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Wonders never cease
So I had these excellent boneless pork chops in my fridge, but then I spent several months never finding the time to cook and they started to develop some freezer burn and I knew that they had become stew meat. Pork stew? What would you put in pork stew. And then, suddenly, the word pozole popped into my head and I knew I had found my mission. What is pozole? It's a pork and hominy stew made slightly differently all over Mexico. And, whaddaya know, they have canned hominy in the International Foods aisle of the Porter Square Star Market. I looked at a bunch of different recipes on the net--I actually really enjoy that process. Rarely do I find one that suits my ideas perfectly (black beans do not belong in any pozole I'm going to make, for example), but after skimming ten or twenty different sets of ingredients and instructions, I can usually come up with something that seems like a plausible strategy for making what I want to make.
I heated up a tablespoon of sun-dried tomato infused olive oil in a big kettle and threw in almost three pounds of approximately one-inch cubed pork, with some kosher salt and black pepper, and cooked that over fairly high heat until it was browned. Then I tossed in a minced onion and about a head's worth of garlic, a can of diced tomatoes, a can of diced green chiles, a quart of chicken broth and a quart of water, turned down the heat some, covered it and ordered a pizza and watched a couple of episodes of Numb3rs. You don't have to watch Numb3rs, I'm sure CSI or Battlestar Galactica or The O.C. or whatever would work. Once the pork started to come apart (after about three episodes, sans commercials), I added in a can of hominy. The recipe whose procedures I was using (while ignoring their amounts and adjusting the ingredients) said to let that boil for an hour. What can I say--I forgot. But when I took the lid off the pot three hours later, the steam that wafted up smelled exactly like...pozole! Further investigation indicates that it even tastes like pozole. Or rather, pozole-base. The thing about pozole is that you don't just eat it--you have to add some kind of greens (I think we've got lettuce and endive in the fridge) and lime juice and salt and tortilla chips just before eating. But at this point it tastes just like pozole that needs lime and salt and lettuce and chips.
Sadly, I'm too tired to eat a big bowl of it right now, so I've poured it into some tubs that are cooling off in the sink so I can refrigerate them and go to sleep. But tomorrow, ah tomorrow, there will be pozole.
I heated up a tablespoon of sun-dried tomato infused olive oil in a big kettle and threw in almost three pounds of approximately one-inch cubed pork, with some kosher salt and black pepper, and cooked that over fairly high heat until it was browned. Then I tossed in a minced onion and about a head's worth of garlic, a can of diced tomatoes, a can of diced green chiles, a quart of chicken broth and a quart of water, turned down the heat some, covered it and ordered a pizza and watched a couple of episodes of Numb3rs. You don't have to watch Numb3rs, I'm sure CSI or Battlestar Galactica or The O.C. or whatever would work. Once the pork started to come apart (after about three episodes, sans commercials), I added in a can of hominy. The recipe whose procedures I was using (while ignoring their amounts and adjusting the ingredients) said to let that boil for an hour. What can I say--I forgot. But when I took the lid off the pot three hours later, the steam that wafted up smelled exactly like...pozole! Further investigation indicates that it even tastes like pozole. Or rather, pozole-base. The thing about pozole is that you don't just eat it--you have to add some kind of greens (I think we've got lettuce and endive in the fridge) and lime juice and salt and tortilla chips just before eating. But at this point it tastes just like pozole that needs lime and salt and lettuce and chips.
Sadly, I'm too tired to eat a big bowl of it right now, so I've poured it into some tubs that are cooling off in the sink so I can refrigerate them and go to sleep. But tomorrow, ah tomorrow, there will be pozole.