What’d You Do Last Weekend?

With a little extra pastry cream and a simple crepe batter, try your hand at a gateau de crepes, also known as mille crepes.

Pozole Rojo

Posted by jenny on 11/12/2007

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After eating such a luxe meal of pork belly this weekend, we wanted simpler fare to start the week, and something that didn't take 3 days to cook. We'd started with the Rick Bayless recipe for Pozole Rojo, but modified it for the crock pot (and our own tastes).

Pozole Rojo

2 cans hominy, rinsed and drained twice (we used dried hominy)
2 pork steaks, seared
2 ancho chiles, dried, seeded and deveined
2 guajillo peppers, dried, seeded and deveined
3 cloves garlic
2 qts water
Epazote
Mexican oregano
Salt and pepper

Prepare the peppers by toasting them in a pan until the skin blisters. This will take about 5 - 7 minutes. Be prepared - the air will get a little smoky and your eyes may start watering.
When they have finished toasting, plunge them into simmering water and keep them submerged for 15 - 20 minutes.
Remove the peppers from the water and put them in a blender or small food processor with the garlic cloves.
Adding a small amount of water to make it easier, pulse until the peppers form a paste.
Meanwhile, add the remaining ingredients to the crock pot, minus the water.
Put the pepper mixture into a strainer and pour the 2 quarts of water over it, directly into the crock pot. This will sieve out the pepper skin, but will transfer the 'meat' to the pot.
Cook all day on low.
Before serving, taste for salt and pepper.

Note: I added a tiny bit of salsa to it when it was done, as well as some homemade chile sauce (that had a little heat and vinegar).

Garnishes
This pozole was a little bland (the real one calls for pig head and pork roasts and makes over 9 quarts - way more than we needed), so we spiced it up with the addition of some garnishes: