We had an old pal from Weirdcliffe pop in for a two-day visit beginning Thursday, and she brought her mom along, so I was required to cook. They’re all smiling in the picture at right, so I must not have poisoned anyone this time around.
The dinner menu was, of course, New Mexican — chicken quesadillas with salsa fresca and jalapeño-stuffed olives on Thursday, and posole with salsa verde on Friday. I was going to whip up some guacamole, too, but spaced it out, which means we can have that tonight with the leftovers.
Wines came from Spain, Portugal and France, including a delicious 2008 Château Miraval Côtes de Provence rosé called “Pink Floyd” that Kelli’s mom, Mary, bought for us. The 2009 iteration placed fourth in a top-10 ranking in a recent Wines of the Times piece by Eric Asimov.
Kelli had requested the posole, which I used to make all the time when we all still lived in Weirdcliffe, so I reprised my old recipe instead of the one I’ve been using from The Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook. Posole v1.0 uses plain water instead of chicken stock, canned white hominy and a tad less garlic, plus I don’t sauté the onions and garlic — I just chuck ’em into the pot with all the other ingredients.
It’s a lazy man’s posole, but Mary liked it enough to ask for the recipe. If you’d like it, too, here it is:
Lazy Man’s Posole
1 29-ounce can of white hominy
1.5 pounds lean pork, diced
2-4 dried New Mexican red chile pods
2 cups chopped onion
3 cloves garlic
2 tsp. Mexican oregano
1 tsp. freshly ground cumin seed
6 cups water
Salt to taste
Remove the stems and seeds from the chile pods and chop with the onions in a food processor. Mince the garlic. Throw the whole shootin’ match into a pot, bring to a boil and then simmer for 2-3 hours until the pork is tender. Add water as necessary. Serve with warm flour tortillas and small bowls of various garnishes — I usually chop up a few jalapeños, radishes and scallions for folks to add to the posole as they please. Coarsely chopped cilantro is nice, too.
This serves about six light eaters or three to four bicycle types, so I usually double up on it to be assured of leftovers.
Mad Blog Media 
I’ve been slaving at the stove and grille quite a bit lately. Seems the future ex-Mrs. Boz has fallen in step with her predecessors. They all love what I whip up nightly.So you know who mans the helm most every day. But, unfortunately for her, I am gainfully employed again starting next week. This means it will be back to shared kitchen duty again. And a real paycheck. That will be weird. In more than one way, that’s for sure. But, I do love to cook. If you do it yourself, you’ll always have a meal you like.
If you like good food the restaurant in town is usually yours..
What is different about Mexican oregano?
bueno me amigo disagree about not sauteing everything but stil sounds like a recipe to feed and sate the masses, especially those that know the cuisine. Growing up the burg I never thought our food was cuisine just good eats
Boz, I do love to cook, and it’s a good thing, too, ’cause Herself is not enough of an eater to enjoy spending a ton of time in the kitchen. Plus she has one of those actual jobs like the one you’re headed back to (congrats, by the way). Us lightly employed types have a little more free time to scour the Innertubes for tasty recipes, do the grocery shopping, and finally tackle the assembly.
Charley, Mexican oregano is more pungent than the Mediterranean variety. The stuff really packs a wallop. Think Humboldt County sinsemilla as opposed to the Nogales ditch weed of my misspent youth.
And John, yeah, the sauté is the thing, unless you’re a drink-sodden Mick in a big hurry to feed four people. Shoot, I’m such a sluggard I don’t even make my own tortillas. I buy ’em from the hippies at Whole Paycheck.
Just reading about your pozole makes me want to book a ticket to D’Enfer and get out to your place. Show up hungry at six.
I’ve been intimidated by the work aspect of pozole, but all your shortcuts make it seem do-able for an attention-deficient cook.
Ms. Stitz,
A pleasure as always. I, too, am intimidated by honest labor, having not had a real job since the fall of 1991. Thus I have little to no interest in posole recipes that take days to cook. I just want to, like, eat, y’know? Sometimes a simple trill on the flute is the equivalent of a symphony.
That said, it’s occasionally entertaining to labor mightily in the kitchen to bring forth a mouse. It took me days to prep’ and cook the last holiday meal we shared with kinfolk and we ate the sonofabitch in about 15 minutes. As Einstein famously noted, time is relatives.