Chile/Salsa Verde

While consolidating from two to one freezer - yep, no need for two without the BBQ business - I discovered a piece of Hawaiian pork roast from our blogger party in 2013.  We had been wanting to make green chile so I went in search of a Chile Verde recipe and found one that sounded good at food.com and matched the ingredients we had on hand, or at least thought we did.  You can click on the link to check out the original recipe but below is what we made.

We decided we wanted to have some salsa verde on hand so we made an entire recipe of the sauce then added some to the diced pork to make the chile verde.  In the freezer, I had discovered what I believed was a bag of roasted chiles but they turned out to be roasted red sweet peppers.  So we ended up using them for in place of the yellow bell pepper and we used canned chiles for that part - I also grilled the tomatillos to char and soften them a little.  We started with only three quarts of chicken broth knowing we could add more as needed.

Salsa Verde - adapted from food.com

Ingredients

• 3 quarts chicken broth - homemade
• 3 lbs fresh tomatillos, husks removed and grilled to char and soften, remove to a bowl
• 2 large yellow onions
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
• fresh ground pepper, to taste
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 can with 5 whole chiles and one small canned diced green chiles, with liquid
• 2 fresh jalapeno peppers, chopped with seeds
• 2 roasted red peppers from the freezer
• 1 cup cilantro leaf, coarsely chopped

• Directions

  1. In a large stock pot over high heat bring the chicken broth to a simmer and add the onion, garlic, peppers, cumin, S&P.  Cook until veggies are soft - about 30 minutes.
  2. While this is cooking, grill the tomatillos until charred a little and softened, remove to a bowl
  3. Add the tomatillos with bowl liquid, canned chilles with liquid, and cilantro to the blender and puree.
  4. Empty blender and puree the vegetables and broth from the pan.
  5. Add everything back to the pot, adjust seasonings and thickness (add more broth or cook down to get desired).  We liked it as it was and pronounced it ready to eat.

The sauce turned out to be very good but some of the meat in the chile verde tasted a little old - so no post about it.  While we used canned chiles, I believe roasting the tomatillos and using the roasted red peppers got plenty of that flavor into the mix.  And while the chile verde was just okay, what was very good were the burritos Bev made for breakfast from the salsa verde.  The first one was stuffed with sausage, eggs, and refried beans and the one below with smoked chicken, eggs, and hash browns.  I hadn't decided if I was going to post about the salsa until this burrito got delivered to me.

It was delicious and of course the star was the salsa verde - the red peppers took away from the brighter green color.  Since this batch turned out so good, I can imagine how good it will be when we have some good roasted Hatch chiles - hopefully picked up when we visit CO this year.  The rest of this salsa batch will go into the freezer for the next time we need a verde fix.

Thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Larry

6/12/15 meal date

OMG Dill Sauce

Bev had bought some salmon just to have with dill sauce and I went about a web search to find a recipe and ended up with one from Taste Of Home for both the salmon and the sauce.  The recipe is for baked fish but I did it on the grill - given a choice, I always choose the grill as my grilling season is 12 months a year.

This is the recipe for the dill sauce and we made it the day before to allow the flavors to marry well.

Dill Sauce:

1/3 cup sour cream

1/3 cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon finely chopped onion

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon prepared horseradish

3/4 teaspoon dill weed

1/4 teaspoon garlic salt

Pepper to taste

Combine the sauce ingredients until smooth.

For the skinless salmon, I seasoned one side with S&P and light coating lemon pepper followed by a light coating of mayo.  I put this side down over a pretty hot charcoal grill and treated the new top side the same.  After cooking for a couple of minutes, I flipped, spread on a good coating of the dill sauce (so it could warm up and set a little), closed the grill lid, and cooked to the desired 135* internal temp.  The salmon was removed, plated and topped with a mound of capers and some chopped chives.  The capers were not in the original recipe but since we love them I wanted to try it this way.

I first tried a couple of bites with just the sauce and then with the capers and I thought it was delicious both ways so it depends on if you like capers whether or not you use them but I thought both were OMG delicious – the search is over for a dill sauce at our house as I cannot imagine a better one for my tastes.

We sided it with some 2012 home-canned green beans and added some frozen 2012 shelly beans (October beans) along with some diced Benton’s bacon and they were very good unto themselves but they were even better topped with some of the dill sauce.  I believe I should use what fresh dill we have to make into this sauce and store it - then put it on everything - hopefully you've taken the hint by now - I loved this sauce.

And what about Bev and Madison you ask - Bev went to the store and bought some more salmon so we could have it again the next night - we just mixed some capers in with the sauce for this one, warmed it in a bowl of hot water, and sided with reheated beans.

I snapped the shot before Bev added chopped red onion to her beans so here is mine - I omitted my not so good fish shot.  As I mentioned above, we like our green beans to have plenty of beans, we cook them to well done, and they may even be better the next day - we totally fail at gourmet green bean preparation J.

The gourmet version, lifted from the web, which are definitely much prettier.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

10/07 & 10/8/14 meal dates