HOT DISH: Mishelle’s Caldo de Gallina brings Guatemala home

Cristel Recinos with her signature dish: caldo de gallina, a rich, complex soup made from an ancestral recipe, served with grilled hen and rice. AMY SOWDER PHOTO

By AMY SOWDER 

“When I was little, my grandmother had hens at home, and on Sundays she’d make this dish for all the families,” said Cristel Recinos, looking down at her soup with hen broth, a grilled hen and accompaniments laid out on a table after the lunch crowd dwindled on a recent afternoon. 

Her grandmother kept the birds in the yard in Esquipulas, Guatemala. And with eight sons and their families coming around, a whole hen in the pot made sense.

Her mother carried that tradition forward, serving the same fiery chiltepin salsa alongside every bowl. “In my house, my mother always made that kind of chile,” Recinos said. Chiltepins are small, round and searingly hot, a pepper native to Guatemala that most families grow in their yards or in a bucket kept indoors on a windowsill. Nearly everyone uses them.

Now Recinos is making that same caldo de gallina in downtown Mount Kisco, and her customers can barely wait for it.

When she first introduced the dish at Mishelle’s Bakery & Coffee, she offered it only on Wednesdays and Sundays. The requests for more days started immediately. 

“Every day people asked for it,” she said. “It’s famous in our country. It was so popular that we decided to make it fresh every morning.”

The soup is not on the printed menu yet, so you have to ask. Ask.

Recinos arrived in the U.S. with her daughter, Mishelle, as tourists, intending to visit and return home to Esquipulas, a city of significance to many in Mount Kisco’s Guatemalan-American community. Then the pandemic closed the airports. Stuck with a friend in Brewster, she improvised. 

“We had to start to sell something, so we started selling cakes,” she said. She began selling tres leches, cheesecake and tiramisu to area shops, including La Marqueta, a grocery store specializing in Latin American ingredients, also on Mount Kisco’s Main Street.

She went on to study pastry for two years with chef Jhoan Estupiñan at Magic Bakery School of New York, a women- and Latino-owned culinary academy in Queens. An experienced businesswoman, she had owned seven clothing boutiques in Guatemala and El Salvador. When a space became available in downtown Mount Kisco, she took it and named the café after her daughter. 

Mishelle’s opened on Nov. 15, 2024, with a menu of baked goods, pastries and custom cakes. Gradually, Recinos added traditional Guatemalan breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes like garnachas and churrasco chapin. “All traditional food from our country,” she said.

The caldo de gallina is the centerpiece. Unlike caldo de pollo, which uses younger chicken, gallina is a mature hen. The difference shows in the broth, which is deeper, richer and more complex. Recinos grills the hen after the long, slow cook to make the broth. 

Güicoyitos, the small, round green summer squash used across Guatemala and Central America, add texture alongside potato, carrot, celery, onion, tomato and garlic. Fresh mint lifts and brightens the whole bowl, adding another layer of flavor to an already complex broth. It’s an ancestral recipe made with local ingredients in the countryside, a taste of home served in Mount Kisco.

The ritual of eating this dish is half the point. Traditionally, you spoon white rice directly into the soup. The hen, half a bird per order divided vertically from breast to drumstick, gets eaten by hand. “It has a lot of bones, so it works best that way,” Recinos said. “Plus, you have to eat the skin.”

On the side are thick, handmade corn tortillas of Maseca flour, chopped avocado, and a bright, raw salsa de chiltepin of finely chopped fiery peppers, white onion, cilantro and lemon juice.

“When you ask for soup in our country, it will look like this,” Recinos said, gazing at the full spread.

Mishelle’s Bakery & Coffee is located at 209 Main St., Mount Kisco.