Recipes, Chicken Recipes, Sausage Recipes

Chicken tinga tostada w/ green tomato salsa

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This mix of meats and spices, leaning particularly towards cloves and tinga is a favourite. Whilst the tostada is a most enjoyable crispy vehicle for your tinga, changing daily moods will sometimes prefer corn tortillas. True to Mexican practicality, this wet stew demands your soft tortillas be doubled up so that sleeves remain unstained.

Chicken tinga tostadas plated alongside a green tomato salsa.

Serves 6

Ingredients

To poach the chicken

For the sauce

For the salsa

Method

  1. Put the chicken in a large pan along with the cloves, bay leaves, oregano, onion, garlic, and a good pinch of salt. Cover with cold water and set on a high heat. Bring the liquid up to a boil, then reduce to a gentle simmer. Cook for 25 minutes, then remove from the heat and allow to sit in the liquid for 1 hour.
  2. Preheat your oven to 220°C.
  3. Place the tomatoes on a roasting tray and season with salt, and give a tiny drizzle of oil. Roast in the oven for 25-30 minutes.
  4. Remove from the oven and tip them into a food processor, along with the rehydrated chipotle chillies and blitz till smooth. Pass through a sieve.
  5. Set a large, heavy-bottomed pan over a high heat, with 2 tablespoons of groundnut oil. Remove the chorizo from its skin and crumble into the pan in large chunks. Fry until browned, then add the onions and garlic and season with salt.
  6. Cook the onions for about 10-12 minutes, stirring regularly. Allow them to take on a little colour but do regulate the heat so as not to burn them.
  7. Add the blitzed tomato, chipotle paste, bay leaves, thyme, and oregano. Turn the heat down to low and cook for another 12 minutes.
  8. Returning to the chicken, remove it from its poaching liquor and remove the skin. Then shred the meat from the bird. Once all the meat is shredded, add it to the sauce, along with some of the cooking liquid (add the bones back to the poaching liquid and simmer for a further 2 hours for a lovely stock — it is not needed for this recipe but is a great thing to have in the fridge!).
  9. Add the brown sugar to the pan and cook the sauce for a further 5 minutes over a low heat, stirring regularly.
  10. Check for seasoning and adjust as necessary.

For the salsa:

  1. Place a frying pan on a high heat and allow it to get very, very hot.
  2. Put the green tomatoes and jalapeños in the pan and allow the skins to blacken. Moving them around the pan at various intervals.
  3. Once blackened all over, remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool.
  4. Cook the diced onion in the groundnut oil over a medium heat for about 5 minutes or until softened but with no colour.
  5. Put the tomatoes, jalapeños, cooked onion, coriander, oregano, salt, and juice from both limes into a food processor and blitz until the desired consistency. Taste for seasoning and adjust as necessary.

To toast the tostadas:

  1. Place a frying pan over a low heat and allow it to get hot.
  2. Add a tablespoon of groundnut oil and then add the tacos 2 or 3 at a time, depending on the size of the pan, and cook slowly for 2 minutes, then flip and cook for another 2 minutes. The tacos should now be crisp tostadas.

    Spoon the tinga onto the tostadas and then salsa on top, plus a little grated queso fresco if you please.

Shop the ingredients

Valentine Warner is a chef, food writer, business owner and broadcaster, with a deep interest in nature, travel and provincial food. He describes his cooking style as ‘International Grandmother’ and combines his strong sense of storytelling with his infectious love of cookery. Val has a deep respect and understanding of ingredients, both wild and cultivated, and has the instinctive ability to rustle up hearty and wholesome meals from whatever’s available. Val is an avid proponent of native food sources, and finds common ground with Swaledale in their work to deliver top-notch meat, within a truthful, ethical and high welfare framework. Originally a trained portrait painter, Val has also authored 5 cookbooks, managed his own catering company and is a co-owner of Taqueria, a West London Mexican cafe. Val is also a partner in the Hepple Distillery in Northumberland and Holmen Lofoten hotel on arctic Norway’s Lofoten island.