Pozole

Last Thursday was Mexican Independence Day. I know this because my boss is Mexican and usually brings in a treat to share on this special day. She did not do this last week. Instead, I took it upon myself to make a Mexican treat of my own in the form of this Pozole, and no, for you Atlanta peeps, I clearly do not mean the restaurant in the Highlands, though their food is quite tasty.

For this baby, you'll need: a few chicken breasts, some sort of spicy seasoning like ancho chili powder, 1 medium onion, a few cloves of garlic, 5 or so tomatillos, hot peppers of your choosing, 2 cans of hominy, 4 cups of broth, 5 radishes, 2 avocados, 2 limes and a whole mess of cilantro.

First, get the chicken breasts boiling in a medium sauce pot over medium-high heat. Two chicken breasts ought to do the trick. To spice things up a bit (literally) I also threw in about a tablespoon of ancho chili powder and a pinch of the Blivmore proprietary spice mix known only as 'use sparingly'.  'Use sparingly' is the dehydrated and powdered form of all the hot garden peppers we've been growing. Its name isn't just an idle warning. Let the chicken boil, uncovered for about 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, mince the garlic and hot peppers.  I intended to use one jalapeno, one very small and very curvy banana peppers, and a serrano. After tasting the chicken boil water and the heat that 'use sparingly' imparted onto it, all these peppers were not used (after all, I do like my taste buds and didn't want to kill them).  I also diced the onion and tomatillos. Yes, those green things are tomatillos and not granny smith apples.

Next, rinse and drain the hominy. A few thoughts on hominy. Being an Italian girl from Rhode Island, I had absolutely no idea what hominy was. I first heard of it in a Tori Amos song and, given the context, I had a suspicion that it was food.  Fast forward several years and some by-the-seat-of-my-pants education in Southern cooking and I've learned that it is indeed food, specifically a corn product with very little flavor of it's own, and an uncanny ability to look utterly unappetizing in photos.

By now the chicken should be cooked. Remove it from but do not discard the cooking water, and shred it any way you like. I spent a good three minutes deciding whether I detested shredding chicken with two forks more than I detested washing the food processor, finally settling on the two fork method (evidenced by the attack fork in the photo below). I left my chicken pieces quite large, mostly due to laziness and hatred of fork shredding.

Now it's cooking time. In your favorite large stock pot, heat a bit of olive oil over medium heat.  Then add the vegetables, cooking for about 3 minutes. 

Next add the broth, both the leftover water from boiling the chicken and 4 cups of other broth. Finally, add the hominy, chicken and a pinch of salt. Increase the heat to bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer. Let this simmer for at least 30 if not 60 minutes.

While the soup is doing its thing, prepare all the soup toppings.  I spent a good portion of my Saturday researching what actually goes onto a bowl of pozole. I settled with sliced radishes, diced avocado, fresh lime juice and a bunch of cilantro.  I found many other recipes that added lettuce or cabbage to the bowl of pozole but I didn't much like that idea. Enjoy!

Sweet Potato Deliciousness

Summer is generally accepted as a season in which people eat less and are more active and therefore shed a few pounds. However, for girls in Atlanta who go to too many tailgates, drink too many beers and wear too many belly hiding sundress, Summer turns into the season of minor weight gain.  Said weight goes largely unnoticed until the first days of Fall roll around and the dreaded task of buttoning pants rears its ugly head, culminating in a major meltdown with me throwing every pair of pants out of my closet in frustration. I'm trying to prevent that meltdown by making some veggie based soups (and re-acquainting myself with the gym). Not to say that this Sweet Potato Deliciousness is without any unhealthy component, but the star of the show is the potato with the unhealthy bits just making a cameo. 

For this little bowl of heaven, you'll need: 4 sweet potatoes, a few cloves of garlic (by some upsetting turn of events, I had no fresh garlic in my house, so please excuse the pre-minced garlic in the picture), 1/2 a cup of barley, 2 dried bay leaves, 2 fresh sage leaves, some broth of your choosing, about a cup of milk and a 4 ounce package of gorganzola cheese.

Since the ingredient list on this one is pretty short, I also thought it would be cute to highlight some of my kitchen gadgets as well. If you have them, this soup is a good place to use: a mandoline slicer, food mill and stick blender.  If you don't have them, the only gadget you'll really need to make this is some device capable of blending a soup, be it a food processor or traditional blender.

To start, peel the potatoes or get your husband to peel them for you because he's bored. That's right, he was so bored that he wanted to peel potatoes. Brian and I lead an exciting life.

Then, get your husband to use the mandoline slicer to put the potatoes into thin rounds.  No mandoline slicer? Just dice the potatoes up into evenly sized chunks or thinly slice them. Remember that the smaller the pieces are, the faster they'll cook.

While Brian was doing all my prep work, I was trying to get the adorable puppy to play with me. He wasn't interested, so I threw his toys at him instead (which is the act of choice in the Blivmore house for when Harls refuses to play with us).  Yes, his toys have faces. Yes, they are also Clemson colors, but that was by accident (I think).

Back to soup. I heated some olive oil in a large stock pot over medium heat then threw in the garlic and cooked for 3 minutes. Then I added the barley and cooked for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly.  The barley is completely optional. I added it so that the soup would have a bit more body and to impart a nutty flavor, but it could easily be left out.

Next, add all the potatoes to the pot and give it a good stir.

Then, add the broth. You want the potatoes to be almost completely submerged in liquid.  I had to add an additional cup of water to cover my potatoes.

Lastly, throw in the bay and sage leaves and a bit of salt and pepper. Cover and increase the heat to get the liquid boiling.  Cook this for at least 30 minutes or until the potatoes are completely cooked and a bit mushy.

Meanwhile, make the gorgonzola cream sauce.  In pursuit of making this soup at least mostly healthy, I used 1% milk instead of real cream. My sauce turned out a bit thin, but I'm okay with that. Using a stick blender or other blending device, blend the entire containter of gorgonzola cheese with about 1/2 a cup of milk.  Set this aside for later.

By now, the potatoes and sage have caused your entire house to smell like Thanksgiving dinner, which is your first indication that the potatoes are done. I mashed the potatoes a bit before attempting to stick blend them because I know that my stick blender is incapable of handling big chunks, and then roughly blended the soup to the consistency of baby food.  Then I ran the entire soup through my brand new food mill in efforts to make it smoother, which mostly failed because the soup needed more liquid. 
I returned the soup to the stock pot, turned the heat back on to medium, and added 1/2 a cup of milk and about a cup of water. This simmered for another 10 minutes. I buzzed it one last time with the stick blender and it turned out to be the perfect consistency (for me at least).


To serve, top with a bit of the gorgonzola cream sauce and stir to get a pretty swirl design in your soup.  Also, consider serving with the wonderful wrap sandwich that I made consisting of: hummus, smoked provolone cheese, homemade pickled hot peppers, onions and carrots (also known as hickles), and turkey. Would I order this in a restaurant? Why yes, I think I would. Enjoy!