This particular Pinedo recipe caught my attention because it looked too basic. On page 91, we find Ejotes en pipián or Green beans in pipián.
My Translation
A pipián is a stew or sauce made primarily with roasted and ground nuts or seeds. It is of ancient Mayan or Aztec origin. Her recipe, if taken as written, says to cook ("stew") green beans with roasted and ground peanuts, and that is all. On the other hand, if you look at other recipes that indicate using a pipián, you see a more complex sauce.
- Pg 22: a sesame pipián with tomatoes, chiles, walnuts, pine nuts, spices, and more.
- Pg 22-23: a pipián with roasted melon seeds and almonds, with chiles, bread, and salt.
- Pg 71: she cautions that a pipián needs to be delicately spiced using mainly cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, and to never use garlic.
I made this recipe three times in order to gain an understanding of what she might have meant with her very simple ingredient list.
In all cases, I chose to use a store-bought nut butter that contained just nuts and maybe salt because the nuts were already roasted and ground. I didn't know if she would have ground the nuts to so fine that the nut butter was smooth or if there would be chunks, so I used what I had in my home already (nutty peanut butter) for the first and third attempts, and a similarly chunky almond butter for the second.
I started with a pound of green beans that I steamed in the microwave. My focus was on the sauce, not the method of cooking the beans.
For the first attempt, on the stove, I slightly heated the peanut butter but immediately realized that it was too thick to turn into a sauce. So I added some chicken broth and stirred while continuing to warm it until I had a pourable sauce. Then I added a tiny bit of cinnamon and cloves and some salt.
Once I had the sauce so the spices were barely tastable, I put the cooked green beans into the sauce and stirred to coat them.
This worked well until suddenly the sauce "seized up" and clumped all over the beans. No longer a sauce, the beans were mixed with small lumps of spiced peanut butter. I could not revive the sauce consistency with more broth or heating. While it tasted fine, it was not what I had expected to achieve. I wanted a sauce coating the beans.
This brought me back to page 71 where Pinedo wrote, "There are also those who prefer the toasted almond pipián because it doesn't break like peanuts and pumpkin seeds." When a sauce breaks, it loses its emulsion, and that is exactly what appeared to happen with my sauce.
So the second attempt used almond butter. I used the same amount of green beans, steamed in the microwave, but I added more cinnamon and cloves and also a small amount of chile flakes. I used enough broth to make a sauce.
This made a beautful coating for the beans that didn't break. My guest tasters thought I could bump up the spice level more but really accepted the beans as they were offered. I liked that the spices were delicate, the chile heat was there but not dominant, and the sauce mostly stuck to the beans. This matched with what Pinedo wrote, "only the amount necessary for the goal will be used or until it in good consistency." My only thought was that I could have made less sauce, although we all enjoyed eating the sauce either directly from the spoon or spread over the roasted pork I served with the meal.
The third attempt is documented with the following.
My Redaction
1 pound of green beans, cooked in the microwave or steamed
1/3 cup chunky peanut butter (it has salt in it)
1/3 cup chicken broth
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon chile flakes
1/16 teaspoon (or so) ground cloves
Put the sauce ingredients in a small saucepan. Over very low heat, stir with a fork. Stir rapidly and continuously until the ingredients form a sauce. Keep heating the sauce very gently, stirring occasionally, while the beans finish cooking. Drain the beans, pour the sauce over the top, then toss the beans with the sauce.
My Notes
My peanut and almond butters both had salt in them, so I did not feel the need to add more salt to the sauce.
If you don't have chile flakes, maybe a dash of Tabasco or similar sauce would do.
In my first two attempts, I used 1/2 cup each of the nut butter and broth. While tasty, this seemed like too much sauce for one pound of green beans.
I didn't get the sauce too hot in the pan as I figured the hot beans would help with that.
Serve it right away.
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| Peanut butter version |
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| Saucy! |
The Verdict
This attempt, with peanut butter, did not break! Hooray! I don't know why but I worked hard to (1) get and keep the mixture blended well with that fork, and (2) keep the temperature low while the sauce was heating.
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| Mmmm! |
After the sauce forms, giving it more time to heat allowed the spices to infuse.
The amount of sauce, about 2/3 cup, seemed just right for the amount of green beans.
The taste was lovely! My guest taster is not a fan of peanut butter but certainly enjoyed the sauce. The spices and chile shifted the flavor away from the sauce tasting like peanuts, and we both liked the overall blend. I suppose you could increase the spice quantities more, but I liked their delicate subtlety.
Success!
The version with almond butter - and I would use the same amounts as with the peanut butter - is just different enough to make it interesting.
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| I didn't realize how much steam was coming off the beans when I took the picture. |
