This Easy Food & Wine Recipe Tried to Kill Me

Every once in a while, I forget who I am and try to cook like someone with access to odd ingredients, a sous chef, and patience. That’s how I ended up with a Food & Wine recipe for Mayan Pepita Chicken Stew that required dozens of ingredients (“divided”), complex steps, and a degree in the Culinary History of Lost Civilizations. 

By hour two, I was stirring something diarrhea-adjacent that was supposed to be red, Googling “achiote paste recipe,” and taking a blood oath never to cook anything with more than nine ingredients again.

I’m a decent cook. I know how to cobble together a recipe that uses up expiring food. My gougères (not hard) are excellent. I can turn a dinner party into an event. But this bitch was so far beyond my skill level that I spent more time saying “fuck this bullshit” than cooking.

I originally saved the recipe because it sounded good, looked good, and used ingredients I already keep stocked. I didn’t even notice how many ingredients were “divided.” 

Only Assholes Divide 192 Ingredients

Do you know what a pain in the ass it is to have six of your 3,301 ingredients “divided”? Chefs, it’s fine if something tastes 1% less transcendent in exchange for 100% less butthurt. I’m not auditioning for Top Chef. Recipe writers, I implore you. Stop overcomplicating recipes for people whose kitchens aren’t instagrammable. 

My husband is a good cook too, so he helped. You should try his chocolate mousse. Mwah! But hours after we’d eaten, he was still bitching about the recipe while we watched season two of The Diplomat.

The problems started with the first step. Each of the eight steps is actually 14-73 steps.

Nya b’a’n tu’n t-xi tcho’n tkan ecy’, ku’n b’e’x cy-elil xc’ota.
It is not good to eat hen’s legs or you will become a slow worker.

The Mayans (from Some unreliable source)

“Wait,” Neil said. “Does she want us to halve the garlic with the skin? Or…”

“Read the whole recipe.”

“I did!”

“There’s no way you read the recipe in ten seconds. Actually read it,” I snapped. See, I didn’t know what an asshole this recipe was. Yet.

Neil and I kept snapping at each other until we smelled the broth. We looked at each other, pissed off that it smelled good. Aromatic and interesting. Full of promise. Hope flickered.

Just Toss Perfectly Good Food

Then, after making the broth, we were told to “discard the solids.” Just toss perfectly good food like it insulted your mother. 

The recipe claimed to be Mayan, but this kind of waste felt aggressively 1980s American. Indeed, the writer of this recipe, Maricel Presilla, was a chef in the 1980s-90s, when she had a few restaurants, a PBS show, and won a few James Beard awards. She obviously knows more about food than I do, but I didn’t want to toss food while children were starving in Africa.

“What a waste,” Neil said. “Let’s save them. This isn’t a real recipe. The Mayans wouldn’t have done this.”

“Exactly,” I said. “They were too busy inventing calendars and hot chocolate.”

I cobbled together an achiote paste from paprika, cumin, and vinegar that may and may not be correct.

Two hours later, it was time to eat. As we sat down, I realized how pissed off I get at chefs who value form over function.

No Good Stew Deserves Bones

You know the type. Bone-in meat in stews, shrimp tails left on like tiny swords, and salads stacked three feet high on flat plates. These people value form over function and flavor over convenience. I don’t want to bob for drumsticks in a bowl of broth. I don’t want to do shrimp surgery. And I definitely don’t want half my salad in my lap because someone thinks big ass salad bowls are unsightly.

I want chopped meat without bones or tails unless it’s a fine dining establishment so expensive nobody wants to bring their toddlers or tweens. That’s the guideline. For home cooked meals eaten while watching serial thrillers? Function over form every time.

In the end, it was fine. But this recipe would have been much better without dividing any ingredients, without using bone-in meat, and without being far too complicated for a lazy Sunday dinner.

Two hours later, long after we finished eating, Neil muttered, “Even the garlic directions were stupid. Why not just peel the damn thing?”

Taste: 7/10. Butthurt: 1,296/10. Would we make it again? Absolutely not. I’m not spending three hours in the kitchen for something that doesn’t end in a yumgasm.

Feature photo by Armando H