I’ve been meaning to make pozole, the traditional Mexican stew, for years now, ever since I’d had it at a fund raiser dinner, but what with all the dried chiles and meat and assorted toppings and hominy (hominy? what even is that?), it seemed a bit involved.

But then David wrote about it and the recipe didn’t look nearly as complicated as I thought it’d be. A month before, I’d gotten over the hominy hump when I’d purchased a whole huge tin of the stuff for a sausage soup (spoiler: there’s nothing tricky or even very exotic about hominy) and now I had the leftover hominy stashed in the freezer. And, once I realized I already had hominy in the freezer, I remembered that I also had leftover Thanksgiving turkey and turkey broth down there as well. And then I checked my stash of dried chiles and, lo and behold, I had the exact ones the recipe called for! 

The soup came together super fast. Aside from the making of the red sauce — just soak the toasted peppers in water and then blend them into a paste), it was mostly just assembly. And boy, was it good — so nourishing and rich and tasty — and the second day it was even better.

Half the soup is condiments (chopped lettuce, radishes, avocados, sour cream, hot sauce, lime, tortilla chips, whatever) which means it’s basically soup with a giant salad on top. How fun is that?

And! In the dead of winter, when we’re craving soup and becoming increasingly desperate for crunchy greens, pozole is the solution. The best of both worlds, it’ll do you good. Promise. 


Pozole 
Adapted from David Lebovitz’s blog.

4 cups cooked, chopped chicken or turkey
4-6 cups cooked hominy, rinsed and well-drained
2-3 quarts chicken or turkey broth
2 dried ancho chiles, stems and seeds removed
3 dried guajillo chiles, stems and seeds removed
1 smallish onion, peeled and rough chopped
6 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
lard or oil
salt and pepper

toppings: finely chopped iceberg lettuce or cabbage, sliced radishes, avocado, lime wedges, fresh cilantro, green onions, sour cream, hot sauce, tortilla chips, etc.

First, make the red sauce. Toast the chiles in a dry skillet over high heat until they are smokey hot and blackened in places. Place the chiles in bowl and add two cups of boiling water. Cover with a plate and soak for 15 minutes. Transfer the now-soggy chiles to a blender, add the onion and garlic, and blend, adding some of the soaking water as needed to make a thick, smooth paste.

Now, for the soup. Melt a generous scoop of lard (or a couple glugs of oil) in a large, heavy-bottomed kettle over medium-high heat. Add the red sauce and cook, stirring frequently, for about ten minutes — this deepens the sauce’s flavor and removes the bite from the garlic and onion. Whisk in the broth, and add the chicken and hominy. Bring everything to a boil before reducing the heat and simmering  for about 20 minutes. Season as needed.

To serve, ladle the pozole into bowls and pile on the condiments to high heaven.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (1.14.19), no-knead sourdough bread, the quotidian (1.15.18), the quotidian (1.16.17), cranberry bread, on kindness, through the kitchen window, GUATEMALA!!!, crumbs, vanilla cream cheese braids.

This same time, years previous: full house, scandinavian sweet buns, the quotidian (1.11.16), the quotidian (1.12.15), the quotidian (1.13.14), roll and twist, sticky toffee pudding, rum raisin shortbread, earthquake cake.

While our younger daughter was in Puerto Rico over the holidays, there were lots of little, and some not-so-little, earthquakes. She told me that some nights everyone slept in the living room together (and just the other night I learned that our friends had lectured her: If our English suddenly stops working and we’re running, FOLLOW US, instructions which made me double over with laughter). None of it seemed to bother my daughter, though, so I didn’t worry. Besides, it wasn’t like I could do anything.

But the night before she was to arrive home, I jolted awake, adrenaline pumping. My first thought was that there’d been a big quake and she was hurt. I lay there, panicking, wondering if I should wake my husband so he could check his phone. I didn’t, though, and eventually the panic subsided and sleep overtook. (I later learned she had felt an earthquake that night, but it’d been several hours earlier and, again, she hadn’t been much fazed.) So maybe I was a little worried after all?

It wasn’t until a few days after she’d returned home that they got hit by the first serious quake, the next day followed by The Big One. That morning when I came downstairs, my husband filled me in on the news (he’d taken the early-morning calls and texts): Six-point-something, tsunami warning, evacuation, island-wide power outages—

Abruptly I started crying, and my husband, confused, stopped his bad-news litany. “Well, I didn’t expect that reaction,” he said, and I half-wailed, half-shouted, “This upsets me!”

But truth is, my response startled me, too. I’m usually pretty even-keel and pragmatic and the facts were: our friends were fine, the tsunami warning was canceled, the devastation wasn’t nearly as bad as it could’ve been, or as it was in Hurricane Maria. But when friends are terrified, facts have less power to calm. The fact fact is, the island has been through so much, and now this.

For the last few weeks, the island’s collective stress — both physically and emotionally — had been building, taking a huge toll everyone, and now, even though scientists say that this was The Big One and everything should settle down, there are still dozens of tremors, making it hard to sleep and keeping them in a constant, elevated state of anxiety. They send us pictures of their mattresses all lined up outside, and emails filling us in on the details of a life displaced.

But as they gradually catch up on sleep (or at least get some), their energy, and their sense of humor, returns. One morning’s email was titled “Refugees Day 2,” and Chiro posted a video of his makeshift earthquake meter: a gallon jar of water atop a concrete pillar, eerily sloshing away.

A couple nights ago, I marinated thin slices of cube steak in Chiro’s pincho sauce. We had rice and refried beans, avocado and lime. Our local Puerto Rican friends braved the snowy roads (safe to us; deadly scary to them) to come eat with us and drink hot chocolate and tell us more details of the news from home.

This next week, MDS sends down a couple people to assess the damage and plan a response.

And so it goes.

This same time, years previous: boys in beds, homemade lard, our little dustbunnies, sourdough crackers, one year and one day, the quotidian (1.9.12), salted dulce de leche ice cream with candied peanuts, hog butchering!, baked hash brown potatoes.