-In its inception, pozole was
nothing more than corn,
water, and humans.
It predates the Spaniards
landing on our land.
It was an Aztec religious soup,
if you would.
Aztec empires were known
for being amazing warriors,
and a result of
their conquest --
They had a lot of captives.
They would tear the heart
out of the captive,
throw it in a pot,
and it was a tribute for
the gods that they would eat.
Pozole for me is
an incredibly personal thing.
Pozole is in our blood.
My name is Claudette Zepeda,
and I fancy myself a Mexican
cultural anthropologist.
I have traveled
the entire country,
and this recipe is very near
and dear to my heart.
Pozole is essentially
a hominy broth.
The original word, pozole,
means boiling stirred.
Every family from north to south
makes pozole however they wish.
Every mom is right.
This is just how I do it.
My aunt would tell me
that I had to use a pig head.
I like the trotters just because
it has a lot of gelatin in it.
I like to wrap them
in a cheesecloth,
and this I learned
after having to fish out
bones out of my pozole
for about two hours
and almost breaking my tooth
on a missed one.
The Aztecs truly believed humans
were descendants of corn,
so the fact that the sacrifice
of the captives
was cooked in the broth,
the corn was
another tribute to man.
The staple corn for pozole
is called cacahuacintle.
This is already treated with
the nixtamalization process.
Nixtamalization
made it possible
to unlock as much nutritional
value that we can from corn.
We're right now going to flavor
the corn
as much as possible
with pork shoulder.
Pozole was a sacrificial soup
for the gods.
By the time the conquest
happened, 1500s,
Spaniards landed on our coast.
The priests
and the friars said,
"It's against the religion
to eat humans.
Here's some pigs."
Now we have kombu as well.
It's natural MSG.
It's a flavor enhancer
in Japanese foods,
and because I grew up
between Tijuana and Guadalajara,
in Tijuana,
we have a huge Chinese
and Japanese cultural influence.
We are a cuisine of immigrants,
so why not take advantage
of all the ingredients
that have come through?
We're going to add onion
and garlic.
The corn is going to take on
that first punchiness
and spiciness of the garlic
and the onions and the herbs.
For the adobo,
it's a chili paste.
These are guajillo and anchos.
I love these two chilies.
Make sure your chilies
are pliable.
Take the seeds out.
Mexico gave chili to the world.
When the colonization period
started, Mexico had 300 seeds
that we were already growing --
corn, tomatoes, chilies.
These are all things that
are indigenous to our land,
and we ended up
giving them to the world.
Can you imagine
Indian food without chilies?
A dish that I think is
very unique to Mexico,
I'll travel and cook
somewhere across the world,
and they'll say, "Oh, no,
we eat the same thing,"
because the same people that
went and set up the missions
and the churches
throughout Mexico,
they moved to a different part
of the world
that they were also taking over,
and you see it in Africa,
different parts of Asia.
That's the beauty of food.
All this stuff is connected
in some way.
I have my water boiling,
and I turn it off.
I'm going to drop the chilies
to just get soft enough
to make a smooth adobo.
This is a result of hard work.
My aunt in Guadalajara
had a restaurant for 40 years.
Started just selling pozole.
The first time I made
this soup this way,
I just wanted my aunt to try it
and my mom to try it
and get their seal of approval.
I was terrified, and they said
that it was different
was the first thing,
and she said,
"Oh, no, but good."
They're really hard to please.
And adobos doesn't call
for fire-roasting,
but I think char
is absolutely an ingredient.
It's a flavor.
You don't want to burn it
to get bitter.
You just want the outside
to char a little bit.
Does not take long
for the chilies
to be soft enough
for the adobo,
so you're just going
to fish them out.
Oaxacan cuisine
has avocado leaves.
For me, it's their
secret ingredient
because it gives sauces
a different flavor,
and you don't really know why.
So you get the leaf, and you
crunch it as much as you can,
and it's going to give you all
that herbaceous, beautiful
je ne sais quoi to your adobo.
We're going to go straight into
the blender with all of this.
You're going to use the chili
water if you need more liquid.
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My oregano.
Japanese bonito flakes is
100% representative
of how I grew up
in the north eating
Chinese food and Japanese food
on a weekly basis.
During World War II
after the internment camps,
everyone fled to Mexico,
and that particular region
of Mexico
is so beautiful in the different
cultures that exist there.
There's Russian, Italian,
Chinese, Japanese in the north.
These are my touches
to the stuff
that I had
in my pantry growing up.
Even though it looks smooth,
it must be very well-strained
because the skin
adds that bitterness
that you don't want
in your broth.
Pozole doesn't get made
if you're in a bad mood.
Pozole has to come
from a place of love.
Make someone fall in love
with you if you make it right
or hate you if you
make it wrong, I guess.
I am a puritan when it comes
to pozole only being red
because I am from Guadalajara.
So the red, white, and green,
the three pozoles that
are known throughout Mexico,
are indicative
of the flag colors,
and you'll find that
in a lot of different things.
Chili, tomato, and onion,
red, white, and green,
those are our trinity.
It's a conversation I have often
about what makes recipes pure.
Some recipes will call
for 50 ingredients,
and you go to a house,
and they use six.
They won't even use onions
and garlic
because it's just not
available to them,
so it's beautiful
to just see how,
from one place to another,
it evolves out of necessity.
Going to add white vinegar.
I'm just gonna finish
with a little bit of salt.
Once your corn is as plump
as it can be,
you can fish out the onions
and the garlic and the kombu,
and you can reserve
these onions and garlic
and make a salsa out of it.
So now I'm ready for the adobo.
This will also help
thicken the broth.
Nowadays, you can have pozole
every day of the week,
but pozole started out as
a celebratory religious meal.
You'll find it at weddings.
The recalentado, which means
the reheating.
Weddings last several days.
Imagine eating this after a
really long party the next day.
This is the perfect
hangover cure.
It's just really, really good.
I like to add salt when I'm
flavoring it towards the end.
We're just doing a little
at a time.
It's a big pot.
The best pozole that you can
ever have is the next day
because this stock
is going to reduce.
The flavor development
just changes crazy.
Now we're going to fish out
the trotters.
If you see a trotter, think
of human feet if you would.
How many bones are in our feet?
Pigs are no different,
lots of little bones.
Just kind of got
to get in there.
It's got some meat,
so we're going to keep that.
Take all the excess fat off.
You just want the skin
and just little strips.
Here you can pickle it
with lime.
When colonization was happening,
they needed to tell
the Spanish kingdom
what was happening
in the new world.
There's pictures depicting
the ceremonies
of the Aztecs
eating human flesh.
It's beautiful to see
how evolution
through really tragic
periods of history
transformed something
that started off very simple
into something so complex,
so flavorful.
So if you're not going to
eat this all,
you either keep it
on a low simmer on your stove,
or you cool it down properly
and as fast as possible
so the nixtamalization process
doesn't ferment the soup.
Let's go ahead
and serve this up.
Fresh oregano.
One of my first jobs when I was
a child at my aunt's restaurant
was doing the garnishes
for the pozoles.
It's always got to be
iceberg lettuce shredded,
as fine as you can get it.
And then, for the radish,
this is just thinly sliced.
Little bit of lime,
a lot of lime.
We're going to add
little pig's feet.
And you have pozole.
It's crazy to think that
this beautiful soup
started off as a very tragic,
kind of gory story.
I do taste this deep,
rich broth.
The pork is just kind of
melting in your mouth.
The pozole has evolved so much.
Different hands get involved,
and different cultures
come into play.
I'm excited to see
where my kids take this
because that's the beauty
of cuisine all over the world.
It has no idea its history.
It's quite precious.
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