Red Chile Colorado

Chile Colorado

I adapted this recipe from Sauteur website, trying to make Adobada, but it tasted more like my friend Zelma Savage’s red chile, so I decided to make it into that instead. I still have to find a rival to my taco wagon’s spicy pork…it eludes me. I may have to kidnap the owner and hold him ransom. But, anyway, this here is a really good, really HOT Chile Colorado that is a New Mexico style chile, it is like a soup/stew form but you can take the meat from the liquid and make tacos…but I really like the stew liquid and eat it like a bowl of stew or chili.

5 oz. dried New Mexico chiles, stemmed

1 large onion, finely minced

4 cloves garlic, minced

Butter or oil to sauté onion and garlic

2 tbsp. New Mexico chile powder

2 tbsp. honey

1 tbsp. white wine vinegar

1 tbsp. ground cumin

1-1/2 tsp. ground cloves

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

Juice of 1 lime

Vegetable or Olive oil for frying pork

3 lb. boneless pork shoulder or loin, cut into 1″ chunk

1 can chicken broth (14 oz)

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Warm corn tortillas and garnishments, for serving

INSTRUCTIONS

Heat chiles in a large stew pot over medium-high heat (no oil or butter, just dry), and cook, turning once, until toasted, about 5 minutes; transfer to a large bowl, cover with 8 cups boiling water, and let sit for 20 minutes.

While waiting for chiles, sauté onion and garlic in oil or butter in a separate skillet until soft and slightly browned, set aside.

Drain chiles, reserving all the soaking liquid.

Transfer chiles to a food processor along with 2 cups of the reserved soaking liquid, chile powder, honey, vinegar, cumin, cloves, cayenne, and lime juice. Add the sautéed onion/garlic to the food processor. Process all and continue incorporating the rest of the soaking liquid, you may have to empty your food processor once or twice during this process into a larger bowl. The goal is to have all the pepper seeds pureed with the sauce mixture Set this aside.

Return the large pot to medium-high heat and add oil and heat until just hot; season pork with salt and pepper, and working in batches, add pork to pot and cook until browned on all sides, about 10 minutes for each batch.

When all the pork is fried and set aside in a bowl, deglaze the pot with about a half cup of chicken broth. The goal is to boil the chicken broth and scrape up all the brown bits from the bottom of the pan that is left over from frying the pork. Boil, scrape, boil, scrape, add more chicken broth if you need to, and get the stuff off the bottom of the pan. Then add the pork pieces and coat with the scraping juice from the pan. Add the rest of the can of chicken broth.

Add all sauce and soaking liquid and bring to a boil; reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid is thickened and pork is tender, at least one and a half hours, until it is the consistency you want. Serve with warm corn tortillas, garnish with cilantro, sour cream, diced onion and tomatoes, and lime wedges to kill the heat. SO DELICIOUS! You can’t stop eating it even though it’s hot.

Tortillas: I fry mine on my pancake griddle or skillet until just barely crisped, so they still fold but they are warm and a touch flaky. Mmmm!

Chicken Stew

My soup adventures continue...this was SO good.

Chicken Stew

Total prep/cooking time is about 1-1/2 to 2 hours, so this is a good weekend meal.

5 lbs bone in chicken thighs, skin on or off
Salt and pepper
2 Tbsp vegetable oil (can add more if needed)
6 Tbsp butter
1 large onion, finely minced
6 Tbsp flour
¼ cup cooking sherry (or substitute ¼ cup water with ½ tsp vinegar added)
6 cans chicken broth (the 14 oz size cans)
2 cups whole milk
½ tsp powdered thyme or 1 tsp minced fresh thyme
2 tsp dried tarragon
3 bay leaves
2 cups sliced carrots
1 cup frozen peas
1 small box frozen spinach

Pat chicken dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper. Heat oil in large stew pot. Fry the chicken in batches for approximately 10 minutes (five minutes per side). Transfer chicken to a plate and remove the skin. Pour off the chicken fat from the pot and scrape any leftover skin from the bottom of the pan. Leave some brown bits, but try and get most of the chicken skin out.

Add the butter to the pan and melt, add the onion and cook about 7 minutes until the onion is soft. Stir in the flour. Whisk in the sherry and stir, scraping up any brown bits from the bottom of the pan into the onions. Add one can of broth slowly while stirring. Add the rest of the chicken broth, milk, thyme, tarragon, bay leaves, and carrots. Nestle the chicken pieces into the stew. Cook until chicken is fully cooked and tender, about one hour. *Add the peas about a half hour into this cooking time. Taste after an hour, season with salt and pepper if needed.

Remove chicken from the pot, take the meat off the bones and discard the bones. Remove the bay leaves, return the chicken meat to the pot. Add the spinach. Heat through, cooking the spinach. If you want the stew thicker (I did) mix three tablespoons corn starch with ½ cup COLD water. Add that mixture to the boiling stew, cook to thicken. Repeat if it’s still not thick enough for you.

Potato Soup with Ham

This was my favorite mistake! Made soup for my dad who's having some problems eating, so I wanted to chop up the ham really small with my food processor, along with the celery and onion. Well, I completely pulverized it and was really mad, it was like baby food. It was two ham steaks so I couldn't waste it! So I just made the soup with the pureed ham. It was so good that way! I will do it again like that, or just cut the ham up into small bite size pieces.

The chicken soup base is from Winco bulk food, it's a powder type base. I use it a lot, very good soup base. While you're at Winco, might as well get the french bread "bombs" to use as bread bowls for this soup, just cut the middle out and fill with soup.

6-8 medium sized potatoes, peeled and diced to 1/2" cubes
3 stalks celery
1 onion
Two ham steaks or equivalent leftover ham (probably 3-4 cups)
7 cups water
1/4 cup chicken soup base or 6 boullion cubes
2 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp flour
4 cups whole milk

Prepare the celery, onion, and ham how you prefer...you can dice it very fine or puree in a food processor. I process the onion and celery very fine, and cut the ham into small pieces. Combine the diced potatoes, celery, onion, ham and water in a soup pot. Boil until potatoes are tender, at least 10-15 minutes and check them. Longer if you like the potatoes very soft. Stir in the chicken base or boullion and the pepper.

In a separate skillet, make a roux (relax, it's easy). Melt the butter over medium low heat and add the flour. Stir constantly with a whisk or fork. Cook about one minute until thick, keep stirring and don't let it burn. Slowly add about a cup of the milk and stir as not to allow lumps to form. keep adding the milk and stir any lumps out. Continue stirring and cooking until the mixture is thick, about 4-5 minutes.

Add the milk mixture (your Roux!) to the soup pot, mix to combine and heat through. Serve soup with bread or crackers. Delicious, easy soup that can be done after work for dinner, it took about an hour including all the vegetable prep time.