, celery and sometimes leeks. That is one reason that off-the-shelf chicken broth is not a great substitute either, as the store bought broth is usually formulated with the French method.

While caldo might make it difficult to precisely duplicate Barrio’s recipes at home, it makes for some pretty delicious cuisine at the restaurant. There are many dishes which actually feature the caldo such as pozole, while there are others where the caldo helps to build that deep, intense flavor into the final product such as our Chicken en Adobo Tacos. We recommend coming down to try them all!

Pozole with Traditional Garnishes

Up at Barrio…we kinda like to think so. Pho is a Vietnamese thinly sliced meat and rice-noodle soup dish that is accompanied by garnishes such as green onions, white onions, cilantro, thai basil, lemon or lime wedges and bean sprouts.

In relatively the same “ballpark”, Pozole is a traditional soup or stew from Mexico. It is made from hominy with pork (or other meat), chili pepper, and other seasonings and garnishes such as cabbage, cilantro, radish, avocado and lime juice to name a few. There are a number of variations on pozole, including blanco (white or clear), rojo (red), de frijol (with beans), and elopozole (sweet corn, squash, and chicken or pork meat).

Here at Barrio, we use hominy and shredded pork cheek and then serve cabbage, radish, cilantro, white onion and corn tortillas on the side. We even have a breakfast version with a poached farm egg. Truly a bowl of delicious goodness…add as much or as little of the sides as you like!

A Very Large Comal

When it comes to cooking, Mexico is a huge country. There are many regional variations from one part of Mexico to another, which makes for a vast and diverse cuisine. There are however, several items which tie the whole of Mexican cooking together.

The cooking of ingredients on a comal (a flat cast iron pan) is uniquely Mexican. Many Mexican cooks put foods on these comales and roast them until the exterior is often slightly burned. This burnt garlic, onion or chile skin is then removed…but what is left behind is a subtle and smoky flavor that is found throughout Mexican cuisine.

The use of corn masa is another uniquely Mexican culinary trait. This paste, made from dried field corn, significantly affects nearly every dish served in Mexico. Where you see a bread basket on every European and most American tables, you will see a basket of freshly made corn tortillas in Mexico. There are also tamales, enchiladas, and an entire category of dishes called antojitos (small plates) that are traditionally made from this corn masa.

Fusion cuisine was all the rage in the mid 1990’s. Chefs were fusing cuisines from all over the world on the same plate, and some of the combinations were very forced and strange. Mexican cuisine is a natural fusion cuisine because it slowly fused Spanish continental cuisine with Mexican Native cuisine. A robust and vibrant cuisine existed in Mexico prior to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores nearly 500 years ago. The Spanish brought spices, pork, rice and European cooking techniques to supplement the cuisine that already existed in Mexico. These two cuisines naturally fused over the centuries, but in Mexico the cuisine of the gulf coast actually exhibits more Spanish influence than in areas which remained more true to native cooking such as Oaxaca and the Yucatan Peninsula. It is the natural blending of cuisines that makes Mexican cooking so ingenious and adaptable.

For all you chocolate lovers out there…we have something new for you to try as our homemade churros come with a xocalatl chocolate dipping sauce! In ancient Aztec culture, xocalatl was the drink of the gods. The term translated means “warm or bitter liquid”. We use a 70% chocolate made from cacao grown in Mexico, and add a blend of cinnamon, ancho chiles, Mexican vanilla and a little cream and sugar. C’mon in and get your xocalatl on!

A quick side note on percentages as it relates to chocolate…this is interesting stuff that I just learned about also. The 70% we use refers to the ratio of cacao to sugar. The more cacao, the deeper, darker and more pronounced the chocolate flavor will be. As a rule, milk chocolate is at about 35-45 percent cacao to sugar, semisweet chocolate is at about 50-60 percent and bittersweet is at about 60-70 percent.

Habanero Pepper

Many people ask us, “How can you guys sort out all of those chiles? How do you know which ones to use with what?” Believe us, it took a lot of research, tastings, and more than a few burned mouths to learn about all of the subtleties of flavor that these delicious fruits can bring to our cuisine here at BARRIO.

There are two main types of chiles, dried and fresh. Fresh chiles are characterized by their grassy, vegetal and under ripe flavors. They are typically used raw or roasted and then the skin is removed. The majority of the fresh chiles we use at BARRIO are green chiles, though we also use the habaneros which are orange, and fresnos, which are fire engine red.

When chiles are allowed to grow until completely ripe and then dry out on the plant itself, you have a dried chile instead of a fresh one. Dried chiles have aromas of leather and other dried fruits like raisins. Because they have been dried, and therefore the ratio of capsaicin (the compound in chiles that makes them hot) to their overall volume has increased, dried chiles are often more picante than their fresh counterparts.

When thinking of chiles, it is important to know how hot they are going to be. In Spanish, we use the word picante to describe chile heat so that it does not get confused with a dish’s actual temperature. We use what is known as the Scoville Scale to measure chile heat. Bold indicates chiles that we use or will use at Barrio.

  Scoville Rating                     Type of Pepper

• 15,000,000 - 16,000,000     Pure Capsaicin
• 2,000,000 - 5,300,000         Standard U.S. Grade Pepper Spray
• 850,000 - 1,050,000            Naga Jolokia aka Ghost Pepper (World’s Hottest Chile)
• 350,000 - 580,000               Red Savina Habanero (World’s Hottest Chile Hybrid)
• 100,000 - 350,000               Habanero, Scotch Bonnet, Jamaican Hot Peppers
• 50,000 - 100,000                 Pequin, Chiltepin, Thai Bird Chiles
• 30,000 - 50,000                   Chile de Arbol
• 10,000 - 30,000                   Cayenne, Chipotle Mora
• 5,000 - 10,000                     Serrano, Chipotle en Adobo
• 2,500 - 5,000                       Jalapeno, Guajillo, Cascabel
• 500 - 2,500                          Anaheim, Ancho, Fresno, Pasilla, Poblano
• 100 - 500                             Pepperoncini, Spanish Pimiento, Spanish Piquillo
• 0 - 100                                 Bell Peppers

Scoville units are used to measure the amount of capsaicin in the chile. This is done through a process called high performance liquid chromatography. We’re not sure how that works any more than you, but what it does provide is a scale to measure how much hotter one chile is than the other.

We hope this scale helps you determine just what dish at BARRIO you might want to taste. In future blogs we will feature specific chiles and tell you all there is to know about them.