This dish is a riff on the Mexican classic Chiles en Nogada. I was first introduced to Chiles en Nogada, over 20 years ago, on a business trip to Austin, Texas. It was on the menu at Manuel’s. I was taken there by friends who said that I’ve never had real Mexican food. They explained that most Mexican fare in the US is “border” Mexican cuisine. Manuel’s specialized in interior and coastal dishes. They were right. I had never seen a menu like the one at Manuel’s. My entrée was their Chile Relleno en Nogada. I was amazed. Business travel has taken me back to Austin a couple dozen times over the past 20 years. Every time I go, I make sure to get to Manuel’s. I usually order the Chile Relleno en Nogada.

Back home, I tried searching for recipes online, and didn’t have much luck. Part of that was because the volume of stuff on the interwebs just wasn’t so huge 20 years ago. Also, I may have had better results if I searched for Chiles en Nogada, which seems to be the more common name for the dish. I’m not sure why that’s the more common name, because chiles relleno in Spanish translates to stuffed peppers in English, and these peppers certainly are stuffed before they get covered “en Nogada” (in walnut sauce). Anyway, after a couple trips back, I took note of the full menu description, and from there I could make some strides at recreating at home. Here’s how the dish is described on their menu.

Roasted poblano pepper filled with a shredded pork, almond, and raisin picadillo, baked & topped with our walnut brandy cream sauce and pomegranate seeds

I had a Rick Bayless cookbook which had a recipe for picadillo. It used ground pork instead of shredded, but it did include almonds and raisins, so it seemed on the right track. Today, you can find a similar recipe on Rick’s website.

I winged the walnut brandy cream sauce with milk, goat cheese, walnuts and brandy. It was good. I didn’t bother with the pomegranate seeds. Culinarily, they play a minor role. Thematically, though, they may be important. The green of the pepper, the white of the cream sauce and the red of the pomegranate are the colors of the Mexican flag. Anyway, the results were good. The effort was high, so I didn’t make it often, but I always had the option in my back pocket.

Later, in the fall of 2019, when I had a part time kitchen lead gig at the now defunct Southern Season Cooking School, I got to work with Marcelo Villasuso in his Chiles Rellenos class, where Chiles en Nogada was on the menu. This dish was very different. Instead of just raisins, it had a ton of fresh fruit, including apples, pears, and peaches. That got me to thinking… Peaches, blueberries and poblanos are all in season in Carolina’s mid-summer. I gave it a try in the summer of 2020, and was thrilled with the results. Unfortunately, I took no notes. So, here, summer of 2021, I was confident the idea can work, but I’d be reinventing the wheel. I did it again. This time I took notes. Again, I liked the results. Next time, I’ll likely change things a bit. I’ll mention that later, but it will probably wait until 2022 for me to test them. For now, here’s what I did.

Ingredients

The Chiles

• 10 large poblano peppers, note: I only had 8 and not all of them were “large.” I had a lot of stuffing left over. So more and larger peppers are in order.

The Stuffing

• 1 medium onion, 6 oz by weight, diced
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• Tomatoes, 12-14 oz by weight, diced
• 1 teaspoon each: cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, dried oregano
• 1 pound Carolina style smoked pulled pork
• 2 peaches, a little over 4 oz weight each
• 1 cup blueberries, 5 oz by weight
• ¼ cup chopped toasted pecans, 1.2 oz by weight
• Salt and pepper

The Sauce

• ½ cup pecans
• ½ oz bourbon
• 4 oz milk, by volume
• 3 oz goat cheese, by weight

The Process

First, I charred the poblanos on the grill. My Weber grill has a “sear station” where an extra burner can be lit between two main burners. That extra heat comes in handy. The poblano skins need to be completely charred, prepping the peppers for easy peeling and infusing them with flavor. Once they were fully charred, I put them in a glass storage container and sealed the lid. They steam in their own heat and their skins release. Knowing that I’d be able to easily rub their skin off when it came time, I let them sit.

Next I prepared the aromatics and tomatoes. I diced up the onion and started it sautéing in about a tablespoon of olive oil with about ½ teaspoon of salt. I minced up the garlic and chopped the tomato. Once the onions were soft and translucent, I added the garlic and let things sauté another minute or two. Then I added the tomatoes and all of the herbs and spices and stirred everything to incorporate. While the tomatoes were cooking down, I ran my chef’s knife through the pulled pork, several times, to break up the large pieces, to make the stuffing process easier.

Once the tomatoes had released their juices and their flesh had softened, I added the pork, the pecans and the fruit. I didn’t bother to peel the peaches, but I did chop them quite fine. I let everything simmer while I returned my focus on the poblanos. “Simmer,” probably isn’t the right word. There wasn’t a lot of liquid. But as things heated, with the occasional stir, as fast as liquid steamed off, it was also released from the peaches and blueberries. The consistency stayed the same through this process.

The poblanos. After they’ve steamed themselves in the sealed container, I easily rubbed off all of their charred skin. Then for each, I cut a slit in the side, cut the pepper’s core from the base of its stem, and carefully pulled out the core and as much pith as I could. Finally, I swiped out as many seeds as I could. You have to be careful with all of this as the poblano’s flesh is quite tender and easy to rip. And, note, before you cut the slit in the side of a poblano, you should first look to see if there is already a split that formed during the charring process. If there is a slit, begin your cut where the split is.

At this point, the stuffing was ready. I gingerly filled each pepper with as much stuffing as I could. I placed them on a parchment lined baking sheet, and put them in the oven at 375°F. I then turned my attention to the sauce.

Back to the story of the original dish. In Spanish, nogada means walnut tree. The “en Nogada” in the title of the original dish refers to the walnut cream sauce. NC pecans are a thing. NC walnuts, not so much. So, I chose to replace the walnuts with pecans. I also chose to replace the brandy in Manuel’s sauce with bourbon, a southern favorite. Note, liquor does not seem to be used in the sauce of any traditional Chiles en Nogada recipes. You can choose to omit it, but it’s a nice touch. Also, the traditional recipes call for soaking and peeling the walnuts, to keep the sauce as white as possible (the whole Mexican flag thing). I chose not to bother trying to peel the skin from the pecans. That makes the sauce dirt simple to bring together. I used the mini-food processor attachment for my immersion blender to chop up the pecans, almost to the point that it would start to form pecan butter. I then added the milk, bourbon and goat cheese. Process that until it’s smooth and creamy. That’s it.

To plate, simply use a spatula to move the chile rellenos to the serving plate and spoon a generous amount of the sauce over their top.  

Thoughts

The dish worked out really well. Tons of flavor complexity that all work together like a symphony. The smokey, earthy flavor of the charred poblanos. The richness and smokiness of NC smoked pulled pork, along with the tartness of the vinegar it brings. The sweet and tang of fresh peaches and blueberries. The warmth of the cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. The herbal earthiness of the oregano. The crunch and nuttiness of the pecans. All of that covered with a rich, nutty, goat-cheesy cream sauce with a hint of bourbon. Yeah, how can that not be good?

The only thing that I would do to improve on this is to increase the amount of fruit. Fully doubling the amount of fruit would work, but I think an increase of 50% would be the sweet spot. The other thing, which is something I learned with my earlier play using Rick Bayless’s picadillo, is that preparing and stuffing the poblanos is a lot of work. Here’s an alternative. Cut the poblanos in half and remove their stems, cores and pith. Char them on the skin side. Seal them up, let them steam and rub off their skin. Then simply slice the poblanos, julienne style.

Then make tacos. Imagine a taco with a layer of this stuffing, topped with a couple slices of roasted poblano and then the cream sauce on top. As tacos, the dish is less visually impressive. But, the flavor profile is still going to be there. Take that to a pot luck, and you’ll be the hit of the party.