Southwest Cuisine: Border Crossings

Its colorful assortment of chiles hits the mark with consumers looking for fresh, bold flavors. Now, the �original American fusion cuisine� is finding new advocates among chefs eager to incorporate the spicy-smoky-sweet accents of Southwestern favorites into tried-and-true American classics.

By Christine LaFave, Associate Editor -- Restaurants and Institutions, 6/24/2008 1:18:00 PM

Marix’s Victoria Schemaria says diners are demonstrably more curious now than they were several years ago about the Southwest’s more complex, spicy flavors.

A melting pot within the broader American melting pot, Southwestern cuisine blends the chiles, squash, root vegetables and grains long cultivated by regional Indian populations with meats and cooking preparations preferred by the Europeans and European-descendant Americans who settled in the area. The result is a spectrum of full-flavored dishes that continues to evolve in foodservice as diners increasingly seek bolder taste combinations.

To satisfy demands for menu innovation and encourage diners to associate Southwestern fare with more than smothered beef burritos, chefs are adding a hatch chile here, a tomatillo there, to enliven American and Asian- or French-accented menu staples.

At seven-month-old Geronimo Bar and Grill in New Haven, Conn., Steak Frites Santa Fe exemplifies Executive Chef Paul Morbidelli’s efforts to expose diners to core Southwestern ingredients in appealing, approachable ways.

The dish, a twist on a bistro classic, features a grilled 14-ounce Angus New York strip steak topped with roasted shallots and syrah reduction with oven-roasted sweet-potato fries and roasted garlic aïoli. The syrah is reduced with a mild red chile—“so no one’s going to complain about the heat,” Morbidelli says—and the sweet potatoes are dipped in a chipotle-and-cumin-accented batter.

CHIPOTLE:
The Chile Crossover Champ

Helping to spark renewed interest in “true” Southwestern and Mexican flavors has been the steady march of a variety of fresh and dried chiles onto supermarket shelves and chain menus.

Among these, smoky-but-not-fiery chipotles (dried, smoked jalapeños) are a clear crossover winner; in five years, they have shown up in everything from retail-sold tortilla chips to a barbecue sauce available as an accompaniment to Chicken McNuggets and Chicken Selects at Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald’s. Louisville-based KFC even deigned the chile worthy of highlighting a new chicken recipe: In May, Smoky Chipotle Chicken became only the third crispy-chicken flavor to be featured at KFC in the chain’s 68-year history.

Other chain offerings perked up with chipotles:

Chipotle Chicken Sandwich
Panera Bread Co. (Richmond Heights, Mo.)
All-natural pepper-mustard chicken, smoked bacon, smoked Cheddar, tomatoes and ancho-chipotle spread

Chipotle Chicken Sandwich
Schlotzsky’s (Austin, Texas)
Thinly sliced, roasted chicken breast with chipotle mayonnaise, red onion, lettuce and tomato on toasted sourdough bread.

Chipotle Chicken Ciabatta
Jack in the Box (San Diego)
Ciabatta bread, chipotle sauce, green-leaf lettuce, tomato, bacon slices, Cheddar cheese, and a grilled chicken fillet or a spicy chicken fillet

Poblano Fresco Sandwich (new for spring 2008)
Corner Bakery Cafe (Dallas)
Roasted red peppers, avocado, white Cheddar cheese, jicama slaw, lettuce and chipotle-lime mayo on poblano cheese bread, available with roasted chicken or roast beef.

Chipotle Salad
Einstein Bros. Bagels, Denver
Mixed greens, roasted-corn-and-black-bean salsa, tomatoes, Cheddar and pepper Jack cheeses and chipotle vinaigrette with tortilla strips, served with a bagel and available with chicken.

Other creative crossover choices include Hatch Green Chile Macaroni & Cheese (baked with Vermont Cheddar, Chihuahua and Gruyère cheeses and dusted with cornbread crumbs) and the Coffee Chop (a grilled 12-ounce French-cut pork chop seasoned with a guajillo-chile-and-cumin rub, topped with a coffee-molasses glaze, and served with a butternut-squash mash and steamed asparagus).

“This is basically the original American fusion cuisine,” says Santa Fe-inspired Morbidelli, a Culinary Institute of America grad. “Everybody’s perception about Southwest cuisine is it’s too hot, [and] it’s too spicy or it’s Tex-Mex … I was so shocked when I first started tasting Southwest cuisine that it wasn’t just [that].”

At Marix Tex Mex Café in West Hollywood and Santa Monica, Calif., Southwestern fusion finds form in a Cilantro Pesto Quesadilla. Pine nuts, a distinctively flavored pesto component, play a prominent role in both Italian and Southwestern/Mexican cooking, making them an ideal “bridge” ingredient. Marix’s border-crossing quesadilla features melted aged cheeses on an open-face flour tortilla, served with cilantro pesto and tomatoes.

Morning visitors to Marix can broaden their breakfast horizons—and still get a bacon fix—with Bacon-Gruyere Migas. The dish is a twist on traditional migas, popular in Texas either as a meatless or chorizo-accented breakfast mélange. In Marix’s version, eggs are scrambled with corn tortilla strips, double-smoked bacon, Gruyere cheese, diced serrano chiles, tomatoes and onion. The scramble is served with rice and black beans.

Southwestern-inspired cuisine “is constantly changing, and it’s always adapting,” says Marix Vice President Victoria Schemaria. “Maybe you’ll have the same basic format [for a dish] but the ingredient will change” according to shifting guest interests, she adds. At Marix, this has meant replacing chicken-fried steak with chicken-fried chicken and, in a nod to Americans’ resurgent interest in slow-cooked meats, menuing braised-brisket tacos and a chile-braised-brisket burrito.

Desert Fire in Redmond, Wash., offers a variation on popular Southwestern egg rolls with its Sedona Spring Rolls—crisp flour tortillas wrapped around roasted chicken and vegetables, served over chipotle barbecue sauce. When ordered as part of the Coyote Sampler Platter, the spring rolls are accompanied by Grilled Turkey Skewers (basted in barbecue sauce) and Portobello and Spinach Quesadillas, served with a papaya fruit salad, mixed greens and cucumber-mint dressing.

Marix’s Schemaria notes that diners are demonstrably more curious now than they were several years ago about the Southwest’s more complex, spicy flavors. “We did recently put in mole tacos and enchiladas,” she says. “When we first opened, we tried doing those, and nobody wanted anything to do with it. People are getting more knowledgeable.”