- Hey! - Jefe!
(Cosme speaking in Spanish) - How you doing pa?
- Waiting for you, man.
- Good to see you.
We got live scallops, fluke, Branzino, lobster.
So you should be good to go.
- It's like very fresh.
Very fresh.
- Only the best for the best.
- So in Casa Enrique we only have one ceviche,
which is fluke that we use, very local.
And then we cook it with lime and some spices and salt.
Very simple.
I used to work in French restaurants
and we used to filet fish like every single day.
So it's been 25 years that I'm in the kitchen.
So I learned, I started.
I like to do like a Japanese-style, like slice it up.
I don't want like chunks.
Some people cut the fish like this,
like they're like cutting wood.
You do only one.
You start it from the end of the knife
and you finish on the front like this.
Only one cut.
From good to very good is a minute difference.
Take your time.
You know, food is about experience.
The whole fluke is amazing.
I think one of my favorite fish is fluke.
Order fire ceviche.
Put it back in the fridge, two minutes, done.
What I want is to be the best in the neighborhood
and we went beyond that.
I am very happy, you know, a lot of people
from all over the world come just to see Casa Enrique.
(violin music)
So first thing in the morning,
we come here at six o'clock in the morning, all the guys.
We start doing the chips for the day.
We start prepping things for tomorrow, like carnitas.
We marinate the carnitas overnight with beer.
You know, that's the way we do it in Michoacán.
So for that particular carnitas, I use Monopolio.
It's one of my favorite beers,
actually it's from San Luis Potosí, the place I grew up.
It gives a lot of flavor
and it breaks down a little bit of the meat.
We close down with the film
and we put it overnight and it's ready for tomorrow.
Carnitas has to be cooked in their own fat
and it has to be faster than the confit.
But it has to be in their own fat.
Not in the oven.
I wouldn't call that carnitas.
We're just gonna cook the pork in very hot pork fat.
Very like close to confit,
but confit is like slow
and this is like very hot.
Because if you don't put it when it's very hot,
it's not gonna give it color.
So it's been marinating for like 24 hours, 26 hours
and we're just gonna drop it to the hot oil.
You don't wanna burn yourself.
So what I do, I use this.
This is gonna cook for like two and a half hours,
but in in the meantime we're gonna add things.
I just put fresh thyme, bay leaves and a black peppercorn.
So this is the skin for the pork.
So what we're gonna do now is pour some Mexican Coca-Cola,
the one with sugar, not with corn syrup,
which allows me to have this skin dark and beautiful.
So we leave it like this.
We're gonna put it in the last hour in the pot.
So it's gonna get a lot of color.
So this is a salty water
and I find the way to salt the meat better,
just pour in the water, showering the meat, every meat.
So you have to remember which one you already did.
So when the salt hits the meat, it stays there.
Because if you put the salt in the oil,
it's gonna stay in the oil.
So it's gonna marry the salt with the pork.
Now the fat is like
relaxing, it's not that hot.
We're doing two things,
salting the meat and helping the fat not to burn.
I felt like living in New York for a long time
and working in the French restaurants,
I thought there was not a traditional Mexican restaurant
in New York that I really, really liked,
and I thought that I could make it better than anybody else.
I never worked with Mexican food before.
I knew French, but I didn't know Mexican.
So I started to look for my mother's recipes
and my family recipes.
When the sweet meets the meat, it gets better.
This is condensed milk.
Mexican food, I wouldn't compare it to French,
you know, French has also a lot of prep,
but Mexican food is a lot of prep.
People understand that,
people think that Mexican food should be cheap.
It's labor, it's a lot of labor, a lot of labor.
So it's not cheap.
Mexican food shouldn't be cheap.
I think the carnitas, they wanna go to sleep.
So first, we're gonna lower the temperature a little bit
so we don't wanna overcook them.
So this is the skin, you're gonna put as a cover on the fat.
So it will cook slowly
and they're gonna cook for another hour like this.
We're gonna open-fire burn these chiles
to make rajas con crema.
The chiles poblanos,
one of my favorite chiles in the world.
This has the best flavor you can get from the chile.
When my mom used to make this at home,
we used to put it in the bag
and wait for like 10 minutes and peel it together
and make the rajas.
It's a lot of work.
It seems like very easy, but it's a lot of work.
You see, it has to look like all the same as this.
So, because if you don't,
it's gonna be very hard to peel them.
Like the chile is not flat, so it is very hard.
So we go with the torch.
(chili crackling)
And after you put it in a container,
close it down with the plastic.
So they sweat for up to 15 minutes
you can peel them and it's easy for you.
People say Mexican doesn't use butter.
Yeah, I do.
I work in the French restaurant and I love to use butter.
This is the next step of the rajas.
So, we are gonna confit the onions.
We're gonna put the garlic on the onions.
So we cook the garlic a little bit
and then we're gonna add the turmeric.
I use turmeric to give the color and it tastes good.
So this rajas con crema you can eat it as a taco,
you can eat it with gorditas or stuffing.
You can use it in anything.
Or you can just eat it with beans and a plate.
And we're gonna add the corn.
So we added the cream.
So this is the poblanos that we charred.
So, now we doing the cutting in strips.
This is my mom's best recipe that I got from her.
And my mom was not those typical Mexican women cooking.
She was a step up of so many people.
I wouldn't say she was one of the best of my town,
but I think she was better than in the states.
I think if she would be here
she would be very, very proud of me.
She's watching us from upstairs.
The rajas con crema is finally done.
So after you finish,
we put it in the chiller to cool it down fast
and we use it for later or tomorrow.
But I would say tomorrow it tastes better.
After you order, we start making the guacamole.
We don't do batches, we just do it for you.
I think it's one of the best sellers that we have here.
(Cosme speaking in Spanish)
So this is the avocado master.
He always supplies me my avocados and limes and lemons.
- Hopefully it's...
- What you can ask more?
Like this is the best avocado you can get, you know, like?
This is the best, you know, like, it's like his baby.
The avocado's his baby.
- I think we know a thing about that or two.
- When I sit down with friends,
all I do is order guacamole.
I have a beer, I order guacamole.
It's amazing.
It's the best fruit we have in Mexico.
So carnitas are done after almost three hours.
So, you know, right now it's very hot.
So I want it to cool down.
So the flavor it goes into the meat again.
By the time it's cooled down and put it back,
it's gonna taste even better.
Take the skin out, we just cut it
like a stripe, put it on top.
Fire the carnitas por favor.
So, this is the fun part.
We're gonna make mole.
Mole de Piaxtla.
So we're gonna start breaking the rules from my grandma.
So we're gonna burn this.
The mole is one of the most favorite dishes that we sell
in Casa Enrique.
And we do everything from the scratch.
This is black pepper, we're gonna toast it.
This is the cloves and the all spice.
So we kind of like to burn it a little bit.
So you got the smokiness of the clove in the mole.
We opened this place with mole
and it's been the same mole as now.
And it makes me think like I am in town
you know, with my grandparents,
from Piaxtla Puebla where my father grew up in Mexico.
That's the sesame seeds, we're gonna toast it.
This is raisins.
When we opened Casa Enrique,
we were making the paste once a month
and now we do it twice a week.
So you can make this and keep it for three months.
So paste is like the base of the sauce.
It's not sauce yet, it's just a paste.
So you finish with chicken broth and I reduce it down.
This is figs, I'm breaking the rules here.
They don't put figs, I do put figs.
Plums.
This one I add like a 25, 26.
I do mole, every time it's different.
It's very close, but it's different.
Depends on the fruits, you know,
the fruits are sometimes more sweet or acidity
or the chiles are spicier than the other.
So it's never the same.
Mexican food is very, it's very labor.
It's a lot of things to do.
It's like French techniques.
So you have to start it
and it takes like 10 hours just to do one thing.
It's kind of soft.
This is done.
Plantain and bolillos, which is a French bread.
That's to thicken the sauce.
Done.
I love cooking man,
as long as nobody comes and makes a bad day.
But cooking is amazing.
Everything has to be blended and mixed.
This guy's gonna blend everything
while I'm cooking the chiles.
Everything has to be ready by the time I'm finished,
so we mix.
This is the blend of the chiles,
guajillo, chile ancho, chile mulato.
This has been roasted in the oven and blended.
We're gonna add some water.
So the water helps to make a paste.
I don't need to go to the gym after this.
Lot of work.
And you have to do this for like 30 minutes, this.
And after you start putting the fruits
it's still an hour cooking.
It's 3:00 PM and everybody's starting
to come in for the service.
So you're gonna see a lot of action here.
A lot of people prepping for the service.
So it's like time for us to push to finish, quickly.
I'm gonna start putting the onions and garlic.
You wouldn't tell me it's onion and garlic.
It's like a chocolate.
Now we're gonna add all the almonds, sesame seeds,
plums, figs, raisins, all blended as a base.
Now the workout is getting harder.
That was just the beginning.
This is plantains and bread.
All these things are gonna become a mole.
After this, it's gonna be another 30 minutes
to get all the flavors married.
Mexican chocolate.
And we're gonna mix and then that's it.
Now it's done the mole, the mole paste.
So what we're gonna do now is cool it down
in a smaller container.
We put it in the fridge and we do portions later
and it's ready for tomorrow to do the mole.
We don't make the masa here.
We get it from Nixtamal,
because we don't have a space for a molino.
So this is the masa that comes from Nixtamal,
the corn masa.
And it is very dry now,
so we add a little bit of water
and then we mix it with a mixer.
Make it nicer, so.
So, Margarita is making the tortillas
coming right from the machine.
Fresh, can't beat that. The best.
She's gonna start making the tortillas
by five o'clock to be ready the first batch.
So, one of the last things today for the service,
we're gonna make chorizo for tomorrow.
So we're gonna ground the pork belly and pork fat
then marinate it.
The marinade is chile guajillos, garlic, thyme and spices.
That's it and we're gonna mix it.
And we're gonna leave it in the fridge
for 24 hours to 48 hours.
This is chorizo that we made yesterday for today's service.
So we're done with the prep.
The service is gonna start at five o'clock.
Kitchen in Casa Enrique is very fast.
We make it very fast because we have to work fast.
We built this restaurant for 70 seats
and now because there's inside and outside, it's making 140.
So it's like two restaurants.
Order fire guacamole medium, then ceviche.
You don't wanna be there.
People who start working and they like
they just stay one day and they go. It's hard.
It's very busy.
It's one of the busiest restaurants I've ever worked.
It's crazy.
(piano music)
We started the mole.
(piano music continues)
And we're gonna go back to make the sauce a little thicker.
Sesame seeds.
The runner finish over there.
We're gonna put the radish and pepper.
I think we changed
the food scene in the United States, not just in New York.
It changed a lot.
All the chefs, new chefs, Mexican chefs.
I think we brought Mexican food to another level.
I was thinking not to be the best.
I was thinking just to be the best of around here
and become like better than anybody else in the city.
So I'm very glad that we did it.