At Pascual in D.C., Isabel Coss and Matt Conroy bring a taste of Mexico City to Capitol Hill, using techniques involving a live fire, handmade tortillas, and a trompo for tacos al pastor. Together with their team, they make lamb neck barbacoa, a smoked half chicken, mezcal-cured smoked trout, buñuelos, and more.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00One of the first things we get going, this is the trompo.
00:02Patty builds our trompo here every day.
00:04So we get really nice heritage pork.
00:05This is gonna be very, like, thinly sliced meat.
00:08It's gonna get marinated in an adobo.
00:09We've got, like, guajillos and anchovies,
00:12garlic, cumin, all that stuff in there.
00:14So what she's gonna do is put, like, a layer of meat,
00:16and then she'll pile some onions in there, more meat.
00:18All the onions end up getting, like,
00:19just covered with all the meat.
00:21So Pascual is based and inspired on Mexican city cuisine.
00:24We're like, we're not gonna open a taqueria,
00:26and if we're gonna choose one taco,
00:29it has to be al pastor taco.
00:30That, for me, is the best taco that exists.
00:33Isabel being from Mexico City, home of the pastor taco,
00:36we had to have it on the menu.
00:38It's inspired by Lebanese cuisine,
00:40and it used to be traditionally made with lamb,
00:43but coming to Mexico, lamb was harder to get,
00:45and pork was very abundant.
00:47So it's basically a shawarma that is made with pork.
00:51♪♪
00:54Oh, pastor and an octo to 41.
00:57Para trout, follow my fideos in Superstore.
01:00Cinco tortillas, por favor.
01:01♪♪
01:07We're gonna wrap this up, let it marinate for a couple hours,
01:09and then we'll set it up on the hearth around 130.
01:12♪♪
01:20First thing in the morning,
01:21the most important part of a Mexican kitchen,
01:24we do corn.
01:25Today, we're cleaning yellow corn,
01:28conico, and bolita azul.
01:30So the corn gets cooked the night before in lime and cal.
01:35Our first person that comes is gonna wash it
01:37to remove all that skin that got released out of the corn.
01:41This is how it looks before it's cooked,
01:43and this is how it looks after.
01:44Like, the outer shell of the corn starts, like,
01:47becomes softer.
01:48That's what breaks the starches inside of it.
01:51Mexican cuisine starts with corn.
01:53Everybody that thinks of Mexican cuisine,
01:55you think of corn.
01:56So it's important for us to have the best ingredient
01:59and showcase it in the best way.
02:01Corn's gonna go through here.
02:02It's gonna get feed through these areas.
02:04So the family of corns are for white, blue,
02:10yellow, and red corn.
02:13They all taste different, you know?
02:14Just like the blue corn tastes more like umami,
02:16mushrooms, earth.
02:18For me, this one tastes more like a butter.
02:20And you can smell it.
02:21It smells so, so good.
02:22Like, the starch, you know?
02:24The corn starch.
02:25But it smells like a tortilleria.
02:28The next part of that process, after we have the masa,
02:31we're gonna paddle it to season
02:33and to check that the water content that it has
02:35is where we want it
02:36and where we know it's gonna create a very nice tortilla
02:39that it's soft, it's malleable.
02:41The next step of the process,
02:42we're gonna weigh the corn
02:44because we need to season it with salt.
02:45So we have a percentage for it.
02:47We're gonna paddle it, adjust water,
02:49and then we're gonna portion it for everything that we want.
02:52For me, I'm a pastry chef.
02:53I'm trained in pastry.
02:54I see masa as if it was like my flour or my starch.
02:58And the combinations and shapes you could do,
03:00it's infinitum, you know?
03:07The next step is gonna get portioned.
03:10Maria's gonna start portioning the corn.
03:11It all has different weights.
03:14This one's gonna get divided mostly for tetelas, tortillas.
03:18The blue is gonna be for tlayudas, tortillas,
03:22and flautas.
03:27We just got our delivery from Regalos.
03:28So they delivered to us overnight from New York.
03:32So we get golden chickens.
03:33They're from Pennsylvania.
03:35We're gonna get the process going.
03:36We'll pass these off to Chef Brandon.
03:38He's gonna break them down, get them in brine,
03:39and then get them on marinade
03:41so they're ready to go for tonight.
03:43I'm removing the head and the backbone
03:45so I can split the chicken in half.
03:47So once these are split,
03:49they're going to go into brine
03:51that's made with oranges, arbol chile, and some garlic.
03:55And they'll stay in brine for four hours.
03:57After being brined,
03:58we put them on a tray to allow the skins to dry
04:02so that the marinade can stick better.
04:07What we really like about them
04:08is you can kind of see all this beautiful fat
04:10that's in here.
04:11Whereas like most chickens in stores,
04:12everyone wants no fat.
04:14They want big chicken breasts that have grown super fast.
04:17They grow these a lot slower
04:18and they get a lot more time to feed.
04:20So they've developed all this fat.
04:22So that's what we're after.
04:25We probably sell 10 to 14 half chickens a day.
04:30So a case of chickens lasts us about two days.
04:36So now these will sit in the brine for a couple hours.
04:38We'll pull them out.
04:39We'll marinate them in an adobo.
04:41And from there, they'll get roasted off over our wood fire.
04:46This is the centerpiece of the restaurant.
04:47We put this in
04:48and kind of built everything else around it.
04:50I think when we were looking for spaces,
04:52that was like one of our number one things
04:53is like, how can we do something with live fire?
04:57We've been to Oaxaca.
04:58And I think that was kind of, for me,
04:59was like one of the first times that I was like,
05:01oh, this is like really special.
05:02You walk into the market
05:03and there's just people cooking with like charcoal
05:06and they're making clayudas
05:07and grilling meats and stuff like that.
05:10We have the maguey here, the leaf,
05:12that we're gonna roast pretty hard.
05:13And this is what we're gonna wrap the lamb necks in
05:16after we grill them off.
05:17Traditionally in Hidalgo, when they're making barbacoa,
05:19it's like a pit.
05:21You build a bed of agave and then you put your meats.
05:25We're in Capitol Hill.
05:26There's no way they're gonna let us dig a hole in it,
05:29but we can get the closest to it.
05:31We're gonna roast this.
05:32So again, to like kind of build another layer of flavor
05:34that's in the dish, that water that's inside,
05:35we really want to cook that out.
05:37This is a very important step
05:38to make sure that it's roasted correctly
05:39before we wrap it.
05:40Because we don't want to put in all this work
05:42into the lamb that takes us three days to get on a plate.
05:44And all it takes is not roasting this correctly
05:46and it ruins the dish.
05:49So now we're gonna set up our lamb barbacoa here.
05:51So we get the neck.
05:53These are coming from Pennsylvania.
05:54We do about 150 pounds of this a week.
05:57So what Brandon's setting up here right now
05:59is the brine for the lamb.
06:01We brine this for 24 to 36 hours.
06:05It's very straightforward, salt, sugar, some aromatics.
06:08This is the lamb neck that has already been brined.
06:11So now we're going to take it and rub it in our adobo,
06:13ready it for the grill.
06:15So we have two different dried chiles in here,
06:17guajillo and pasilla oaxaqueña.
06:20There is some cumin, garlic, avocado leaf,
06:25some apple cider vinegar,
06:27and then that's all blended together
06:29with the water that we soak the chiles in.
06:31So we go through a couple hundred pounds
06:35pretty easily in a week.
06:36Each of these lamb necks runs about two pounds.
06:39So it's a good amount of meat.
06:41Once it's been cooked off,
06:43it's very tender, very flavorful.
06:45For me in particular,
06:47I think of after church tacos with my grandpa growing up.
06:52We have our lamb necks that have come out of brine.
06:54They've been on brine for about 30 hours.
06:56And then we're going to really start to get some char
06:59and smoke on these before we braise them.
07:01So kind of rendering some of the fat,
07:04getting that a nice smoke on here
07:06before these go in the oven to finish.
07:13Instead of fanning like crazy,
07:15we got one of these and we had all seen it on YouTube
07:18from another chef and we bought this
07:20and it's a game changer.
07:23Gets the fire going much faster.
07:26We'll wrap that in agave leaf that we've grilled.
07:30We're trying to really mimic that
07:31burying it in a pit in the ground.
07:33They got nice and caramelized like that.
07:35All those nice bits in there are going to be really,
07:37really good.
07:38Part of why we use this cut,
07:40all this bone that's in here,
07:41there's cartilage and there's fat.
07:43That's just going to add more flavor in there.
07:48This was the one we were marinating in earlier
07:50and we don't want to waste any of that adobo that's in there.
07:52It's all going to go together.
07:54And this will end up being the consomme.
07:57So this will get wrapped
07:59and then put in the oven for a couple hours.
08:06It's 2.30 now,
08:06so we're going to get the trumbo
08:08that we built earlier in the day.
08:09We're going to get it on so we can start cooking.
08:11Getting it on about 2.30,
08:12it should put us right in line for five o'clock for service.
08:15So it's set up there
08:16and then just kind of the heat from our burn box,
08:17we'll get it going.
08:19And it's just kind of low and slow, pick up smoke.
08:22We'll throw more wood in there,
08:23so it'll really start to cook as we get closer to service.
08:25But for right now,
08:26we just want to start bringing it up to temperature.
08:28And this like onion and pineapple
08:29will all start to like kind of drip down there
08:31and flavor it for service.
08:35So these are the chickens.
08:36They've come out of brine after a couple hours.
08:38We have a marinade here that we've made
08:40with some chilies, honey, orange juice, cumin, black pepper.
08:45So this will kind of go all over the chickens itself.
08:47And because of the sugar and stuff like that,
08:49it will really, the smoke and char
08:51will stick to these nicely.
08:52And then we'll take our meat hooks
08:55and we just go right through.
08:56There's still some of the bones in here.
08:57We've only removed some of them,
08:59so it will help protect the meat as well.
09:01And these guys are just going to get hung
09:03right up over here, over the fire.
09:06And we'll move them around as we need during service,
09:08depending on how fast or how slow they're cooking.
09:11And we'll see as these start to go,
09:13we'll start to see like fat dripping
09:14and rendering out of here.
09:15This meat will almost start to retract off the bone.
09:17That's how we know the leg will be done.
09:25Another one of the desserts
09:26that we did from the beginning, buñuelos.
09:29I'm obsessed with buñuelos.
09:30What we're doing today is buñuelo de viento.
09:32It is more traditional, kind of like the Danish fritters.
09:36Like I'm a pastry chef,
09:37but like I also like to do this menu
09:40in a collaborative way.
09:42So this is Patty's project and she killed it.
09:44And I think her palate is very similar
09:46to what I grew up with.
09:47So this was like one of those dishes that I'm like,
09:50we're making buñuelos.
09:51And she's like, oh, I got you.
09:52I got you, chef.
09:54In Mexico kitchens,
09:56there's always a position for a mayora.
09:58Like you have your chefs, your sous-chefs,
10:00you know, your line cook.
10:02There's always going to be a mayora
10:03and it's a position of respect.
10:05It's usually a woman with a lot of knowledge
10:09that will play the part of making delicious food.
10:13You know, for everybody,
10:14it's a person that if you don't know
10:16why your tamale is not working,
10:18she's going to answer to you.
10:20Here, I think we got a couple mayoras.
10:22Our AM definitely would be Patty.
10:25The mold needs to be warm.
10:26We preheat it on the oil
10:28and then it goes into the batter
10:30and then it touches the oil.
10:31The fry oil will cook it really fast.
10:33It takes like, we definitely have to hold it
10:35for like a minute
10:36just because we don't want it to lose the shape.
10:39So this is where the mold goes,
10:41creating kind of like a tar shell.
10:42You see it in fine dining restaurants,
10:44they do it for those little tartlets.
10:45It's the same technique, you know,
10:46we just do it on a bigger scale.
10:48And this is not the biggest mold I've had.
10:50I have a bigger mold than this,
10:52but they prohibited me from using it
10:55just because, you know,
10:56we didn't have a plate that could
10:58host that big of a buñuelo.
11:00And in the next stop for this,
11:01we're gonna make a chocolate sauce.
11:05We're gonna make it a ganache,
11:06but instead of using milk or cream,
11:08we're using water.
11:09We're making a tea with Mexican cinnamon,
11:12some star anise, some piloncillo,
11:14some brown sugar that's gonna take a little longer.
11:16So I'm just gonna get the tea melted over here.
11:19And then for chocolate,
11:20we have two type of chocolate.
11:21We have dark chocolate,
11:23like a 65% like Valrhona brand.
11:26And we also mix it with Mexican chocolate.
11:27This is a very bitter chocolate.
11:29It smells incredible.
11:30This is come from Chiapas.
11:32So I'm just gonna wait for my tea
11:33to get warm and get flavor.
11:36And then I'm gonna strain it
11:37and put it on top of the chocolate.
11:38And that's gonna be my chocolate sauce
11:40for service tonight.
11:41The last part of the buñuelo,
11:42it gets tossed into a cinnamon and sugar mixture.
11:45We want the sugar to definitely add some color
11:47from the cinnamon.
11:54So we're arranging a new dish for the menu.
11:57We're heading into fall.
11:58It's definitely gotten a little cooler.
11:59So we've kind of noticed where crudo sales
12:01have like kind of slowed down a little bit.
12:03Kind of started to want to mess around
12:05with like how do we serve raw fish
12:07or slightly cooked fish a little warm.
12:09So we got a nice piece of steelhead trout.
12:13We marinate it in mezcal.
12:16We're gonna smoke it above the grill.
12:18We're just basically gonna drop it up here
12:20and let it pick up some of that smoke
12:22for an hour or so.
12:23Not to cook it,
12:24just to hopefully get some of that flavor on there
12:26to keep with the thought of
12:27everything's been touching the grill.
12:28So we're making a mojo de ajo.
12:31This one, instead of oil,
12:32we're replacing the oil for brown butter.
12:34The idea is a fish that's cured
12:37that looks like a tiradito
12:39and on top of it has warm butter sauce on it.
12:42And the butter we're gonna flavor it
12:43with some yuzu kosho.
12:45Our thought of this is that
12:46we would do this at the table.
12:47So like usually the mojo de ajo,
12:48it's just like lots of garlic and stuff.
12:49So it'd be really aromatic when it hits the table.
12:52I think when we're tasting now,
12:54our palates have aligned a lot.
12:56Yeah, I think we both love food
12:58that's like bright and fresh and acidic.
13:00So we love having that like chili and acid and salt.
13:02And like, I think that's what we crave with food.
13:05We'll cut this down.
13:06So we can do some nice slices.
13:09So like the tail definitely got like a little warm up there.
13:11So we'll have to watch that.
13:14And then you want to garnish with radish?
13:15I might be getting excited with radish.
13:17That's my issue.
13:18I always want to take it like too far.
13:19And I think there's two ways.
13:20We take it like...
13:22In between the leaves?
13:23In between the leaves.
13:24But it'd be too...
13:25No, I like that.
13:26I think there's always running to like
13:27the comment of like,
13:28how can you work with your partner, you know?
13:30And how could you not, you know?
13:32Like your partner is the person you admire the most.
13:35So why would I not?
13:38I like the radish.
13:39The radish is almost like a pop of wasabi.
13:41Do we need more lime juice on it?
13:42A little salt.
13:43Like working together is great for us.
13:46I think we get to bounce ideas off of each other
13:48and there's what her strong points are
13:50or probably my weaknesses and vice versa.
13:52So it's like, it really helps in the kitchen.
13:54I think it needed a little salt.
13:55I think we need to figure out
13:56exactly how we get it to the table.
13:58But I think for the weekend it can get on the menu.
14:00No, tonight, no?
14:01Tonight?
14:02I think we can do it tonight.
14:03Let's do it tonight.
14:03I think we can definitely do it tonight.
14:05All right.
14:07It's four o'clock here now.
14:08So all the PM crew has started to show up.
14:11The AM crew that has been here since about 8.30
14:13is heading in towards the finish line.
14:16This is a major crunch time.
14:17Like you can see the stove's all full and everything
14:19for our PM cooks to be ready for five o'clock.
14:20So there's a lot happening right now
14:22to be ready in the next hour.
14:24What do we have?
14:25We have a couple of announcements.
14:27We have no dogs tonight.
14:28We do have a new special today.
14:30It's going to be still caught trout
14:33and we're going to put a table side.
14:35So I'm going to give you guys a pot.
14:36I can come to the tables.
14:38We'll do a couple together.
14:39That's all I have guys.
14:40Let's have fun.
14:41All right, guys.
14:42We got 15 minutes till service.
14:45So this is all the masa.
14:46And now we're going to start cooking tortillas.
14:49This is a process that we do all day.
14:51Tortillas, it's one of those techniques.
14:53It's about how you press it.
14:55And also about how you flip it.
14:56The tortilla only gets flipped three times.
14:59The first one to set up the corn, a second one to cook it.
15:02And then we do a third one to inflate the corn.
15:06So these ones, we're going to dry them after.
15:09Those get used for, to eat with your guacamole set.
15:13Right now we're getting the setup
15:14for all of our guacamole plate.
15:17So this is our guacamole.
15:18We've made pickled jalapenos and onions and cilantro.
15:22One little twist that we do here is
15:24this is again, the avocado leaf.
15:26This was our way to get a burnt flavor into the guacamole.
15:29We've charred avocado leaf and onions.
15:32Looks kind of dark when you get it.
15:34And then as soon as you dig in,
15:35it's going to be like this,
15:36like really nice bright color green under there.
15:38So you're going to get your chips.
15:39This is a crema with onion and cilantro.
15:42This is our escabeche.
15:43There's going to be some smoked pineapple and radish.
15:47And then we're going to go our salsas,
15:48which we always go for mild.
15:50So we're going to have our salsa cruda.
15:52There'll be habanero salsa matcha.
15:55And then we'll finish this.
15:57So a little bit of olive oil and lime juice over the top
15:59and send it up.
16:00That's kind of the base of everything.
16:02Salt and lime at the end is like
16:04what makes Mexican food so good.
16:15Mexico City is usually salsa morita.
16:17Salsa verde is like the fresh one.
16:20We're going to do some fresh white onion.
16:23Chef, you're a heads up on a lamb,
16:24a side of rice and a chicken.
16:27We serve this with spring onions.
16:28So what we do is we have these just kind of slowly roasting,
16:32served with along with the chicken.
16:34So all these dishes are kind of meant to be served
16:36family style.
16:37We break this down a little bit.
16:38It's still served on some of the bones,
16:40but we'll cut this into four pieces
16:42just for ease of eating.
16:44So we're going to do a little bit of a
16:45chicken steak and onion.
16:47So this is our chicken steak.
16:49We cut this into four pieces just for ease of eating.
16:55So we serve the chicken with fried rice.
16:58So we're kind of looking for that like crispy,
17:00like fried rice.
17:12Fire aguachile chayote,
17:13followed by hamachi tartar,
17:15followed by a chicken third course, please.
17:18Fire and octo, fire and aguachile,
17:20second course hamachi,
17:21third course eggplant and a tartar.
17:24Hands, please.
17:26Let's fire table 32.
17:28That's a barbacoa and a side of rice, please.
17:37So this will go right on top.
17:48You owe me, chef.
17:49One aguachile, one fig, one tartar.
17:52We're in the middle of service.
17:53We're having a great time.
17:54The energy is like really good.
17:57I think the kitchen's killing it
17:59and everything's going according to plan.
18:01We're going to have a really good service today.
18:05Thank you, aguachile chayote.
18:08Fire up pascualgua.
18:09I'll take six tostadas, please.
18:13We wanted to do Mexican food
18:14and represent it kind of like
18:16Mexican food and represent it correctly in DC
18:20and showcase like how diverse it is
18:23and how much more we can do with it.
18:24So it was really about like,
18:26let's do all the techniques and the flavors that we love
18:29and showcase it to people and show them,
18:32it doesn't have to just be a taqueria.
18:33So that's kind of what pascual is.
18:44Mexican cuisine was the base.
18:45I'm from Mexico City and that's kind of where we met.
18:48And that's kind of like the story that we have together.
18:54It's a place to make me feel closer to home.
18:57It's a place where I get to meet and cook
19:00with more Mexican cooks.
19:01And it's a place where I get to cook
19:03with a lot of talented chefs here too,
19:05that we get to bring.
19:11And just explore Mexican cuisine, you know,
19:14to as far as we could in the best way possible.