Grandma's Posole - Memories

"When daddy's quit staying

And the mommas quit praying

Even the children quit tryin'

God must be crying

Cause even the skies are blue"

Instantly classic lyrics but that's not my point in putting them here, I put them there cause when I heard that song I was reminded of memories. What the heck do memories have to do with Grandma's Posole? Grandma's Posole is one of the few recipes I can recite by heart. Posole is a Mexican stew with chunks of pork (or chicken) in a broth seasoned with red chilies, and made hearty with hominy. If I haven't lost you by now, please keep reading. 

Grandma has a few recipes that I just love to cook. Over the years I have been fortunate enough to find out from her how she makes them and make some of those recipes my own. Rice soup, sopa de fideo (Pasta soup), sopa de albondigas (meatball soup) and her posole are the few that I am proud of. The recipes for soup are the most forgiving (in other words I couldn't mess them up), and the posole is closest to my heart. The chunks of pork, the hearty broth, finely chopped onions, shredded lettuce and tostadas or even tortillas make this something I will never tire of, just like a classic country lyric.

The version below (with the exception of the hominy) is from scratch. In place of the scratch made chili paste you can use a 10 oz can of Las Palmas chili sauce, it works in a pinch, everybody knows my Grandma did it!

Grandma's Posole

Ingredients

Pork and broth

1 1/2 - 2 lbs pork country style ribs cut into chunks

2 tbsp oil

3 quarts water

1 onion

3 garlic cloves

salt to taste

2 large cans of hominy

Chili paste

4 cups water

2 oz dried Pasilla chilies

2 oz dried New Mexico chilies

2 oz dried Ancho chilies

Remove the seeds from these chilies for a less spicy sauce

1 chipotle pepper w/ 1 tsp of adobo sauce

1 onion sliced

Accompaniments

Red pepper flakes

Chopped white onion

Mexican oregano

Sliced lettuce

Limes

Tostada shells

Broth

Begin by heating a large soup pot and add the oil, sear off the chunks of pork meat after searing all of the pork add salt, onion and garlic to the pan and sweat until translucent. Return the pork to the pot and all 3 quarts of water. Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down to about medium low to achieve a slow boil. Boil for one hour, stirring occasionally.

Chili paste/sauce

In a large sauce pan bring the water to a boil and add the dried chilies without the stems and the onion. Boil until the chilies are soft. Remove the chilies and onion, these ingredients to a blender and add about 1 1/2 cups of liquid from boiling process and chipotle chili and sauce blend until smooth. Taste for salt, if you like the smokiness of the adobo sauce you can add more. Put this sauce in the refrigerator overnight so the flavors can marry.

After the pork has boiled for one hour turn off the heat and place the pot in the refrigerator overnight. This will coagulate the fat on the top of the broth making it easier to remove. The next day bring broth to a boil and add the hominy and chili paste, boil for about 30 - 45 minutes stirring occasionally. 

Accompaniments

At this point the stew is ready, however there are some cold ingredients that accompany this that bring all of the flavors to another level. All of these accompaniments can be added as you like. The spice of the red chili flakes and onion go right along with the broth making those spices blossom with each spoonful. The shredded lettuce work great to mellow those flavors, and the oregano, the floral oregano makes the pork taste even better. As for the lime, what Mexican soup whether it is chicken soup, posole or menudo doesn't taste better with lime. The tostadas bring along another element of crunch that brings the whole stew together.

This is it, you might find the task of making your own scratch made chili sauce daunting, but it really does make a difference, if you add another 1/2 cup of water and tweak the variety of chilies and you would have your own homemade "enchilada sauce".

Memories are like the cool evening breeze in L.A., you can count on them to be there just when you need them!

Duck Prosciutto 4.0 STEP 2!

The finished product!

Before I get into the next step of my Duck Prosciutto recipe let me make one thing clear. There are some things I didn't cover in my last post.

I hate to say it but I made some assumptions about YOU the reader. I have to apologize! Don't take this the wrong way, I'm going to cover some basic stuff that you need to do or you could get sick. A couple days on the ceramic throne sick! On to the serious stuff.

Please keep your stuff clean! I mean, your cutting boards, knives, your scale, all of it, but most importantly keep your hands clean! I know it's a pain but of all things, we cross-contaminate more with our hands than with any other possible utensil!


The best way to clean your stuff? About a half a gallon of water with 2 tsp of bleach! That's it, cheap, easy and right there under the sink!

Okay now that the health and safety is taken care of on to part two of our recipe!

Things you will need:
2 salted duck breast
paper towels
butchers twine
digital scale
a small plate
refrigerator or cold dark basement
cheesecloth (optional)
between 7-10 days or 2 weeks
Plenty of hot water and soap (not OPTIONAL)

Now that your duck breasts have cured in the salt and pink salt for at least 1 day and not more than 2 days (I like 36 hours) you can take it out of the fridge and clean off the salt and spices. I wash it under warm water to clean off the salt and stuck on pieces of herbs. As you handle the it you will notice that the duck has sort of stiffened. That is the wonder of salt both the pink and regular salt doing its job!

Salted and seasoned!

Once I have cleaned off the salt dry the duck with paper towels and set them aside I move on to the scale... 

NOT! I wash my hands!

Please keep washing your hands throughout this process! You'll feel so good knowing you didn't poison someone!

After you have washed your hands, get the out the scale. I like to weigh my duck before wrapping and trussing. In doing so I find out if the right amount of drying is happening. Some recipes simply call for 7-10 days of drying. Others call for 30% of the weight to be lost in hanging and drying.

I'll be honest both ways work. I have tried each one and each one works as well as the other.

Note the starting weight of the duck breast

Moving on, using the 'tare' function place a small plate on the scale and hit the 'tare' button to zero out the weight of the plate. Note the weight of each piece of duck and record that weight. If your duck starts out at 124 grams then your duck should lose 37 grams (30% of the weight) during the course of drying.

The next step is to truss the breast, basically you are wrapping it with string to make it easier to hang, this video shows the easiest way to truss a piece of meat in the range we have with a duck breast, http://youtu.be/iDtLRqoHb9A I know the graphics and intro are hokey but the technique works.


Before you truss the duck there is another option you need to choose, cheesecloth or no cheesecloth? I am trying no cheesecloth this time around. But as with everything everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Now that you have wrapped and trussed the duck, or not! You can hang it in the fridge! How you do that is up to you! I have glass shelves in my fridge and have a hanger that I have bent into a special rig to hang my duck.






Now comes the test of your patience! You might need to wait up to 2 weeks for this to cure. If you decide to weigh your duck, the first couple of days you will see quite a bit of weight coming off your duck breast, then about 5 days into the process it will slow to a crawl. My buddy Brennan likes to feel the difference in his duck. It seems that when the duck stops feeling "squishy" it is ready, that happens in about 10 days. 

Now go wash your hands!!!

Homegrown Mushrooms Part 1

That kinda sounds like a Pink Floyd song!

I found this at the store!

It doesn't look like much at first.

This is my first post, now that I have stated the obvious, I'm just going to get into why I decided to write a blog. I love to share what I find with the people I know! Especially when it comes to food. 


I was walking through the produce department at the Von's in MDR and I found this display. For $16.99 you can grow up to 1 1/2 pounds of oyster mushrooms. While it doesn't seem to be economical it did look like fun!

As soon as I got it home I opened the box and found the little spray bottle... This is probably for the "kid factor" that was part of the display. What is harder to see is the perforations on the cardboard. The instructions on the side of the box kind of allude to "opening the front panel" I pulled the panels off after finally finding the perforations and followed the directions. So far so good, this looked like an easy project so far. A lot easier than the lime tree that was a gift from one of my best friends (no offense B) . Easier than the pepper sprouts in a can (from my wife) that are finally starting to get bigger, but not yet blooming!

Its made with coffee grounds,
my favorite coffee grounds, Peet's.

Inside the box I found a coupon for Peet's. Cool mushrooms and $1 off my next bag of coffee! I'm really liking this project.

If you have a problem with the written directions on the outside of the box the inside of the perforated panel has pictures. I like pictures too. The pictures made it easier to understand that I was going to cut into the plastic bag that held the used coffee grounds.

After opening the cardboard.

I know this sounds redundant! But I'll say it anyway, find a sharp knife! Dull knives are dangerous, you stand a better chance of cutting yourself with a dull knife you have to fight with than that sharp knife that does it's job the first time.

Once that was done I had to find a container that would hold the entire plastic bag. I tried some of the smaller pots I own but I had to use my enormous stock pot. See the bag needs to soak for 12 hours. The biggest problem was the bag wants to float...

The instructions make it look easy to 
put it under water to soak but it's not!

Ultimately my solution was to weigh down the whole this with a gallon jug of water. Even after an hour the bag o' mulch wanted to float.

Tuesday morning I'll pull the bag out of my stockpot and continue to follow the directions and place the box in out of direct sunlight.

I'll keep you posted!