We are going to be making Mexican Picadillo. You can use the Picadillo to fill dishes that you like, like chiles rellenos, tube pasta, and many other dishes of the type that use a filling.
Start with 8 cups of water in a sauce pan. Add a leaf of laurel, a pound and a half of ground beef; We are going to add two chopped carrots. There they are, 2 chopped carrots. We are going to add a half of a small onion, and a clove of garlic.
We are going to grate the garlic so it doesn't just sit as a large piece. You can chop or grate the garlic, whichever way you prefer.
We are going to add 1 corn on the cob, grated. You can use a cheese grater, and remove all the kernals from the corn on the cob. This way there is no hard part of the corn, only soft pieces.
We are going to let this cook for as long as it takes for this meat to be tender. And we are going to be cooking off some of this water. By the way, you will want to add salt to taste.
Now we are going to add 1/2 cup chicharo (peas), so they will cook together with the ground beef. Later, when everything is tender and cooked, we are going to add onion, garlic, and cumin.
This has been cooking now for about 30 minutes. And we are going to see if the meat is now tender and cooked. It needs more time still.
You can add to the picadillo the ingredients you like best, a small calabasa (squash) chopped, would add some extra flavor, according to your own tastes.
OK, now we are going to look at this again, as you can see the water has dried up, now it just needs a little more time for flavor, for a broth. We remove the pan from the heat. And we are going to begin to fry the rest.
We are going to cook what comes next with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. We are going to fry a quarter-cup of finely chopped onions, and we are going to cook them until soft and tender.
When the oinion is cooked, we are going to add a clove of garlic, which you can either cut or grate with a grater. We will let this cook for another 2 minutes. We don't want this to cook too quickly, or it might loose some of its flavor.
Next, we are going to add 1 large tomato chopped.
And in the same way, we are going to let this cook for another 2 minutes to let the flavor cook in. Now we are going to add a quarter teaspoon of cumin.
Now that we've given this time to cook, we are going to add the meat. We remove the bay leaf.
And we are going to let this cook down for about five minutes. And we want to keep the flame height at medium. And we'll add a small amount of water, about a quarter cup. You can also add salt to taste.
Now that we have let this cook for 5 minutes, the moisture that it had has been cooked away, and this is how it should be. This picadillo is now ready to be used how you wish, (such as for a filling for chile relleno.)
