This was going to be an entry for Tales of the Domestically Challenged but I didn't meltdown in the middle of making dinner last night so I guess we can put it in the success story portion of the blog. Wherever that is.
A few weeks ago I picked up a copy of the NFL Game Day Cookbook by Ray Lampe aka Dr. BBQ. There were several recipes for wings and stuff I wasn't interested in making. The book did have a recipe for posole which is a traditional Mexican stew. Using a recipe for posole not handed down through my family might cause my ancestors to roll in their graves; but my ancestors aren't here right now so they are just going to have to roll with the punches. I don't even know how much, if any, Aztec blood I have anyway. According to a Wikipedia article posole was a special-occasion dish. The special occasion was the sacrifice of a human and that was the meat they used. Obviously, my ancestors would scoff at my use of pork and tell me to find a suitable sacrificial human.
Soups and stews have a lot of ingredients and that usually scares me. If I see a recipe that has more than five ingredients I skip it. Posole was no exception but after reading the recipe over and discussing it with David I decided I should try it. If pork shoulder or a cut similar went on sale that would be a sign that I would make the soup. Pork went on sale this week (99 cents a pound for shoulder. A sweet deal! ). The only ingredient I might have trouble finding is hominy.
Hominy is corn like grits. But it's a little different than grits. Hominy is puffier looking and sounds scarier. I figured our local store probably wouldn't have it but a store, even a chain, closer to Cleveland proper would carry it. David sometimes takes a co-worker home that lives nearer to Cleve so I asked him to stop by a store to look for it. David acquired two cans of hominy and that was my second sign that posole was a go.
There were several vegetables that needed to be washed and chopped so about an hour before prepping the meat I did all the vegetable work and shoved it in the fridge to hang out while I gathered courage to attack the raw pork. I can't stand working with raw meat; it doesn't matter what kind. I figure God invented butchers and freezers so there is never a need for me to work with disease-causing slabs of dead animal. I am so OCD about "working clean" that raw meat just sends me into an "OMG we are going to die of salmonella and E.Coli! Don't touch anything until you have scoured your hands and the counter with bleach!" tailspin. I know that eating under-cooked pork can give you worms in the brain or Trichinellosis.
Straight out of high school I had a job as a receptionist in the X-ray department of a hospital. A gentleman came in for a CT scan of the head. As I was walking through a workspace that had light boxes for the techs to check scans the CT tech pulled me aside to show me a scan. Since I was just an itty-bitty girl the techs delighted in showing me gruesome scans and film. Though the CT scan looked murky the tech assured me this man had worms in the brain. My jaw dropped as she pointed to the abnormalities and said "Poor sucker probably ate a bad carnitas burrito down in Tia-juana." You'd think I'd go vegetarian after that but no it's much easier to panic every time we cook meat.
Okay, back to the posole. The recipe called for the pork to be cut into 1/2 inch cubes. I dropped the amorphous slab on the cutting board and wondered how I was going to cut cubes out of it. I mean you can really only cut cubes out of things that are already cubed, right? I guess you can cut squares out of a circle but only the middle. Those round sides mess everything up. But this is a stew so if the pork is just cut up in edible bits I don't see the need to cut it into perfect cubes. Now no matter what I need to chop or slice I always choose the wrong knife. I'm like a culinary Goldilocks. This knife is too small, big, dull or serrated. So I end up hacking away with whatever knife I grab first using every knife in the block and mangling food as I go. The pork was no exception. As I did my best to chop the meat while not touching it I found myself sawing it. This prompted my father's voice in my head, "We don't saw our meat. We glide. Glide, glide, glide." I don't think table manners matter in the kitchen so I sawed away. Sorry, Dad.
I examined the pile of chunks I had cut and they started to look a little big. Suddenly, Tim Gunn was in the kitchen telling me he was concerned about the size of the chunks. Would they be chewable? My overactive imagination struggled for a response. Meat shrinks as it cooks, right? So that's what I told him, "Mr. Gunn, I assure you these bits are going to be 100% edible. They will shrink when I brown them in oil." Tim Gunn rested his hand on his tilted chin and said "Carry on." I breathed a sigh of relief and did just that.
David was busy getting a speeding ticket so he didn't arrive home in time to examine the meat I browned to assure me it was cooked thoroughly. So I carried on without David too. He was home in time to eat the finished product and that's the important part. Well, actually the important part is neither of us have worms in our brain and no humans were sacrificed. I'm so glad it's 2010 and not the 15th century; cooking is so much easier now.
Posts
