Before I started developing aguachiles during my time at Républica, I thought aguachile was simply a salsa with many variations. As I learned, there’s actually a distinction in the concept and execution of aguachile that differentiates it from ceviche, which is what many people may be more familiar with in the United States.

The History of Aguachile

Aguachile is from Sinaloa and translates to “chile water.” It usually features some kind of seafood that gets tossed with the aguachile, which cooks it as you’re eating it because the chile water has an acidic component. It’s important to differentiate it from ceviche in this way, where the curing actually happens hours beforehand, making the seafood more firm. Historically, aguachile was made with smoked meats to re-tenderize it after preservation. However, when Japanese migrants came to Mexico, they influenced the dish by altering the smoked meat with seafood instead, thanks to the boom of the fishing industry at the time.

My time at República was when I really honed in on my love for seasonality and incorporated that into the philosophy of the restaurant, so that’s also when we first developed the concept of a strawberry aguachile. Now, I don’t want to say that we invented it ourselves, but it’s the first time that I personally ever saw one on a menu.

Honoring Japanese flavors in an aguachile

So now, whenever strawberries and cucumbers first come into season, we try to make an aguachile with it. The aguachile is not your traditional aguachile, which is usually made with garlic, cucumber, aromatics, and lime. Instead, we really wanted to highlight the flavor of the strawberries while paying homage to the Japanese migrants who helped define this dish. So for that reason, our aguachile has koji and mirin, along with agave and albion strawberries.

First-summer glimpses featuring strawberries and cucumbers

If last week was considered a winter-to-spring transitional time, this week is definitely starting to give you those first glimpses of summer flavors in the spring, starting with those albion strawberries. We wanted to preserve the firmer textures that early-season items hold while still giving them our own special versions of an “extra push” for maximum flavor.

Albion strawberries aren’t nearly as soft as other varieties that people in the Pacific Northwest know really well, like Hoods and Sweet Charlies. But they’re still just as red and full. So to amplify their flavor, we’re doing a pickle…I hesitate to say pickle since we don’t add the same aromatics as a traditional pickle gets…All this is is sugar, strawberry vinegar, ice wine vinegar, and salt. So it definitely has the flavors of a pickle, minus the heat.

A lot of people might think of cucumbers as a summer produce, but they actually start arriving in the late spring time as well. For our Persian cucumbers, we’re preserving the texture by compressing them in a vacuum-sealed bag. All it takes is about 40 seconds at a low pressure, otherwise you risk breaking them down much faster than intended. With just a little dressing of lemon and salt, it heavily amplifies their flavor while giving them a translucent color.

Bay Scallops that sing with freshness

I thought that the sweetness of a scallop would do really well with the flavors of the strawberries and cucumber, but also because they tend to cook a little faster with the aguachile before they go out. And honestly, it’s simply an opportunity to enjoy a scallop on its own. It really keeps the integrity and freshness of the scallop. It’s super fresh, they’re beautiful. We don’t cure them or anything. We just dress them with a little lime and salt and add the aguachile right before they go out.

One of the most defining features that people will notice for the aguachile this week is the heat, which is another component that truly differentiates it from ceviche, which isn’t always spicy. Today we’re using chile de arbol from Westwind Gardens, which is a very spicy chile that has a tropical sensation to it.

So for that, you’ll definitely know it’s an aguachile. But it’s also more than that.

Right now, at this moment in time, it’s too easy to say that this is my favorite season because everyone in Portland is feeling that way right now. Everything’s starting to move. There’s still that Portland mist, that rain, but blooms are starting to occur. It feels like the Earth is about to awaken.

Progressive spring is the epitome of hyper-seasonality

So I’ll be a little more specific and talk about the clash between the end of winter and the beginning of spring, the progressive spring—I love all the micro-seasons that come with produce during this time. It’s why I call Lilia Comedor hyper-seasonal—it’s because of this time in the spring, when I get to work with produce that has special, limited growing seasons. The green strawberries that our team used recently were one amazing example of that because they only grow for two weeks out of the year. Something like spruce tips, which is on this week’s dessert menu, are another prime example of that because they’re also only available for a couple weeks.

And not only are spruce tips hyper-seasonal. They’re super regional… I mean the food of the land, the food that was here before any of us were. Spruce tips are the food that was utilized by indigenous people who have been eating them for hundreds of years. They’re a great representation of these people and this region.

Snap peas and the farmers market swing

At the farmers market lately, everything has been flourishing. There’s a noticeable shift. When I’m deciding on what produce to use for Lilia, I usually let the produce talk to me. I gravitate towards whatever looks most beautiful (and let me just remind you that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder). This week, snap peas were one of those items.

The first time I saw that snap peas were available on Eloisa’s Instagram, I was running late to the farmers market and they were already out of stock by the time I got there. It’s not the end of the world to miss a vegetable’s first week of harvest though, because the micro-seasonality of vegetables can even change from the start of a cycle to an end. Sugars can develop, maturing roots will deepen a flavor, etc. For snap peas though, missing the first week is fine. Their sugars still haven’t fully developed, so they’re really crunchy and perfect for my dish this week, which is esquites.

Building esquites by starting with snap peas

Esquites is a street food from Mexico that consists of loose corn kernels in a cup that get topped with mayo, Tajín, lime, and cotija cheese. But instead of using corn, we’re replacing it with whole snap peas, skin intact. Unlike English peas that you eat for the pods, you want to eat the shell of a snap pea because of that crunch it has; so, for that reason, we barely sear it for this dish before topping it with a roasted garlic and Meyer lemon aioli instead of mayo, the Meyer lemon representing the last of winter produce. It has a little more depth and gives this dish that fatty element that it needs.

Sunflower dukkah as a means of crunch and complexity

The chile powder we use is a dukkah with chiles and a lot of other powerful spices. Dukkah is a Middle Eastern spice blend that our team often makes in house with the ingredients that we have on hand, which allows us to be really intentional about the moment in time and what spices make the most sense seasonally and from a flavoring perspective. This week, amongst ingredients like pink and black peppercorns, several chiles, cumin, coriander, etc., it has sunflower seeds–which is another representation of ingredients available during the shift-over seasons. Of course they have a nutty taste, but they’re also bitter and sweet, and the texture of its crunch is something I just can’t compare to any other kind of seed or nut. This week’s dukkah really helps us elevate the esquites beyond a standard street food with a deeper level of complexity.

Adding funkiness with an apple cider-washed cow cheese

Another thing that really takes this dish to the next level is the alpine cheese. For this version of esquites, cotija cheese would have probably been too overpowering when we want the sweetness and the beauty of the snap peas to stand out the most. However, I still needed a cheese that was still a little sharper than a cow’s cheese but not as tangy as a goat’s cheese. So we’ve got an alpine gruyere cheese washed in apple cider from Helvetia Creamery, who only has about five cows a year to manufacture this. When I came upon it at Cowbell Creamery, I was looking for something that was a little bit more intense than Parmesan, but a little bit more reserved than a sheep’s cheese. This cheese really nails it, and the creaminess really completes this dish.

Who says esquites has to have corn in it?

If I closed my eyes and took a bite of the dish, I would just instantly know that this is definitely esquites. It doesn’t have to be made with corn or just mayonnaise, because that’s not what esquites is all about. I could definitely see where the dish is going, where it came from, and where it’s going to end up at.

For me, food has always been family-oriented. After all, Lilia is named after my mother. A lot of the dishes at the restaurant are inspired by foods that I grew up eating. A few times a year at Lilia Comedor, I make chilaquiles. But unlike the other items that are on the menu, I try to keep things a little simpler for this dish because I want it to be humble and to feel like something accessible to everyone. I also try not to tinker with it too much, just because it holds such strong core foundational food memories for myself.

Growing up, food was like an indulgence for me as a kid. Many chefs will tell you that they spent their childhoods in the kitchen helping their parents, whether it was plucking herbs alongside them or assembling dumpling wrappers together. For me though, I didn’t really get into the kitchen until later in life, so a lot of the food I enjoyed growing up was made by my mom, who truly showed her love through cooking for us.

One of the things she made most often for us were chilaquiles, which are still a staple in my life. Most of the time, they’re served for breakfast, utilizing older or stale tortillas as a way to make sure they don’t go to waste. They’re typically topped with a salsa, which could be any kind of salsa, whether it’s red, green, sometimes even orange salsa or with a mole. The tortillas get braised in a salsa, and then you top it with an egg, and sometimes queso fresco or crema. Every once in a while, if there’s an opportunity, you could put meat on it too. From carne asada to chorizo to carnitas, the options are kind of endless.

Today’s Chilaquiles at Lilia

The version we have on the menu today is a salsa roja so that we could utilize the chiles I buy from Westwind Gardens. We air fry our tortillas and then deep fry them till they get extra crispy, and I also utilize an egg cooking technique from one of my favorite chefs, Wylie Dufrense. We take egg yolks and circulate them in water at 65 Celcius for 45 minutes, which gives them a lot more of an umami flavor and a really creamy texture. It’s almost like pure egg yolk hollandaise with the addition of butter. Our chilaquiles at Lilia are also really locally focused because all of the ingredients for it are sourced within 250 miles of the restaurants, which I think is pretty cool.

Eating Chilaquiles in Portland

When I go out for chilaquiles though, salsa verde will always reign supreme. Occasionally, I go to Supermercado Mexico (17420 SE Division St.) for them, which I’ll order with chorizo and a bolillo bread roll on the side when I’m feeling extra indulgent.

As a hyper-seasonal chef, I try to be really intentional about every ingredient I’m using for a dish. Some weeks, I just get cravings. This week, I wanted a chalupa.

Thanks to Taco Bell, just about everyone knows what a chalupa is. But what they don’t know is that a chalupa is from central Mexico, where the name refers to a canoe that you would take to get into Mexico City. This version is super different from both versions (Taco Bell and central Mexico) because it features a morel mushroom tinga instead of the chicken or beef that you may be used to seeing.

Why Not Vegetables?

I’ve done this several times with dishes that most people associate with meat. Every time, I tell myself, well, I could make something out of meat, so what’s stopping me from making them with vegetables? So the morel mushrooms in this dish are the first of this season, coming from Oregon. The morels hold their shape really nicely and a tinga is a really great way to utilize the first batch. The flavor of them, the texture of them is very distinct, and in my mind, they kind of symbolize the time and place we are right now. When I think of morels, I instantly think of somewhere in North America when it’s spring.

The Morel Tinga

With that, it just felt obvious to make a tinga. So we make the tinga by combining chile sandia with some caramelized onions, Mexican oregano, and Japanese ingredients like koji, vinegar, and tamari. Tomatoes are another thing that’s super crucial for tinga, but to honor its seasonality, we use sundried tomatoes in oil since the fresh ones aren’t in season. After letting that cook for a couple of hours, we emulsify it and blend it and make it into our adobo sauce. The tinga has even more caramelized onions, garlic, Mexican oregano, and finally the morels, which we have to cook for another hour to evaporate their moisture. At this point, it’s a demi-glace that really sticks to the mushrooms. You can really use all the morels on anything. You can use them on a tostada. You can use them on a huarache. That’s the beautiful thing about guisados and masa. You can use any kind of masa as a vessel, and you can use any kind of guisado for the topping.

Preserving Bok Choy Rabe as an Unfermented Kimchi

Another important feature of this chalupa is the bok choy rabe. So rabe in general is a spring ingredient, typically a brassica or a vegetable that’s starting to flower or bolt–and in that moment of flowering, the leaves and the stems are edible. Using bok choy for this dish was obvious because it’s so tender and herbaceous, and usually, baby bok choy is something I really enjoy. But bok choy rabe is even more delicate than that, so utilizing its sweetness and herbaceousness made a lot more sense than something like a kale rabe or broccoli rabe.

For our bok choy rabe, we trim the leaves, cut the stems, and then make a geotjeori out of it. A technique I learned with Peter Cho at Toki, geotjeori is like a quick version of kimchi–but mine is vegetarian because I omit the fish sauce and shrimp paste. Geotjeori helps me preserve the texture of the bok choy while adding something acidic to really brighten everything up.

For my chalupa, I’ve combined these ingredients and layered them with emulsified gigante beans (think hummus, but replace garbanzo beans with butter beans) and crema Mexicana.

Complex Layers With Simple Execution

Now, what I’ll say right away about this chalupa overall is that the morels stand out the most because they’re morels and morels are incomparable to anything. However, between layers of gigante beans, bok choy, morels, and tinga, I’m building complexity but in a way that looks very simple. The flavor of the texture of the chalupa will erase any conversation you’ve ever had about chalupas in general and what they’re supposed to be like.

Purple sprouting broccoli is probably one of my top three favorite ingredients of the entire year. Compared to broccoli raab or rapini, it’s sweeter. It has a lot better texture. It roasts really well, it grows really well. It fries really well, and its florets are really distinctive.

For this week’s dish, we’re using those florets from Bethel Farms, poaching it, and then searing it, which makes it tender with some really nice sear marks.

Pine Nut Mole de Novia

Because purple sprouting broccoli is a brassica, we felt that utilizing cauliflower in the mole really represented the beginning of spring.

When you talk about mole, there’s a few states that come to mind, Oaxaca of course. Oaxaca has several famous moles that are considered the foundation of mole, but there’s also lesser known ones. Mole de Novia is from the Mixtec that’s meant for weddings, and utilizes lighter ingredients so the bride doesn’t stain her dress. Ours this week is going to be made of cauliflower, along with leeks and golden raisins. It’s one of the first that I first learned to make with Lauro Romero, who used to be our executive chef, and when I took a bite, I was just like, this is not what I thought mole was supposed to be. Growing up, I thought mole was just a one-box sauce that had chocolate, darkness, spice, and fruit flavors, but when I started developing moles at Republica, I realized that there’s just so many variations. So whenever those key ingredients are in season is when we make mole de novia.

And because purple sprouting broccoli is a brassica, we felt that utilizing cauliflower in the mole really represented the beginning of spring. We’re doing a little bit of brown butter pine nuts over the top as well to amplify the flavor of the mole.

Cured Green Strawberries: A Chef’s Secret Weapon

We have beautiful green strawberries, which not only add a floral note, but there’s also a lot of texture and herbaceousness that brings everything together.

So green strawberries are an unripe strawberry that very recently have gotten a lot of attention. Most of the time they get pickled, but for ours, we compress them in verjus, lemon, and a little bit of ice wine vinegar. Pickling strawberryberries has always been kind of redundant because of the texture—they get really soft and dissipate. But green strawberries don’t do that. They hold up really well. To take something that’s an unripe strawberry that typically doesn’t often get used and amplify it as a spring ingredient…that takes some time and some attention. We’re getting ours from Northern California, still part of the Cascadia region. But a little later into spring, Groundwork Organics will have them, along with a few farmers because they know chefs enjoy them. But they won’t sell them to the general public. It’s like a special chef request to be able to get them.

Cauliflower Curtido to Add Texture And Florality

Finally, to tie it all together, we add a cauliflower curtido to the top. The texture is really different. There’s a lot more texture, with more vegetal notes, so it’s a lot more floral and allows the vegetable to sing. It’s a curtido that’s based off the Six seasons of Cooking cookbook, but we clash it with a Mexican curtido, which is traditionally a lightly fermented Mexican cabbage. So we take the fundamentals of utilizing the cookbook’s cold brine technique on the cauliflower with the flavors of the Mexican fermented cabbage, so it’s a clash of both.

I love Singing Scallops more than oysters for their intense hyperseasonality. Now don’t get me wrong, I love oysters. I’ll knock one back any time except the summer. I never eat oysters during the summer, and I don’t serve them during the summer because typically the water gets too hot. And with summer transportation and the way it travels, it’s not something I’m willing to compromise. Singing Scallops, on the other hand, there’s nothing quite like it. The delicate flavor, the texture, the fact that it kind of stays with you for a little bit… I don’t know if there’s something as hyper-seasonal as singing scallops.

The Magic and Rarity of Singing Scallops

Singing Scallops are only available for two weeks out of the year, and are literally hand-harvested by divers out in Alaska, where they’re from. When my friend Jobie at Corfini Gourmet introduced them to me, I had no idea what they were. Within the first two weeks of Lilia opening, he dropped in, handed me 10 pounds of them, and that was it. My first instinct was to grab some lemons and salt to season them before eating them but he stopped me. He told me you have to taste it raw on its own first before you eat anything else with it. Jovie has been where they’re harvested, and the way he explained it to me is that Singing Scallops taste like the way Alaska smells in the morning. The ones I’m working with today were flown in on Thursday morning. You have to eat them within 48 hours of receiving them. It really doesn’t get any more hyperseasonal than that. People usually prefer to eat the roe of a scallop exclusively. But for these scallops, they’re served alive and whole to preserve their freshness.

The Serrano Kosho Pear Granita

I have an Anjou pear granita that’s served over the raw Singing Scallop, which is a traditional Italian semi-frozen dessert. A lot of people are familiar with Anjou pears, and they’re definitely one of my top three favorite pears. The ones I’m working with are from Kiyokawa Farms out in Hood River, which I blend with a little bit of a serrano kosho. Kosho is a Japanese chili paste made from salted citrus (usually yuzu peel) and chiles. Here at Lilia, we take serranos that we salted from the summer in order to do that. The idea is that with this pairing, you get the flavors of an aguachile with the preparation of a Japanese technique. The granita also cools down the scallop while also firming up the meat, making it a more pleasant experience overall to eat.

Olive Oil Caviar as an Added Layer of Complexity

To complete the experience, I’m topping the scallops off with olive oil caviar, which I source from Caviaroli. Despite the name it doesn’t actually have caviar in it, but rather it’s olive oil that’s been encapsulated into popping shells that look like caviar. Made with Arbequina olive oil, it adds a really nice layer of fat to it, along with an added layer of texture. Combined with the granita, everything creates a really interesting sensation, from the crunch of the granita to the way the olive oil coats your palate.

Suadero is from Central Mexico. Mexico City, specifically. Traditionally made with a cut tucked somewhere deep inside the brisket, a cut most people here never really see. So instead, I started with Central Oregon short rib. Same philosophy. Braised slowly in adobo and tallow until it reaches that point where the edges begin to caramelize and the meat almost folds into itself.

But the rest of the plate drifts.

It’s sweet corn season, so naturally that found its way in. Roasted and folded into something closer to tarator than salsa. Dry spices. Chiles. Aromatics. A little pull from the Middle East. Jimmy Nardellos are peaking right now too, and Sungold Farms grows some of the best I’ve worked with, so they get blistered hard over flame until they almost collapse.

Then there’s the tortilla.

Cooked first. Air-dried after. Grilled again over open fire. Almost like a reverse tlacoyo or tostada. Something you break apart with your hands instead of cutting cleanly with a knife and fork.

That part matters to me.

Maybe it comes from growing up between places. Born in Sinaloa. Raised in Los Angeles. Cooking professionally for most of my life somewhere between fine dining precision and the food I actually crave eating.

I think more and more, I’m interested in dishes that feel lived in.

Not pristine.
Not overly composed.
Just honest enough to remind you that food is supposed to be touched.

-JG

I don’t mean to sound cheesy, but huitlacoche reminds me of my ancestors. It has a certain sense of lineage that I can’t describe, but whenever I eat it, it takes me back home and creates a really particular connection that I don’t feel with any other Mexican foods. Growing up, I used to eat it in quesadillas, or it was part of an enchilada, and we would also eat it in blue rice.

A corn byproduct re-emerges as a culinary treasure

Huitlacoche is a type of naturally occurring fungi that grows on corn after the rainy season in Mexico. It was traditionally eaten by farmers with the Three Sisters of Mesoamerica 3,000 years ago: corn, squash, and beans. What started as a food eaten out of leftovers has actually become a delicacy today–the “Mexican truffle” is what some people call it. And it’s not just used in Mexico. Chefs everywhere are using it in variations like pastas, sauces, risottos, etc. It’s something to be proud of. Something that most of the time in the States is considered as waste is now being featured as something really important.

The delicate nature of huitlacoche

Unfortunately, this also means that some of it is intentionally grown in hydroponic facilities. Ours comes from Yakima and is naturally derived. But in order to preserve it, it’s flash frozen to maintain its flavors and quality. On its own, huitlacoche has a subtle sweetness, earthiness, creaminess, and bitterness–almost like a truffle but not resembling anything close to it. It’s really easy to overcook and undercook, though. You really have to know how to work with it. The fact that we’re able to work with it is really incredible considering it’s not a very humble ingredient anymore. It’s not very cheap, and it’s also difficult to find fresh or frozen in the States.

A taco dorado you won’t find anywhere else

To highlight the huitlacoche, I put it into a taco dorado. Now, my taco dorado isn’t exactly like the ones you’re going to find elsewhere. It’s not your typical deep-fried taco. I’ve taken my favorite parts and combined it with a taco ahogado and enchilada to create a perfect taco that’s crispy on the outside but soft and creamy on the inside.

We start off by cooking the huitlacoche with a bunch of onions and garlic, sauteed until it’s translucent, which develops a deep roasted flavor. It’s then deglazed with liquor from the huitlacoche, almost making a nice emulsion before cooling it down. Once we cool it down we add a requeson to hold it together and add a really nice layer of fat to it, which also cuts through the intense flavor of the huitlacoche.

A South American tuber adds acidity and texture

Then, we add shaved oca to the taco dorado. Oca is a tuber that originated in the Andes, which comes from the same family as sorrel. Similar to sorrel, it has a bright acidity, with lemon notes and a really crisp clean taste with beautiful herbaceous notes. Shaved thin and further crisped in ice water, the oca serves as the fresh crispy toppings to a taco, similar to radishes and lettuce.

When foods feel familiar yet taste different

Finally, to make it “ahogado” or a wet, we make an adobo with sandia chiles, which adds another layer that softens it. It’s almost like a play on a taco ahogado, which is a drowned taco. You might think it looks like a folded over enchilada. It has a lot of its own elements that make it feel familiar.

Chicken is not usually something I put on the menu, just because our space has been limited and the chances for mishandling chicken are high. And even though it seems like chicken is a commodity, in restaurants it’s very difficult to order chicken. It’s not something that’s readily available, and you have to pre-order it.

But for the moment right now, people synchronize this time of year with eating chicken wings. I’ll get a lot of pushback on adding wings to the menu at Lilia Comedor. People might say, “Why are you serving wings? You know, it’s Cocina Noroeste. Why would I want to do something that’s not in my usual format?”

And my answer to that is, well, that’s kind of what we want to do, right? We want to serve something that’s attainable to everyone, but shown in a different way.

What I like about wings is that it’s always been something that I eat with my hands and enjoy. You know, you get a little messy. Get a little dirty. It’s something that kind of centers around bringing people together. Most of the time, I’m eating wings at someone’s house, or I’m used to being at a bar, watching UFC or a game, so it just goes hand-in-hand with community.

How to make wings that stay crispy and juicy

Classic Buffalo wings are usually made with chicken that comes straight out of the bag and gets double-fried, which will either dry them out or they’ll get rubbery, depending on how you make them. I’m doing confit style to cook our wings, which involves brining and cooking them in a container of melted butter at a low temperature for 2-3 hours before they get fried to a crispy texture and tossed in our sauce. Confit retains the chicken’s moisture while also imparting a nutty flavor into it.

I make a salsa that’s modeled after a classic Mexican salsa called Búfalo Salsa, but it’s ironic because that salsa doesn’t really have anything to do with Buffalo sauce. But to keep it similar to American Buffalo sauce, it has a simpler ingredient list: fermented garlic, chiles, vinegar, etc. The wings have other components that’ll make it a more complex dish.

Ranch that doesn’t go by any other name

So in my perception, ranch has always been the number-one dip for my wings, and people are gonna want to fight you on that—specifically people from the East Coast. Ranch is kind of seen as a basic sauce. Really though, if you incorporate some fun stuff like dino kale, it could be a lot better.

So we have a little bit of pickled serranos and ramps in there, roasted poblanos. There’s gonna be dino kale that gives the ranch a green color… buttermilk, mayo… there’s a lot going on, but for the most part it just tastes like ranch. Again, the idea is to make attainable for people to taste it and recognize that it’s definitely ranch, but there’s a lot more to it behind the scenes. I could have called it a buttered preserved, serrano pickled and buttermilk aioli–but did I need to? No. Not for wings. For wings, we’re calling it dino kale ranch.

Transcending wings into a Cocina Noroeste dish

The wings are crusted in a pepita dukkah, which is a Middle Eastern spice crumble. Ours has a ton of spices like black peppercorns, cumin, coriander, ginger, etc., which gives the wings texture, an explosion of flavor, and a way that sets it apart from being “just wings.” It just ties everything together.

An unexpected crudité

When I was going to the farmer’s market and I was talking to my farmers, I was explaining how I needed something with a lot of texture and a lot of flavor that’s not too bitter. They said Tardivo is the one. It’s sweet, the texture is beautiful, almost buttery. I use that as a crudité on top of the wings, similar to how carrots are served with Buffalo wings.

So as you take a bite of a wing, you take a bite of a leaf, and you’re dipping it in ranch, and you’re using your hands to enjoy it. Believe it or not, I really like it when people eat with their hands here. The idea is to get messy. And if you don’t leave with at least a little bit on your shirt, did you really dine with us at Lilia? It’s a lot less formal, it’s a lot more communal. It’s really about just enjoying yourself and letting go of everything else.

Chef Olivia Bartruff is currently standing in for Chef Juan Gomez while he’s on paternity leave. Sending his family best wishes!

Honey-kiwi semifreddo

Honey-macerated Oregon kiwis, Oso Farms honey, candied pistachio

When I was looking at Lilia Comedor’s ingredients for the week, Chef Juan said that he had been thinking about adding a semifreddo to the menu; I asked him what he had on hand that we could use and we had kiwis. And so, my prompt became semifreddo and kiwi. I was trying to think about what flavors would complement the kiwi. I typically don’t like processing them that much because I think the texture is really cool and they’re visually so stunning.

The kiwis we have are from Oregon right now, and they have a really tropical, earthy flavor. In general though, people don’t really use kiwi a lot. The season’s not very long, and it has a really particular flavor and a certain astringency to it. This can make it difficult to pair with other ingredients sometimes.

So when I was developing this dessert with kiwi, I wanted to pair it with other Oregon local ingredients, but to also bring out its more earthy and tropical flavors. So for me, honey has both of those flavor qualities too. This semifreddo highlights the kiwi as a main ingredient, but another important component of this dessert is the honey I’m using from Oso Farms. They’re somebody we work with a lot and really like.

Honey from high-quality bee farms can truly show you that honey tastes differently depending on the varietal. You may have seen honey labels that have descriptors like “wildflower” or “orange blossom” on the labels. Well, when you think about how honey is made, it’s all just flowers right? Because the honey is nectar that comes from bees who are pollinating flowers. However, it’s actually what type of flower they’re pollinating that can make a difference in the taste of a honey.

So for my semifreddo, I’m macerating the kiwis and mixing my cream and eggs with pumpkin honey–which means the bees were pollinating pumpkins. It definitely has a sweeter, more classic honey taste. But then I’m also finishing the dessert with a radicchio honey. The raddichio honey has a noticeably more bitter, complex taste that balances out the sweetness of the semifreddo, along with some crushed candied pistachios I’m adding as a topping.

Candied pistachio has a little bit of a floral quality in the same way that honey does. It also adds another layer of texture, which makes it more complex than just having the semifreddo’s crumble.

It keeps the whole dish gluten-free, which I tend to do almost by default, partly just from doing similar dishes at República so often. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to do something that has gluten in it; I just think there are some things that you don’t need gluten to achieve texture and flavor. But I’m not a gluten hater. I love gluten.

Overall, the idea is that through this minimalist dish, every ingredient in this semifreddo should be really punchy. Ideally, the honey should be pretty forceful coming through. The kiwis are also delicious right now, and are going to be unadulterated in their texture and flavor.

Winter menus tend to feature a lot more fatty ingredients and preservatives because of the limited produce that we work with during this time, but I thought it was interesting how Chef Juan’s menu this week really leans into more balanced items than those. This time, the menu features several citric flavors, winter fruits, leaner fish like sturgeon, lighter root veggies, and specialized preparation techniques. Which, to me, feels unique for a winter menu. I don’t know if that’s his intent, but that’s my interpretation.

Chef Olivia Bartruff is the Culinary Director of República & Co., Hospitality. To read more about her thoughts on the industry, check out her feature on Humble Kitchen.

Black futsu squash, Melogold, requesón, salsa negra

Every week at Lilia Comedor, we try to incorporate at least one masa concept into the menu. It doesn’t always make it because we are not necessarily a Mexican restaurant. We’re just inspired by Mexican-American ingredients, so some weeks there’s no masa on the menu at all. It’s very rare, but I personally like to eat masa a lot.

So when I thought about a memela, I knew that I didn’t really eat many of them growing up in Los Angeles, since the dish is originally from Oaxaca. The first time I tried them was when I was traveling from Arizona back to Los Angeles. At the time, I remember stopping by Venice Beach and there was a little corner stand that was pumping out the memelas as fast as they could.

And what I like about the memela is the texture. It’s thicker than a tortilla, so it does have a really soft consistency. But you should be able to cut it with a fork. It has a little bit of a tender chew, and a nice outer layer with a certain crunch to it.

Koji-Roasted Black Futsu Squash

When I was creating this menu item, I didn’t actually start with the memela. I started with black futsu squash, which is the type of heirloom squash variety from Japan that I found at the Portland State University farmers market. On the vine they’re pitch black, but as they ripen, they lose that color. To bring out the squash’s flavors, we roast it with koji.

So when you make koji, there’s fermented rice, but then there’s also a creamy byproduct that has a really funky and sweet flavor to it. This week, we cut the black futsu into wedges, and then right before roasting it, we rub it with the koji byproduct. But it’s not as sweet as you would think. Sometimes, people think of squash and they picture pumpkin or butternut squash, and they think of pie, but squash can also be really savory in a really good way. And koji kind of brings out those beautiful, more complex flavors that you normally don’t get in squash otherwise.

Roasted squash and fresh cheese: a long-term relationship

Roasted squash and ricotta have a beautiful relationship. Combined with an acidic component, the formula has been used so many times. So I used that as a foundation from my training but I put our own spin on it. And requesón just was obvious for me, you know, laying down that beautiful memela that’s really tender and putting in a good amount of fat like a fresh cheese of requesón as the base.

Melogold: Pomelo’s Floral Family Member

Melogold is a type of pomelo hybrid in the grapefruit family from Northern California. So right now in Portland, we’re midway through our winter citrus season, and that’s only the second week that Melogold has actually started. Melogold is like a grapefruit, but not as bitter, and it’s very similar to a pomelo, but with a lot more nuance to it. It has floral notes that really make it stand out, so much so that I got Daniel to use it for one of his drinks at Bar Comala.

Salsa Negra’s Unapologetic Spice and Complexity

When I experienced salsa macha for the first time, it was taking over the United States. Everyone was talking about macha. However, I didn’t want to do a salsa that was that close to salsa macha. It needed to be different. And salsa negra is that. It’s closely related, but there’s ingredients that you usually don’t find in fresh salsa. Using a combination of rare chiles, black garlic, and spices, it has a really strong depth and flavor profile that differentiates it from salsa macha. And not only does it add spice to the memela, but it also offers a complexity that ties the entire dish together. It’s spicier than most people expect. It’s unapologetic.

Trust in the process

Like most of our dishes, a lot of the ingredients and a lot of the steps that we do to every dish, we don’t necessarily divulge. If I were to put every single ingredient that we use, the description would be huge and people would be talking to us about it for 30 minutes. My philosophy is that we’re supposed to make our food seem like minimal, like it’s an attainable dish that anyone can do. But when they taste it, there’s a whirlwind of flavors that they weren’t ready for. If guests were to try to replicate it from purely visual memory, they’d miss those key points. That’s important because we want people to just trust us to do the work.

This week, Sam, my wife and the pastry chef at Lilia Comedor, felt like grilling a cake—this time, a pound cake. It’s something we’ve made before at the restaurant but with a strawberry dessert mole in the past; my favorite version of mole besides the one I grew up eating.

Soaked in a little bit of butter and very low heat, it caramelizes the entire thing, accentuating its creaminess and fat. It’s a much more intense version of a dessert that’s usually on the drier side.

I’ll be honest. It’s not the most luxurious cake, but when someone who actually knows what they’re doing makes it, it’s incredible. Historically, pound cake’s name comes from a pound of cheap ingredients: a pound of milk, a pound of butter, and a pound of flour. That has to stem from not having anything else, right? It came out of humble beginnings.

The champurrado

While this is a pound cake, I feel like champurrado is the main ingredient of this dish because it’s something I’ve had throughout my life, and something that Sam often makes at Lilia. Champurrado for us was always prepared like a hot chocolate with cinnamon and vanilla, thickened by masa. For a spin on this, Sam used a white chocolate instead of milk chocolate, and we sourced from the best available, Valrhona. The white chocolate makes the champurrado more delicate. What’s ironic is that the champurrado blanco isn’t super sweet, which it usually is. This one is a little bit more savory.

After making the champurrado blanco, I sent my friend Angel away with a pint and that’s the happiest I’ve seen him in a really long time. I think it hit a core memory for him too. That’s important with desserts, at least for Sam. Her number-one thing is that it has to be nostalgic for guests. I don’t want to say that we originated champurrado blanco, but I can also say that I haven’t seen it anywhere else.

Caviar as balance and flavor dimension

When I asked Sam if we could add caviar to the dessert, she was a little reluctant. But I explained how in the past, I’ve noticed that other chefs did it in a way where savory and sweet was how a meal would be finished—plus, on your last dessert, you want to go out with a bang, right? You want it to be the most memorable thing that you had. Our caviar is from Royal Ostera, which is top of the line. To my surprise, I didn’t think the dessert would sell. And yet, I’ve received some feedback that it’s been the best dish on the entire menu. So, the caviar is really just more balance and dimension.

The final toppings: toffee, crema gelato, olio verde

The toffee crunch topping adds texture, while the crema gelato topping is similar to an ice cream but more dense. Adding acidity, it cuts through the richness of everything else.

Finally, we finish the dessert with olio verde, which has a lot spicier of a flavor than the arbequina oil we use for a lot of our other dishes. It’s more well rounded and has a better mouthfeel.

Rice pudding holds so many memories for me, eating it hot, still steaming from the pot. My mom telling me to wait until it cooled down. Long nights with champurrado, and chilled arroz con leche waiting in the fridge.

It’s more than just food.

We were low income, and we knew it. Same shoes for years. Clothes that didn’t quite fit. But food never lacked. And whenever our parents were proud of us, whenever they wanted to show love, they did it with food.

That’s what makes this dish special.

Beyond the usual winter dishes; tamales, pozole… I couldn’t wait until it was past 10pm. The rice almost done. The hot chocolate just starting. Those moments stayed with me.

My incredible wife, Sam, who as some of you know, is the human responsible for all of our great desserts on the menu at Lilia– wanted to bring this memory back to life in a winter format—clashing it with one of her all-time favorites: crème brûlée.

So here we have it.

Brûléed arroz con leche, layered with citrus: sumo syrup, satsuma gelée, cara cara supreme, pickled raisin. Finished with a deeply savory crumble of caramelized coconut cream.

It only takes about eight hours to make.
Something simple—taken just far enough to push it over the top.

— Juan

Black bean adobo (allium, chipotle, apple cider vinegar)
Queso Botanero — Don Froylan Creamery
Roasted bok choy
5-day cured egg yolk

Enfrijoladas were one of the first dishes I thought about putting on the menu at Lilia Comedor.

Why? Because they taste like home.

Enfrijoladas come from leftovers. From the beans you cooked for something else. Instead of an enchilada sauce made from dried chiles, the beans themselves become the adobo—the sauce. That black bean adobo is what gives the dish its name. It’s humble food, usually eaten for breakfast or lunch. Food built from what you already have.

That’s the tradition we’re working from here—only we’re layering it over pork collar carnitas, the preparation that first put us on the map.

The beans for the adobo come from Sungold Farms, where we source all of our beans. Chris only sells me beans that are less than six months old. After that, they lose flavor. Most dried beans you find in stores are over two years old.

Six months is the cap.

The adobo itself is made from beans we cooked the week before, blended with alliums—garlic, onions, chiles—and dried spices. Nothing flashy. Just depth.

We finish the dish with a seasoned quesillo from Don Froylan Creamery, an Oaxacan-style string cheese. It’s the only artisan creamery of its kind in Oregon, and it gives the dish a quiet richness that holds everything together.

The seasonal element here is roasted bok choy, laid over the enfrijoladas at the end—something green, fresh, and just bitter enough to balance the beans and pork.

And finally, the egg yolk.

We cure the yolks in salt and sugar for five days, then dehydrate them overnight at 150 degrees and grate them over the top. You might recognize this texture from Asian mooncakes. It’s similar—salty, cheesy, slightly gooey. Like the inside of a mooncake without the sweetness.

A dish built from what’s left.
Made new without losing its humility.

- Juan Gomez, Lila Comedor

Pork-Collar Enfrijoladas

Still very much at home.