Sikil Pak

Trying a lot of new and different recipes can have its ups and downs. There are ones that are easy and lovely and cause no stress and turn out delicious. Others are a little more complicated and leave you wondering about the results until the very end. And, once in a while, there’s a recipe that ends up being a complete waste of time and ingredients. It doesn’t happen often, but I just experienced one of the latter recently, and it’s depressing. I had to move on, find something really good to try, and forget about it. The sikil pak from Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson was a great recipe for dip and for forgetting about bad food. This is a Mayan dish that’s perfect for dipping tortilla chips. Ground pepitas form the base of the dip and an habanero gives it spice. I have no idea how I’d never encountered this before, but now that I know how to make it, I’ll be doing so frequently.

An habanero and some unpeeled garlic cloves were charred in a pan and then allowed to cool. Tomatoes received the same treatment. The pepitas were ground in a food processor and removed to a bowl. Then, the seeded and chopped habanero, the peeled garlic, and the cored tomatoes were roughly chopped in the food processor. The ground pumpkin seeds were returned to the food processor, and the goal was to puree this mixture to a mayonnaise-like consistency. Some vegetable stock was called for in the recipe, but there was enough juice in the tomatoes I used to achieve the desired texture without adding any other liquid. Finely chopped white onion, cilantro leaves, and a couple pinches of cinnamon were stirred into the dip to finish it.

It was noticeably fiery but not in a painful way. The pepitas smoothed out the heat, and the tomatoes freshened it up. Charring the vegetables added deeper flavor and earthiness, and the onion and cilantro added texture and spunk. The dip gets even better as it sits in the refrigerator overnight, and I’m certain about that because I nearly devoured the entire remaining quantity for lunch today. This was such a happy discovery; I think everyone should try making it. Or, just stop by my house because from now on I’ll be making some every few days.

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