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!