Not-Your-Abuelita’s PicadilloMatt JonesFollow3 min read·May 1, 2020 --

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2 pounds ground beef or turkey, 93% lean1 medium white onion2 garlic cloves2 bell peppers (I used yellow)1 cup raisins1 9.5 ounce jar Manzanilla olives with pimentos, sliced (preferably

only so much I can diverge on a single step into full disaster.

0. Salt the meat a bit in the fridge ahead of time if you can.

1. Brunoise the whole onion, and dice the bell peppers to a Parmentier. You want the bell peppers to retain some bite to them in the finished product, but be manageable on a spoon. Mince the

garlic.

2. Put all the above into a pan with olive oil and salt to taste. Sweat the mix and then turn the heat up so you start to sear / caramelize the outsides.

3. Add the meat to the pan, and immediately fold in the vegetables so they don’t get pressed into the pan beneath the meat and burn.

4. Add cumin, oregano, garlic powder, and cinnamon to the mixture before it has browned too much. Brown the meat, stirring constantly.

5. Once brown, adjust the salt, cumin, oregano, garlic powder and cinnamon to taste. Don’t be afraid to have a bit of a heavy hand with the spices — it should be pungent.

[As a note, start making your rice here for timing, which I like to cook with a bit of salt in the water and a bit of olive oil]

6. Drain the olives, reserving the juice. Add them in along with the raisins, and keep stirring for a bit until the raisins begin to plump a bit. Taste, and adjust seasoning again if

necessary — I found I wanted a bit more cumin and cinnamon after the raisins.

6. Add in the strained tomatoes, and let it reduce. Tasting it here is really helpful, I think, because it’ll be good-if-undersalted, but a little heavy and drag on the olives. It’ll lean

too much toward earthy. However we have some tricks, so worry not.

7. First, add in a few honking tablespoons of tomato paste. Taste. A lot brighter. Maybe needs salt? Do not add salt.

8. Instead, add some of the brine from the olives. Not only is there salt, there is also lactic acid from the fermentation process. Also feel free to adjust the seasoning — I went a bit

forward with the seasoning earlier, so I didn’t really need to do too much here aside from brighten it up.

9. Plate and serve. I used plain Lundberg sushi rice because it offers such a clean taste and beautiful texture. Jasmine or basmati are, in contrast, more opinionated and emphasize the

earthier / sweeter flavors of the dish.

The theory I had approaching the dish this way is that what I love most about picadillo is it’s a rich, balanced battle between two flavor profiles — earthy / sweet on one hand, and salty /

tangy on the other. After all, why olives and raisins in what chef David Guas characterizes as an “a la minute chili”?

What I like is the variety. Every bite has a different ratio of these diametrically opposite profiles represented by raisins and olives, giving it more degrees of freedom and more staying

power over the course of a meal than many chilis I’ve had. It isn’t monodimensional. And because one of the flavor profiles is tangy, it can make the meal light enough to get all the way

through without being weighed down. The cinnamon, I think, is a natural pairing for raisins, and is an element that works well in a savory context with tomatoes in the same way as curry

does.

The one thing I wanted to avoid was making the raisins or olives “bit actors” that are just novelties in a chili. I wanted them to star, and tug you into interpreting the meat and tomato

sauce in two different directions. A bold dish all its own.

Hope you enjoy!