Picante Pork and Potato Stew
(Serves 2-3, with some leftovers)
Put the following ingredients into a crock pot:
1 large piece of pork (trimmed of all fat)
3 large onions, quartered
10 whole cloves
1 cinnamon stick
10 black peppercorns
3-4 whole garlic cloves (peeled)
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
Assortment of whole, fresh chili peppers of your choice
4-5 medium size new potatoes, quartered (add to crock pot later, per instructions)
- Add cold water to cover all of the above ingredients (except potatoes) in the crock pot.
- Put the whole (unseeded) chili peppers on top. (Any amount and any type of chili peppers
are fine, depending on how hot you want the final dish.)
- Cover and cook on low setting 3-4 hours.
- Remove meat and chili peppers from the crock pot.
- Add quartered potatoes to the cooking broth and cook about 1½ hours longer.
While potatoes are cooking and after the cooked chili peppers and meat
have cooled:
- Carefully cut off the top of the chili peppers, slit open them and remove seeds. Scrape
flesh from the inside and discard the skin. Reserve the chili pepper flesh.
- Remove any remaining fat from pork and cut the pork into bite-size pieces. Set aside.
Final assembly:
Remove potatoes from cooking broth and strain broth into saucepan. Then:
- Reduce the broth to leave just enough liquid to use as stew base(about 2 cups).
- From ingredients in strainer, pick out onions and put the onions into food processor.
- To food processor add reduced cooking broth, chili pepper flesh, and 1 large clove
peeled raw garlic. Puree until smooth.
- Heat the pureed sauce in large pan and add the cut-up pork and cooked potatoes.
- Add 1-2 TBS white vinegar to finish. (Adjust picanteness by
adding more vinegar to taste just before serving.)
Serving:
This is a thick stew that is well-suited to be served in your bouillabaisse bowls
accompanied by corn tortillas or Gorditas (tortillas made with wheat flour and lard)
Notes:
