Picadillo is a south-of-the-border dish with Mexican and Cuban variations and who knows what others (I'd like to find out.) I made it for dinner last night; my version is very close to this one, adding canned chilis and a couple of chopped-up pickled piparra peppers to the mixture of ground beef, chorizo, onion, bell peppers, tomatoes, sliced green olives and raisins. (I left out the vinegar and shifted the spices a little; dukkah carries the cumin and cinnamon/clove notes well, with some parsley and basil chiming in.)
It had been a couple of years since the last batch. Some versions are made with diced potatoes; mine is served over rice (or, for Tam, not). It's a very thick stew, as suited to a plate as a bowl, with a complex flavor, salt, sweet, hot and spicy, and you can make it as hot or as mild as you'd like.
Last night was a good night for chili, with the weather turning from warm to a rainy chill. This was even better. It's worth trying!
I make a version of it fairly regularly. The one I make has raisins in it (it's good with them. It also calls for green olives, but I don't care for those and they're also more salt than I should be eating these days). In one of my cookbooks - I think it was the little mimeographed "Indian-Mexican Recipes" one with an orange cover that I bought at one of the Western park sites, they say picadillo is an old fore-runner of chili. I don't know, it has some of the same ingredients to chili, at least how I make it.
ReplyDeleteIt's really good with frybread, but frybread is a lot of mess to make, so I usually eat it with the little white-corn tortillas I keep on hand for various dishes.
That recipe sounds delicious. A lot of varied flavors there. Mom's version was low-rent version - hamburger meat, chopped carrots - onion - green pepper, all cooked up before blended with seasoned Mexican rice. So good. Flour tortillas preferred, but corn tortillas are good too.
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