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.
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