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

2015 Florida Trip – Day 18 – The Beach & Quesajitas

Even though we were near Port Charlotte, it was still about a 25 mile drive over to the nearest beach at Englewood, FL and since we can’t come to Florida without at least seeing the water, off we went.  It was a sunny, 80 degree day and the public beach was pretty well full of sun bathers – Pat and Bev checked it out while I got a shot of them.

These shots are further north in a low populated area.

The plan was to go out for supper per Bev’s desire, but then she decided it might be better to cook at home and use the meat and avocado we had in the fridge.

Bev had purchased some thin sliced (about ¼“) top round called Beef Milanesa and from what I read it should have said beef for beef Milanesa which is a dish and not a cut of meat.   We discussed whether to have fajitas or quesadillas and based upon the large size of our tortillas and love of crispy ones, we settled on fajita makings made into a quesadilla and named it the quesajita.

We used the ingredients as we would for fajitas and prepared them as follows:

1. Make up some seasoning from Chamayo chile powder, smoked paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, & cumin (the stuff we had on hand).

2. Slice or shred some cheddar cheese (or your favorite)

3. Julienne some red & green bell pepper and slice some onion into half-moons.

4. Slice the meat into ½“ wide strips.

5. Add the vegetables to the pan, season with S&P and the above spice mix and sauté them until about almost done then remove and keep warm.

6. Add the meat to the pan, season it as the veggies and cook until just done.

7. Add the veggies back to the meat, mix thoroughly, remove from heat, and keep warm.

8. Wipe out the pan (we only have one 12” skillet) and turn heat to medium.

9. Lay a tortilla in the 12” skillet, add cheese to one side, and the meat/vegetable mixture to the other side and add a lid if you have one.

10. When the cheese is melted and the tortilla bottom is crispy, flip the cheese half over the meat half and remove to a plate.

Bev made the guacamole by adding some jarred salsa, cumin, and lime juice to a Florida avocado.

My quesajita only got topped with a nice amount of guac.

For a throw together with stuff we had on hand, they were pretty darned good.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

1/13/15 event date

PORK STEW WITH PAPRIKA AND SAUERKRAUT – Shortened Version

In spite of a desire to eat more fish, my two favorite Colorado cooks keep putting up recipes that must be tried.  When I saw this dish on Lea Ann’s blog, “Cooking On The Ranch”, I thought it sounded very good and when she mentioned using smoked paprika, I decided I could just use smoked meat from the freezer and adapt it, similar to what I’d recently done with Heather’s Carne Advovada. 

This is a shortened version of Lea Ann’s recipe because I used already cooked pork barbecue, so I adapted the recipe to maintain the same basic ingredients, but made changes to the cooking process and amounts of liquids – I knew the pork had lots of flavor and liquid so I used less and only added it as needed.

Pork Stew with Paprika and Sauerkraut – Adapted from Cooking On The Ranch

Ingredients:

1 tbsp.oil

2 tablespoons tomato paste

½ cup sweet paprika

½ tsp cayenne

4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced (I used the garlic press)

4 small yellow bell peppers, chopped

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

½  750-ml bottle red wine (I used a nice merlot and poured out the leftover – yeah right)

2 pounds pulled pork BBQ

12 oz. sauerkraut, drained (I didn’t have the required 16 oz.)

2 cups water

1 teaspoon dried marjoram

2 bay leaves

2 red Cubanelle peppers

1 teaspoon black pepper

Cooked and buttered egg noodles, for serving

Sour Cream, for serving

Instructions:

1. Heat oil in a pot, add the tomato paste and cook, stirring, until lightly caramelized, about 2 minutes. 

2. Add the paprikas and cayenne and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. 

3. Add the garlic, bell peppers and onions and cook for a few minutes until the onions begin to look translucent deglazing the pan as needed with the wine.

4. Add the pork, sauerkraut, water, marjoram, bay leaves, cubanelle peppers, salt and pepper.  

5. Bring to a hard simmer, reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, and cook until everything is hot, about 30 minutes - taste and re-season as needed.

Since I only cooked it for about 45 minutes, I made it a couple of hours ahead of time, covered, and allowed the flavors to marry, then re-heated to serve.

I really liked the idea of serving it over buttered egg noodles and I just cooked them to package directions.

I mixed it all up together and it was delicious both for this meal, the next two leftover times, rolled up in a tortilla, and as a sandwich.  Definitely a keeper recipe - thanks Lea Ann.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

10/30/14 meal date

Carne Advovada Ala Heather

Heather, over at Rocky Mountain Cooking, recently posted her recipe for Carne Advovada and it sounded too good to pass up, especially since I’d found adaptable ingredients while freezer diving - check out her site for the recipe she used.  According to Wikipedia “Adobada is generally pork marinated in a "red" chilli sauce with vinegar and oregano, …” and after looking at several recipes on-line this seemed to be accurate, but since Heather’s use of green chile sauce is the part that appealed to me, I decided to stick with hers. 

Carne Advovada - Adapted from Rocky Mountain Cooking

Ingredients:

2 pounds of pork loin, cut into cubes

3/8 cup red chili powder (like Heather, I used Hatch)

½ tbs. salt

2 cans Hatch hot, chopped green chilies – I used canned to save my last bag of the good ones

½ large onion, diced

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp. ground cumin

38 oz. of homemade chile verde

Instructions:

1. Trim pork and cut into cubes, both small and medium sized.

2. In a bowl combine chili powder and salt.

3. In a large bowl, add pork and chili/salt mixture and mix well with your hands until all the pork is covered in the chili.

4. Cover let sit overnight.

5. Add everything to the Crockpot and cook on high for an hour, then reduce to low and cook for 6-8 hours or until pork loin is very tender.

We just rolled it in a flour tortilla and topped with some shredded lettuce and sour cream and I thought it was delicious.  The shredded meat came from the Chile Verde and the cubes are the pork loin.

Since a big part of my dish was our homemade chile verde and Heather used green chile sauce with pork, I suspect the two were somewhat different but I believe we did use the same Hatch red chile powder which had to have made them taste very similar.  I think this dish basically turned my green chile into red and I don’t know if it is classical Carne Advovada, but I loved it this way - much better than my shots of it showed.

Next time, I would not use the pork loin cubes but would make it as Heather did or just add the right portion of the other ingredients to my Chile Verde - the canned hot chiles added plenty of heat.  I think it would have been very good atop most any starch - potato, rice, pasta, chips, etc.

Thanks Heather for several delicious meals.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

10/22/14 meal date

Arroz Con Pollo (Rice With Chicken)

When I saw this recipe on Chris’ Nibble Me This blog, I knew I wanted to try it and I considered it for my BD dinner but it didn’t satisfy my easy, little mess criteria.  Chris made it with the goal of replicating the version he had eaten at the Knoxville Pelancho’s Restaurant - the place that contributed the most to my margarita recipe. 

We basically followed Chris’ recipe with three deviations:

1. We used chicken breasts as that’s what we had.

2. We had no sazon spice and made our own  - ½ t coriander, ½ t cumin, ½ t garlic powder, ½ t salt, ½ t paprika (or turmeric for yellow)

3. We made the queso sauce with what we had on hand and needed to use. 

Queso Sauce

12 oz Mexican Dipping Cheese

6 oz     Queso Dip

1 c.      chicken stock

¼ t.      dried oregano

Since I used the spiced cheeses, I omitted the peppers from the queso and it was very tasty and plenty hot.  While the flavor was very good, the cup of chicken stock made the sauce too thin so I wish I had added a little at a time – it was a margarita day.

We had a couple more chicken breasts so I added them to the marinade and then grilled them – they were very good and we’ll use the marinade again.

My finished shots all turned out poorly so I borrowed this one from Chris’ blog to inspire you to stop by there for more great shots and the recipe.

We both thought it was very good and the biggest endorsement was Bev saying she wanted to try it again very soon and so do I.  Normally I would not post something without finished photos, but I wanted to be sure you knew about his recipe in case you wanted to give it a try (we recommend you do).

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

9/19/14 meal date

Green Chile Lasagna

As soon as I saw this recipe on Heathers blog, Rocky Mountain Cooking, my first thought was this had to be tried with the roasted Hatch green chiles we had in the freezer from last fall’s western trip – Heather actually took us to the place we bought them in Denver.  

Please stop by her blog for more info about the dish and the peppers.  We adapted the recipe for what we could find at the store and what we had on hand.

Green Chile Lasagna – Adapted from Rocking Mountain Cooking

Ingredients:

1½ pounds ground beef

1 cup onion, diced

2 garlic cloves minced

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

16 oz La Palmas Green Chile Enchilada Sauce (all we could find at Walmart)

12 tostada shells made by frying corn tortillas

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese – we forgot to buy Monterrey Jack

17 whole roasted and peeled mild green chile's, sliced down the middle to make flat, stems & seeds removed

Sliced ripe olives

Instructions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees

2. Add about a quarter inch of oil to a 12” skillet and fry two tortillas until the edges get a little brown then flip and cook until the other side is brown – about a minute per side – drain on paper towels.

3. Remove the oil from the skillet, add the ground beef and onions, and cook until the beef is cooked through.

4. Add the garlic, salt and pepper and cook for one minute.

5. Add the green chili sauce and cook for about 10 minutes - I think I cooked a little too much of the liquid out.

6. In a greased 9"x13" baking dish, place four tostada shells evenly on the bottom. Cover with the meat mixture, 6 green chiles, and cheese.

7. Repeat this process making three layers, ending with cheese.

8. Bake in the oven until the cheese is browned and bubbly.  Remove from oven and garnish with olives.  While it was plenty done, it could have baked a little longer to melt the cheese more.

9. Let sit 10 minutes before serving. 

I really enjoyed the dish but Bev said it needed some more flavor for her and we both agreed that for our tastes, 2-3 chopped jalapenos should be added to the meat mixture.  I really liked the flavor the corn tortillas brought to the party and making your own tostada shells is very easy and quick if you live where they are not readily available.  I would definitely make it again but with the jalapenos and Jack cheese next time.  Thanks Heather for a fine dinner and and even better breakfast.

I used Pam's (For The Joy Of Cooking) method for poaching the egg except mine only took 3 minutes.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

9/18/14 meal date