Mayan Pollo en Pepian

The Mayan civilisation (Mexico and northern Central America) may be lost but this recipe has retained their influence. Pollo is 'chicken' and Pepian refers to a nutty sauce. It is an unusual but delightfully flavoursome recipe and well worth a try.

Ingredients

For 1	Continued...
1 chicken breast	knob of butter
200 ml chicken stock	100 ml passata (see note 4)
2 tbspn pumpkin seeds	salt to taste
1 tspn sesame seeds	freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 red pepper (see note 1)	1 tbspn oil
50 gm onion (prepared weight)	40 ml orange juice
1 clove garlic	20 ml lime juice
2 tbspn raisins	¼ tspn ground allspice
2 tbspn flaked almonds

Preparation

Heat the stock in a saucepan, cover, and simmer the chicken breast for 20 min, remove from the heat and set aside.
Using a spice grinder or equivalent (see note 2) grind the sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds to a fine powder.
Roughly chop the pepper, onion and garlic and roughly blend (see note 3) and then mix in the passata and ground sesame and pumpkin seeds.
Cover the raisins with a little water for about 15 min to soften them, then drain and set aside.
Using a frying pan, melt the butter and fry the almonds until golden brown, then drain and reserve.

Cooking

Heat the oil in a frying pan and, over a medium heat, fry the blended paste, stirring regularly, for 5 min.
Return the chicken and stock to the heat and mix in the 'cooked' paste from the frying pan, add the orange juice, lime juice, allspice and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cover and simmer, stirring regularly for 15 min until the sauce is quite thick.

Serving

Serve with rice and garnish with the raisins and toasted almonds.

Notes

(1) Red or yellow pepper can be used or even a combination of both.
(2) It is very difficult to grind the pumpkin seeds in a pestle and mortar.
(3) When blending small quantities it is easier to put the ingredients into a mug and use a hand (stick) blender.
(4) Passata is not a traditional ingredient but is used here instead of a tomato because supermarket purchased tomatoes are rarely ripe enough.

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