Almost every time we eat out at one of our favorite local Mexican cheap-eats, it is difficult for me to resist the crunchy and tasty sopes. These traditional Mexican dish involves fried masa cakes and can be topped with a variety of things – chorizo, beef, chicken, pork, veggies or beans. Some are made small as a sort of appetizer or first course, we make them larger for a main meal (about 6 inches in diameter). If you kind of ‘pinch’ the sides of the masa, it helps some of your toppings stay on the sopes. I really get excited when I know we’re going to make a weeknight meal out of this because, yes, it involves a bit of frying, and we all know how good anything fried tastes, but the combo of flavors and the layering of flavors is really amazing.

One sauce, or salsa, we make often to top our enchiladas, burritos, fajitas and sopes is a delicious tomatillo-avocado salsa. For some of our readers, it may be difficult to find tomatillos, the small green, ‘tomato-like’ fruit with a brown husk surrounding it. They are not green tomatoes, though. Research finds that these beauties never took hold in Europe and the beloved red tomato was taken to Italy where it reigns supreme today. These sweet treasures are used in a lot of Latin American cooking. If you can get your hands on them, I highly recommend giving them a try. Make sure you husk and wash the stickiness off them before you use them!

Please don’t be turned off by what seems like alot of work to make this meal. If you’ve ever made burritos or fajitas, you can make sopes! If you don’t have tomatillos or can not get them, don’t worry, just top with your favorite salsa!

SHREDDED CHICKEN SOPES WITH TOMATILLO-AVOCADO SALSA

(serves 2 for 2 big entree sized sopes)

Ingredients

• 2 cups masa harina
• 1 cup warm water (may need less)
• pinch of salt
• vegetable or corn oil or frying
• 1 large chicken breast or 2 medium sized ones (with or without skin – just take skin off after you boil)
• 1 onion, sliced in 1/2” half moons
• 1 green or red pepper, cut in half and sliced into 1/2” slices
• 1 minced clove of garlic
• juice of 1 lime
• 2 scallions, sliced
• cilantro
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon chipotle powder
• salt
• 1-2 cups of our beans with chorizo and cumin (you can make these without the chorizo as well)
• sour cream as a topping
• cojita, shredded cheddar or monterey jack cheese as a topping
• tomatillo-avocado salsa for topping (SEE BELOW)

What to do:

1. Boil some water and cook your chicken breasts for 12-15 minutes or until it is not pink inside. How long you boil it for will depend on how big the piece is.
2. Make your tomatillo-avocado salsa (see below).
3. Start making your beans w/ chorizo and cumin if you choose to.
4. In a bowl, add your masa. a pinch of salt and the water. You want it to be thick, not like pancake batter. If you need to add water, add more. If you feel like it’s too thin, add more masa. You will want to shape them and fry them about the same time (I’ve found that the dried masa sometimes doesn’t stick together as well as I’d like it to). Reserve this in the bowl until you’re ready to fry your cakes.
5. When your chicken breasts are cooked, allow to cool and then shred using your hands or a fork. Keep handy so you can add them at the end of Step 5.
6. In a pan on medium, saute your onions and pepper in some olive oil. Add your minced garlic. After 4 minutes or so, add your shredded chicken breasts and your spices (cumin, chipotle powder and some salt if necessary). Add the juice of half a lime and stir. Allow to warm the chicken back up, then turn on low to keep warm.
7. Now, it’s time to fry your sopes. Take a lump of masa/water mixture and push it down so it’s about 1”-1 1/2” thick in a circular shape. It does NOT have to be perfect. If you can pinch the sides of it up a bit, this could help your topping from moving. Many times I do not do this, so don’t worry if you just have a disc-like masa cake. Usually mine end up being anywhere between 4″ to 6″ in diameter.
8. Heat your oil up so it’s in frying-mode, making sure the oil level is about 1” to 2” deep. When oil is hot, using a spatula, slowly slide your sopes into the oil. After 1 1/2 minutes check it to see if you can turn. You want them to be a golden color, not very dark. They get very cruchy even if they do not look that brown.
9. Remove from oil and allow to drain on paper towels.
10. Now it’s time to build! On top your your sopes, add a layer of your beans, then a layer of your shredded chicken/onions/peppers mixture and a bit of shredded cheese. Top with your tomatillo salsa, a small dollop of sour cream, a squeeze more of lime on top and scatter some sliced scallions! ENJOY!!

TOMATILLO-AVOCADO SALSA

• 4 tomatillos, husks removed and roasted
• 1/2 ripe Haas avocado
• 1 1/2 cups of cilantro (or two big palmfuls)
• 1 scallion (or 1/4 onion if you don’t have a scallion), cut in half
• juice of 1 lime
• 1 tablespoon of sour cream
• 1/2 – 1 jalapeno (if you want it spicy), minced
• salt
• food processor or blender

What to do:

1. Preheat your oven to 457 degrees. Husk, de-stem and wash your tomatillos. Roast your tomatillos on a baking sheet for 10 minutes whole. They will look a bit brown and will be very juicy.
2. In a blender or food processor, add all the rest of your ingredients including the roasted tomatillos. Puree until smooth. Put in a bowl and into the refridgerator to cool down. See, so easy!!

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Our end of Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn (one of the two main thorough-fares in the neighborhood Architectural Digest recently named the best in America, Park Slope), is festooned with restaurants of all kinds. In fact, there are more restaurants, I would say, than there are any other kind of stores on the street. An average of perhaps two and a half eateries per block. Many of these have sprung up in the last few years and are of a certain type – dim-lighting, dark wood interiors and “fusion” menus – catering to the newly-arrived, brownstone-purchasing, high income-earning folks that used to only inhabit the upper west and upper east sides of Manhattan . Since the advent of these restaurants, many of the neighborhoods’ original retailers have left – in fact, just this past weekend, we noticed that the shady-looking storefront selling Articulos Religiosos had gone, probably to be replaced with some joint with a menu trying to emulate Tyler Florence. Anyway, in the midst of all this change and gentrification sits Los Pollitos II, a small, noisy Mexican restaurant specializing in rotisserie chicken, a few northern Mexican staples (fajitas, burritos, etc.) and some more Caribbean-coast inspired dishes, that has remained a constant in the culinary landscape of our changing neighborhood.

Last night, my wife and I were feeling a bit under the weather and decided we wanted Pollitos’ chicken soup, some rotisserie chicken, rice and beans and a salad. A very basic, wholesome meal without too many flavors. A large soup (more than a pint), half a roast chicken, a small rice and beans, an order of tostones (starchy, fried, smashed plantains) with garlic sauce, and a large house salad was ordered. We were told we might have to wait 45 minutes to an hour for our order, but we were undeterred — Pollitos has become a go-to restaurant for us (one month this year, when we were crazy busy organizing our wedding, we went there nearly twice a week) and when you want Pollitos, you can’t have anything else. So we settled in to bear our hunger pains until the food arrived. Not only did it arrive in less than half an hour, but the bill was $19.23 for enough food for two meals for two people, or maybe more because we eat too much. $19.23!! Worringly, it’s almost cheaper than buying ingredients and cooking it ourselves, but this isn’t unhealthy food. It’s not low-calorie and it’s certainly not fat-free, but rice, beans and chicken with a side salad is what most of the world would call a good meal and would eat more often if only they could afford it.

Their chicken soup is frankly, a triumph. Never before have I had chicken soup with more flavor and less fat. It arrives with carrots, potatoes, chicken (half a breast and a whole wing, in this case), onion and cilantro, and is, or might be, a meal in itself. Perhaps because they have so many bones from all the rotisserie chickens, their stock is just that bit richer than elsewhere, or perhaps it’s the cilantro, I’m not sure, but I would strongly recommend you try it whether you’re feeling a bit rough or in perfect health. I could rave on at length about how tasty their rice and beans is (something that a lot of people underestimate how hard it is to make tasty), how delicious their tostones and garlic sauce are (really amazing) and how much crisp, fresh salad they give you, but instead I’m going to devote my final words to their rotisserie chicken. It is succelent and juicy – even the white meat, the skin is crisp, salty and almost sweet, and the bones are chewable because of the slow-cooking. It may be the the finest rotisserie chicken in the city and you can get a whole one for under $8. I rest my case.

Indeed, we are not the only ones who have discovered Los Pollitos II, however, I think we may have the distinction of being two of its most regular customers. In the past year, we must have eaten there twenty times, and call me a pikey if you like, but I took my wife there for her birthday too! (They gave us a free dessert, a weird, sweet shot of something, and five of the waiters took an old warped guitar off the wall and serenaded her with “feliz cumpleanos a ti”. How’s that for customer service?)

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