Zucchini Enchiladas with Pumpkinseed Salsa

Hey, I'm back. It's been a busy August! We're trying to buy a house, so all posts following this one will probably be a little more... uh... economical in nature for a while. For instance, I have some pictures of a salad I made from the contents of my co-worker's desk drawer. I'll post those after this. Anyway...

Zucchini enchiladas. This was epicurious's recipe of the day when I went to their site looking for something to do with the ginormous zucchinis my officemate had given me (thanks, Julia!). So, it was meant to be right from the beginning. The actual title of the original recipe is "Zucchini and Red Pepper Enchiladas with Two Salsas," but come on - that doesn't even hint at the fact that these enchiladas are loaded up with toasted, spiced pumpkinseed puree - by far the coolest element!

These were absolutely delicious, and they held together surprisingly well for our lunch and dinner the next day. I will say that trying to seal these babies together by frying them in oil without having all the goodness drip out the ends and burn was a bit of a challenge, especially in the 100-degree weather we were having that night. In the future, I could possibly be persuaded to leave out the frying and assemble these like soft tacos, just because the frying was such a pain and left me with some finger burns.

The recipe asks for you to grill the vegetables. Yeah... I live in an apartment. I did, however, use this as an excuse to pick up a cast-iron grill pan at Goodwill! I've been very happy with it.

So, the recipe.

Ingredients

For enchiladas:
-1 large white onion, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick rounds
-2 red bell peppers, quartered
-3/4 pound medium zucchini, cut lengthwise into 1/4-inch-thick slices [I had way more zucchini than this, and I used way more - probably why we ended up with enchiladas big enough to eat two, not three of them as a generous meal]
-12 (6-to 7-inch) soft corn tortillas [I used white, and I think they were a little bigger than this]
-1/2 cup vegetable oil
-6 ounces crumbled queso fresco or ricotta salata [I used the queso fresco]

For pumpkin-seed salsa:
-1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh serrano chile, including seeds
-2 garlic cloves, minced
-1 teaspoon ground cumin
-1 1/3 cups raw green (hulled) pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
-1/2 cup vegetable oil
-2 cups chopped cilantro [Mike doesn't like cilantro. I can't remember if I used a little parsley instead, or just ignored this]
-1 1/2 cups water

For tomato salsa [yeah, or you could just use some store-bought salsa]:
-2 medium tomatoes, chopped
-1/4 cup finely chopped white onion
-2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh serrano chile, including seeds
-2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
-Garnish: cilantro leaves

For the tomato salsa: stir together tomatoes, onion, chile, lime juice, and 1/4 teaspoon salt.


For the pumpkinseed salsa: cook chile, garlic, cumin, and pumpkin seeds in oil in a 10-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat, stirring, until seeds pop, 4 to 5 minutes.



Transfer 3 tablespoons seeds with a slotted spoon to a bowl and reserve. Purée remaining seeds and oil with cilantro, water, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a blender until smooth.

Start enchiladas:Prepare a gas grill for direct-heat cooking over medium heat.
Preheat oven to 350°F .
Secure each onion round with a wooden pick for grilling. Oil grill rack, then grill vegetables, covered, turning occasionally, until tender (6 to 8 minutes for bell peppers and zucchini; 10 to 12 minutes for onion), transferring to a bowl.

Okay, grilling the vegetables in my little grill pan took many,

many,

many,

many batches.

To make the enchiladas: cut vegetables into strips. Spread 2 teaspoons pumpkin-seed salsa on each warm tortilla and top with some of grilled vegetables, then roll up.

Heat oil (1/2 cup) in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Fry enchiladas, seam side down first, in 2 batches, turning once, until lightly browned and heated through, about 2 minutes per batch.

Transfer enchiladas to plates, then drizzle with remaining pumpkin-seed salsa and sprinkle with reserved seeds and cheese. Serve with tomato salsa.

Yum!

Noodle Bowl #3 - Mustard Greens

Can I just say that I don't think I'll ever get sick of noodle bowls? They're the only thing I'm in the mood for on Saturday afternoons, and this week I realized that they also have the side benefit of helping me use up unruly produce that is just threatening to get slimey before I get to it.

That said, I don't really expect anyone else to share my interest in the whole thing. But since I've started taking pictures of them, I think I'll just keep doing it. I'll try to title the posts appropriately, so that anyone reading knows it's not an actual recipe.

I had some turkey lemongrass broth, left over from this recipe, sitting in my freezer for the last 4 months. Honestly, I had forgotten to label it and so wasn't sure if it was chicken broth, or turkey lemongrass. When its thawed scent revealed it to be the latter, I used it for a noodle bowl. Yay!

I used:
-2 cups broth
-1/2 teaspoon five-spice powder
-dash soy sauce
-a few drops Sriracha or some other spicy ingredient
-a few drops dark sesame oil
-1 carrot, peeled and sliced thin diagonally
-about 2 cups chopped mustard greens
-1 green onion, chopped
-1 wedge lime, squeezed (or dash seasoned rice vinegar)

Instructions:
Bring broth to a boil. Add five-spice powder, sesame oil, Sriracha, soy sauce, and carrots, and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Return to a non-spilling-over boil, and ramen, and cook for two minutes. Stir in mustard greens and cook for another minute or until wilted. Pour into deep bowl. Squeeze lime into bowl (or splash with rice vinegar). Sprinkle with green onion.

Basil, Melon, and Prosciutto (or Bacon!) Salad with Cayenne

There are a zillion variations on this recipe on the Interwebs, and since I remembered the three main ingredients from when my mom made this several years ago, I don't feel obligated to cite any particular source. Plus, I might have added the cayenne pepper part myself - not sure.

As long as you have enough melon (and it can be canteloupe, honeydew, whatever - I happen to like honeydew better) to serve the number of people you want to serve, the amount of basil and prosciutto/bacon is totally flexible. If you need to use up a strip of bacon from breakfast, use that. You can use as little as one or two large leaves of basil for a few people, and it would still be fine. Or, if you love basil, you can use much, much more.

I tossed the ingredients in a little lime because I had a leftover wedge, but it's not necessary.

Half of a small honeydew melon, combined with the other ingredients (which don't add much volume) yielded us two 6-oz mugs full of salad. Scroll down to the very last picture to see what I consider a "serving."

Hooray honeydew! I was so excited that New Seasons had delicious-looking (and tasting), ripe honeydew halves on sale by the pound, and that I only had to buy half of a teeny one. I know myself, and I know that there is no way I would properly preserve and then use the other half before it went bad. Below is the honeydew shredded up with my new melonballer (I started out trying to make actual melon balls, then decided scraping was the way to go). In the picture, it looks kind of like celery, doesn't it? Weird...

Okay, so the recipe. Like I said, any way you make it, it will taste good. But as a guideline, you will need:

Ingredients

- 1/2 canteloupe or honeydew melon, cut into balls or ribbons with a melonballer, or chopped into 1/2 inch-ish pieces

-1/8 cup chopped prosciutto, or 1/8 cup cooked bacon (cooked/broiled with brown sugar for extra pizazz!)

- 4 or 5 medium fresh basil leaves, ripped into small pieces

-Squeeze of lime juice

-dash of cayenne pepper

-2 shakes of salt

-1/2 teaspoon sugar or 1/2 brown sugar (unless you used bacon with brown sugar already)

Instructions

1. Combine prosciutto or bacon with basil in a bowl or in the melon shell.

2. Combine lime juice, cayenne, salt, and sugar (omit sugar if using bacon cooked with brown sugar) in small bowl. Stir to combine. Toss prosciutto-basil mixture with lime mixture.

3. Add melon pieces and toss to combine.

4. Serve immediately or let sit for awhile if the rest of the meal isn't ready yet. If you're not serving the salad until much later, wait until closer to mealtime to rip up the basil and add it.

Here's the prosciutto. I bought two little slices from the deli counter - it was prosciutto di parma and cost $23.99 a pound, and I paid 57 cents, so... not very much. It looks like it came to about 1/8th of a cup, chopped up.

Note: When my mom made this, she used bacon, and she says that it was broiled with brown sugar on top. If you have bacon at home, you should TOTALLY do that instead. The deli prosciutto was tasty, but the kind in the bag at Safeway (which I used the second time around) can't hold a candle to good ol' bacon.

This next picture is completely irrelevant to the recipe, except that I ended up mixing the salad up in the hollowed-out honeydew, and the shell looked kind of cool in the sunlight. It reminds me of the Wicked Witch of the West's crystal ball!

Here's the salad. We had it with lentil soup. Disclaimer: Unlike his pad kee mao-obsessed wife, Mike is not a fan of the sweet-salty-sour flavor profile. And true to form, he wasn't crazy about this dish. Soooo... not everyone will like it. Only those with good taste. BURN!

Last note: I think the salt drew out a little more honeydew liquid from the honeydew shell - so if your melon is on the not-so-ripe side, you might want to consider lightly salting the melon shell, letting it sit for a while, and then harvesting any juice that gathers up.

Sunsmoke Salsa with Soba Noodles

Hey, a recipe that I didn't get from The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper!

I can't claim that I came up with this idea on my own, because there are many delicious-sounding recipes out there that call for jicama ("HEE-kuh-muh" - there should be an accent over the "i" there) with mango and some sort of grilled or smoky ingredient, and I've drooled over all of them at one time or another.

I think of jicama as a cross between an apple and potato (and am sure that I'm not the first one to make the connection - heck, maybe that's its actual lineage), because it's crisp like an apple but leaves your knife all starchy like a potato. Oh, and because it burns my hands just like potatoes burn my hands - but that's just me and my weird hands.

I was really getting a craving for some kind of salsa on Saturday morning, and found myself in the fortunate (for me - I love grocery shopping when it's quiet) position of having half an hour to kill at Safeway. So I picked up most of these ingredients without knowing exactly what I'd do with them, but knowing that they all sounded good together, at least.

Here's most of the star produce in a group shot - except for the ginger, which is like that guy who can be seen in the back of at least one family photo per vacation, scratching his nose or contorting his face to yell at someone unseen by the camera. What I mean to say by all this is that I ended up not using ginger in this recipe. I think it would have tasted weird.

Here's the jicama! I avoided jicama for a long time after my first experience with it, because it is so difficult to peel with your average-to-dull regular peeler, and I wanted better things for my knuckles than to die a bloody death in their twenty-somethings just because their master wanted to take a shot at "Gracie's Pepper Salad with Jicama" or whatever it was. Jicama skin is tough, or at least it is by the time it gets to the grocery stores where I live! But now I have a serrated peeler, which I think is meant for fruit, but it also does a great job of peeling anything tricky.

And not to show off, but here is my adorable Microplane grater! Actually, I have now invested in three of them total, but here is the one that proved to be the perfect size for grating a little zest off the blood orange. Here it is pretending to be a skyscraper in the most recent "Godzilla" flop:

Convincing, huh? And to the left, it reveals its true stature. I got it for a dollar!

To our right we have the dried chipotle

chiles that figure in the dressing/liquid component for the salsa.

Get a look at that texture on the chipotle! Doesn't it just look like the paper bag that got left in the backyard, partially sheltered by the roof or a garbage can or something, and proceeded to get rained on and dried out by the sun repeatedly for five years?

Anyway, enough yammering about paper bags. Here's the recipe:

Sunsmoke Salsa with Soba Noodles (or other grain of your choice)
For the dressing/liquid part:

• 1/8 cup honey
• Juice from one blood orange (or regular orange! I just think the blood oranges are pretty), about 1/4 cup
• Juice from 1/2 lime
• 1/4 teaspoon zest from orange
• 2-3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 or 2 dried chipotles chiles (I used 1 but wish I'd used 2), chopped into 4 or 5 easy-to-fish-out pieces
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
  
  Instructions for dressing:
  1. Heat honey and olive oil in a small saucepan (as small as you have, really, so that the chipotles get covered up as much as possible) oon low, or whatever will heat the liquid without burning the honey on your stovetop.
  2. When the honey and olive oil are warmed and thin, add the cumin and the pieces of chipotle. Cover and let the mixture sit a little above low for 15 minutes or so, so that it smells smoky from the chipotle. If it starts bubbling angrily, turn it down.

3. Once the mixture smells nice and smoky, stir in the juice and zest from the blood orange and let the mixture simmer for a few minutes. When it seems "combined" enough and a little syrupy, take it off heat. When it's cool, take out each chipotle piece and squeeze the honey mixture stuck on the inside back into the pan. Let the mixture cool completely before adding the lime juice. You could really just add the lime juice right before you put the meal together. If you put in the lime juice before you are ready to toss the vegetables with the dressing, be sure to whisk the dressing mixture again before combining it with the veggies.

For the salsa and soba noodles:

• 1 carrot, grated
• 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed (or soaked and cooked dried black beans)
• 1 clove garlic, minced or pressed through garlic press
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced
• 1.5 tablespoons finely chopped shallot (or not, if you hate onion breath and think the garlic and green onions will be enough for you)
• 2 red bell peppers, diced, sliced, or whatever you prefer - I did a combination
• 1 medium jicama, peeled and cut into matchsticks
• 1 mango, peeled and diced
• 1/2 serrano pepper, seeded, deveined, and finely chopped
• 1 avocado
• Cooked and cooled soba noodles for however many people you are serving - or rice, or pasta, or whatever else you think would taste good under the salsa!

Instructions for the salsa:

1. Combine all ingredients except the black beans and the avocado in a large bowl. Toss to combine. Drizzle dressing into bowl, adding it in two installments if the bowl is on the smaller side. Toss salsa to coat with dressing.

2. Peel and dice avocado. Spoon 1 cup or so of salsa over each person's plate of cold soba noodles; sprinkle black beans and avocado over each serving. Or, if serving family-style, place the black beans and diced avocado over the rest of the salsa in the bowl. Serve promptly.

The "serve promptly" is so the avocado won't brown. As long as you save the avocado-chopping step for last, you've got oodles of time. I'm anticipating this salsa will keep for days (and will report back if that proves not to be the case. And hey, check out the nifty avocado-saver ("saver" - I hope) I MacGyvered together so I can have more avocado at work tomorrow. Right now, it's sitting in a mug in the fridge.

Of course, only after creating the limado (as I plan on calling it) did I remember that we're going to my brother-in-law's for dinner tomorrow, so we won't get to use the leftover avocado for dinner. So, a true test: a 48-hour avocado?! We shall see.

One final note: I described sprinkling the black beans and avocado separately on top because my black beans were a little on the mushy side and were going to be crushed under the weight of the rest of the ingredients. Beans of a springier nature should be able to handle the incorporation just fine, and adding them to the leftover salsa will do wonders for their taste, I'm sure.

Pho, Interrupted

Disclaimer: This isn't really pho. I'm sure a closer title would be "Soup which superficially resembles pho, but whose broth was concocted in an inauthentic manner." But whatever it is, I love it almost as much as I love the bowl I get down the street at Pho Gia! So, I just wanted to get that off my chest: this broth has no beef knuckles or anything of the kind. It's just an approximation.

Aaaaanyway, I bought a knob of fresh turmeric the other day (grown organically in Hawaii! Who knew?) and was itching to use it in something. I don't think I've ever seen turmeric in its non-yellow-powder form before! Looked like ginger except for the whole orange factor. This picture doesn't really do it justice.

I've made my Splendid Table-inspired pho-proximation several times. The broth contains a bunch of broiled ginger. I figured I would use a little less ginger than usual, and add in some turmeric. The turmeric gave the broth a beautiful color!

The bad news: All of my pictures are showing up tiny, even though I select "Large"! What gives??

Here's the recipe:

Vietnamese Rice Noodle Soup With Beef and Fresh Herbs (Pho)

From The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper

Cheater's Asian Broth (this name comes from the cookbook! not me)

-1 medium onion, thin sliced

-4 large garlic cloves, thin sliced

-One 2- to 3-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and thin sliced

-6 whole cloves

-1 whole star anise, bruised; or 1/2 teaspoon anise seeds

-Fresh-ground black pepper

-Four 14-ounce cans chicken broth

-2 tablespoons sugar

-2 teaspoons Asian fish sauce (nam pla or nuoc nam)

Soup

-6 to 8 ounces linguine-style rice noodles

-6 to 8 ounces top round steak (chicken breast can be substituted), sliced extremely thin

Table Salad

-10 sprigs fresh coriander (okay, where I come from this is cilantro, and the Splendid Table isn't British so I'm not sure who they're trying to impress...)

-6 to 8 sprigs Thai or other fresh basil

-2 serrano chiles or jalape*os, thin sliced

-Generous handful bean sprouts

-1 large lime, cut into wedges

Sauces (I've never used these and haven't particularly missed them)

Hoisin sauce

Hot sauce

1. Position an oven rack 4 to 6 inches from the broiler, and preheat. Double a very large piece of heavy foil. Scatter the onion, garlic, ginger, cloves, anise, and 5 grinds of pepper on the foil.

Broil for 5 minutes, turning the pieces once. You want the onion to have some toasted edges, and the spices should be fragrant. Scrape everything into a 6-quart pot. Be sure to get all the anise seed if that's what you used.

2. Add the broth, sugar, and fish sauce, and bring to a gentle bubble. Cover tightly, and simmer for 20 minutes. [Carrina's note: stop right here! Every single time I make this broth, I end up simmering for closer to 40 minutes, because I forget to start soaking the rice noodles until the broth is done. Consequently, the broth always ends up being a little too, ahem, pungent. 20 minutes really is plenty of time for this method. Just sayin'. Now could you please tell my future self this, so she remembers the next time she makes this broth?]

3. Meanwhile, put the rice noodles in a large bowl, and cover them with very hot tap water [Carrina's note: hot tap water just did not cut it when I made this at my mom's house. We ended up just having to boil water at the last minute. I've started using almost-boiling water from a teapot instead, and it works much better. And yes, cover it!]. Soak the noodles for 10 to 15 minutes, or until they are tender but with a little more firmness than you want. Stir a few times. When they are ready, drain and rinse well with cold water. Divide the noodles between two large soup bowls.

4. While the broth is simmering and the noodles are soaking, arrange the table salad on a platter and set out the sauces.

[Carrina's note: also slice the meat at this point, if you have time! I used top round steak that had been frozen solid for a month, then thawed in the fridge for five minutes. It was like I was shaving the meat! I used my super-sharp, fairly new chef's knife, or this method probably wouldn't have worked.]

5. To serve, divide the beef between the soup bowls. Ladle the bubbling broth into the bowls [check out the beautiful yellow color the turmeric gave to the onions!]

Top each serving with selections from the table salad.

Spicy Turkey and Jasmine Rice Soup

- from Chicken Soup With Rice by Maurice Sendak (yes, the same guy who wrote Where the Wild Things Are - but this is the book that gives me kindergarten memories).

I pulled a bag of this soup out of the freezer to have for lunch yesterday. Even without the snappy toppings, this soup makes a great meal - it's like your classic chicken soup and rice with a kick.

I got this recipe from Cooks Illustrated online a couple of years ago (and it originally appeared in the magazine on November 1, 2000), but have never actually made it with a turkey carcass until our Thanksgiving hosts were kind enough to let me walk off with theirs last November (thanks, Becca! link to her awesome and prolific food blog appears here). Before November, I'd just used chicken - sometimes with intention, and sometimes because I had extra chicken "pieces" to use. Either way works. If you don't have enough bone-in chicken/turkey/fowl of your choice to bring flavor to this much stock, just use less water or combine the stock with some canned chicken broth until the flavor is bumped up to acceptable.

I always simmer the jalapeños [note to self: stop posting recipes with jala - dang it - until you figure out how to put the "~" over the n without copying and pasting from Word. This is the third time in two days, and is getting tedious], garlic, ginger, and lemongrass longer than the 10 minutes the recipe calls for, because I love pungent spiciness. Taste it after ten minutes and see what you think.

I cook the jasmine rice separately and then throw it into the broth to simmer for a few minutes at the end, because no matter what I do, leftover rice in a soup always soaks up any remaining broth, and there's no way I'm going to slave over a homemade stock only to have it gobbled up at the last minute by rice.

This recipe freezes great! You may need to add a little chicken broth when reheating, due to rice greediness problem alluded to above.

A note on the lemongrass: the recipe calls for one stalk. I usually use three or four, since I have them anyway. Safeway sells lemongrass, sometimes at least, in the "refrigerated ethnic produce" section with the cactus arms, tamarind, bell peppers, and tomatillos. In the past I have been tricked into buying a big bundle of lemongrass at Safeway, but I think you can just pull out a couple of stalks. If not, you will have a lot of lemongrass to use up. New Seasons in Portland definitely sells it by the stalk. Some grocery stores also sell little pieces of lemongrass in a plastic box along with the other fresh herbs, but it is soooo marked up! If you can't get fresh stalks, try lemongrass paste, also available near the refrigerated ethnic produce section.

Last note: this recipe assumes that your primary goal is to rid yourself of a turkey carcass, and that you won't mind staying home all day to accomplish this goal. If the spiciness sounds good to you, but you'd just as soon infuse the spicy flavors into a commercially-prepared chicken broth, then just do that! You can save yourself, oh, four hours (still allow some time for that massive amount of white wine to simmer, though - or cut back the amount).

Spicy Turkey and Jasmine Rice Soup

(originally published in Cooks Illustrated, November 1, 2000)

Basic Turkey Stock
-1 turkey carcass from 12- to 14-pound turkey, cut into 4 or 5 rough pieces to fit into pot
-1 large onion , peeled and halved
-1 large carrot , peeled and chopped coarse
-1 large rib celery , about 4 ounces, chopped coarse
-3 medium cloves garlic , unpeeled and smashed
-2 cups dry white wine
-1 bay leaf
-5 sprigs fresh parsley leaves
-3 sprigs fresh thyme

For the Soup
-1 stalk lemon grass , trimmed to bottom 6 inches and bruised with back of chef's knife
-3/4 inch piece fresh ginger , peeled, cut into thirds, and bruised with back of chef's knife
-2 large cloves garlic , unpeeled and smashed
-2 jalapeño chiles (fresh), or Thai chilies, halved lengthwise and seeds removed
-Table salt
-1 cup jasmine rice
-2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro leaves
-3 tablespoons minced fresh basil leaves
-5 medium scallions , sliced thin

1. For Stock: Bring turkey carcass, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, wine, bay leaf, and 4 1/2 quarts water to boil in 12-quart stockpot over medium-high heat, skimming fat or foam that rises to surface. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, 2 hours, continuing to skim surface as necessary. Add parsley and thyme; continue to simmer until stock is rich and flavorful, about 2 hours longer, continuing to skim surface as necessary.

2. Strain stock through large-mesh strainer into large bowl or container; remove meat from strained solids, shred into bite-sized pieces, and set aside; discard solids in strainer. Cool stock slightly, about 20 minutes; spoon fat from surface. Use stock immediately or cool to room temperature, cover, and refrigerate up to 2 days.

3. For Soup: Bring turkey stock to simmer in large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add lemon grass, ginger, garlic, chiles, and 1 teaspoon salt; cover and simmer until broth is fragrant and flavorful, about 10 minutes. With slotted spoon, remove and discard lemon grass, ginger, garlic, and chiles. Add rice and reserved shredded turkey meat from stock; bring to boil, then reduce heat to medium and simmer, covered, until rice is tender, 12 to 15 minutes. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper; ladle soup into individual bowls and sprinkle each with a portion of cilantro, basil, and scallions. Serve immediately.

Smoky Slow Cooker Chili, without the slow cooker

"I'm a low-brow but I rock a little know-how."

- the Red Hot Chili Peppers

THE (spicy) HISTORY

The last time I attempted this recipe, I stirred in a little shame as an afterthought, and was less than pleased with the results. The shame developed because I hate to waste food. I used chipotle chili powder instead of regular (I was out!) and (this was the true meal-killer) used probably 1/4 of a cup of "El Pato" hot sauce. I thought I was compensating for the fact that I had no "Mexican hot-style tomato sauce [such as El Paso]," but in fact, I pulled a Jeffrey Rowland and overcompensated, rendering the chili inedible. My husband and I managed to choke a little down, but when I couldn't finish a bowl even after diluting it with two hunks of cornbread and with two glasses of water by my side, I knew there was not a lot of hope for the rest of the batch. So bring out... REMATCH!

THE CHANGES

First of all, some mods. I used the pound of ground pork and the smoked ham hock (I'll put a smoked ham hock in anything but breakfast cereal), but omitted the pound of boneless pork shoulder. It just sounded like an extra step that I didn't need, especially when I always end up soaking more beans than I need and hence have more protein than I know what to do with anyway. Which brings me to my next modification: dried beans over canned. Canned beans are saltier and more expensive, which is not to say I don't use them, but my cheapskate side gets a little irked when a recipe tells me to use canned and I already have dried. So, I used dried - which meant that I had a very late dinner indeed.

I also used only a handful of pinto beans - the rest were pink beans. Google tells me that "another common term for pink beans is chili beans" (recipezaar.com), so I hope I'm in the clear. If only I hadn't squandered all of my pintos on that capsaicin-fueled nightmare last week!

I guess I made only three other modifications:

1) still couldn't find that elusive "Mexican hot-style tomato sauce [such as El Paso]" and used a can of tomato sauce and a few squirts of "El PaTo" hot sauce instead,

2) squirrelled away a couple of ounces of beer for myself in spite of the author's admonishment to use 12 oz instead of a cup if cooking on the stovetop, and

3) omitted the cilantro on top at the end because I forgot that my husband, and his aversion to said herb, would be out of the house playing Dungeons and Dragons tonight - so didn't buy any. Oh, and I guess modification number

4) is that I didn't use the slow cooker for this recipe. I was planning on using it, right up until late last night when I realized I'd have to get up at 4:45 to prepare this for the slow cooker and still get to work on time. Eeewww. Anyway, I just used my Dutch oven instead.

THE WORK

First, I browned a pound of ground pork. I have to say, though, that I think this chili would be yummy without the meat, as long as you put in a little chipotle chili to keep the smoky flavor from the ham hock, and kept the beer.

Then, I put the pork in a different container and sauteed the onion, pepper, and then garlic (added at the last minute) in the pot where the pork had been. Sauteeing onions is one of my favorite things to do because 1) my stomach knows that it means that some kind of soup is on the way, and 2) unless I forget about the pot and go downstairs to do laundry, I can't really screw it up.

Next, I added the tomato paste. The recipe had me sautee it with the onions and peppers for 3 minutes, I guess to just keep cooking the whole mixture down? And then, the beer. I love adding alcohol to a sizzling dish. It opens up another whole family of aromas.

I then added the rest of the herbs and spices, tomatoes, beans, hot sauce, smoked ham hock... and... the tomatillos! They're my favorite - they're so cute! Here's one to do a little striptease for us now:

I love the teensy seeds!

Despite their individual charms, however, the tomatillos ended up spending their night in service to the greater good: my chili.

After adding the tomatillos, I covered the pot and settled in for a looooong, hungry, 2.5 hours.

Here's a glimpse of the pink beans about halfway through. They really are pink!

When the 2.5 hours were up, I pulled out the ham hock, shredded the meat, and threw the shreds back into the pot. Here's the defrocked ham hock:

Of course, even with 2.5 hours to spare while the chili was cooking, I forgot that I had a little prep work to do for the toppings. So at the last minute, so desperate from hunger (it was at least 9:30 at this point!) that I actually used the recipe as a cutting board, I chopped the green onions, crumbled the queso fresco, and hacked up some lime wedges.

(lime wedges not pictured)

Aaaaaaaaand, the final product!

I had some cornbread in the freezer from last week's failed attempt of the chili recipe. It thawed and reheated pretty nicely!

THE END!

I would make this chili again in a heartbeat (assuming we didn't already have chili leftovers in the fridge) using the slow cooker or the pressure cooker, but would probably not do it again in the Dutch oven unless I had all afternoon. Definitely NOT a weeknight dish with the dried beans. I might have been able to speed up the process a bit by cooking the beans with just the veggies and a non-acid cooking liquid for a while, adding the tomatoes and beer later (acid keeps beans from cooking quickly, right? I think I've read that). Even so, it's too big of a project for a Monday night, IMO.

I have to confess that my motivation for making this chili in the first place had a lot to do with the toppings. Here's how my line of reasoning went, even if I couldn't have articulated it at the time:

I love noodle bowls.

Noodle bowls (sometimes) have limes and green onions on top.

This chili has limes and green onions on top.

I will love this chili.

And hey, I did! But if you're going to make it, don't leave out the toppings. The tomatillos were fun, but not nearly noticeable enough to justify "trying something new" in a chili recipe all on their own. The stuff on top makes the meal!