First off, I weighed putting pinto beans or hominy in the chile. I used to be vociferously against beans in chile of any kind but I’m mellowing on this issue. But I want this to be my favorite house-style chile verde, so no beans this time. I have two cans of hominy but I’m going to save that for posole as we get closer to winter, I think.
So here’s what I am doing.
First off, a sofrito of onion, garlic, and several peppers—some poblanos, some Hatch chiles, and one sweet bell pepper. All of the peppers I’m blistering over a charcoal fire. I honestly didn’t know that this was a “sofrito” for years until I started to understand what that meant. It’s really not any different than what French chefs call a mirepoix conceptually. It’s a base of finely chopped vegetables cooked for a while in oil or butter that will flavor something—a soup, a stew, a sauce. I love the smokiness of good peppers blistered over a hot fire.
Incidentally, I use poblanos for everything that would usually call for a green bell pepper. I think green bell peppers have a really nasty vegetative flavor and I’d be glad to see them disappear from most food.
I’m blistering the tomatillos separately over the hot charcoal for the same basic reasons, but those go in the next step, not with the sofrito. They’re very liquid (that’s good for the end product) but that means they’d kill the good softening and browning of the sofrito.
I’m using pork shoulder cubed for this. The basic reason is that pork shoulder is the most flavorful cut of pork, in my view, but it’s got some downsides here. For one, the fat will keep rendering off in the chile to excess, so you have to do a bit of skimming during the cooking, even if you fry the cubes a good bit beforehand. For another, you have to cook it longer. Pork loin and pork tenderloin work well too, but you have to shorten the cooking time and you lose the fantastic mouthfeel of pork shoulder once it’s tender.
So step one is to brown the pork cubes and then take them out of the pan.
Step two is to cook the sofrito in the rendered pork fat.
Step three is to blend the tomatillos in a food processor and add that to the sofrito. Step four is to food process some old bread, some pumpkin seeds, and some canned chipotles. I’m adding a bit of honey to that, a few currants, and some lime zest. That’s a mole that adds complexity to the chile and helps to thicken it as it cooks. Then I add some chicken broth and some white wine. When that’s cooked for a couple of hours, I put some lime juice and chopped cilantro in, and if I think it needs more heat, maybe a few chopped fresh hot peppers or a hot pepper sauce.
Over the years, I’ve at times added dried peppers like anchos to the mole stage but they tend to make the mole much more red and it tends to make the resulting dish not especially verde-looking.
I will leave it at this—it’s still cooking but I’m very happy with the initial tasting. I may or may not yet make thick flour tortillas as you can find in New Mexico to go with it, or maybe some rice. But all is well here, I think.