Winter is Stew Time

On the 3rd day of 2010, Jim decided that it was finally time for posole, a traditional Mexican pork and hominy stew from Jalisco. Hominy is corn that has been treated with lime which makes them more easily digestable and causes them to puff out like little blossoms. The first posole that Jim had made was his best and the last, from the Gourmet big book, was the worst.

In his "research", Jim found that most recipes call for Guajillo and Pasilla peppers to be re-constituted in chicken broth and that many so-called Pasilla peppers are just dried Poblano peppers or Ancho chilies. In reality, the pasilla negro is the dried version of the chilaca chile. We managed to find those peppers at the local Raley's.

We used homemade stock to reconstitute the peppers and then went on to use variations on these recipes: one and two. We used the garlic, mint, cilantro, onion, oregano, peppercorns and cloves of the latter and cumin, pepper amounts and types and browning of the pork.

We've been eating it for days!