Ain't Found A Good Title Blog

 I thought I knew what chili verde was, until I started doing some research.   In fact now I’m not even sure of the spelling, chili versus chile.  I defer to what Shakespeare meant with that rose thing.

I had two revelations making this recipe:

1.  I can’t do better than the local Mexican restaurant.

2.  Salsa verde is hard to find, especially in larger sizes.

I take care of the first revelation with a weekly visit and a jumbo margarita.  The chili verde is about a once a year menu choice for me.  That’s simply because it’s about the hottest item on the menu and I need to condition myself for it.  However I will be having it soon to get a better idea what I’m missing in this recipe.  The obvious answer is, the margarita.

The second revelation was partly solved by a visit to the local Mexican market where I found a 1/2 liter bottle of La Costena Green Mexican Salsa (medium).  It still wasn’t what I was looking for, but it was close.

6 – 8 ounces of slow roasted pork shoulder (see notes)

1/2 medium onion

1/2 green pepper (had it hanging around the refrigerator)

1 – 2 tablespoons, olive oil

1/2 teaspoon oregano

8 ounces, salsa verde (or is it more correctly tomatillo sauce ? – it’s the rose thing coming back)

Cook the diced onion and green pepper for about 5 minutes in the olive oil in a small sauce pan.  Add the roasted pork shoulder, salsa verde and oregano.  Mix and simmer for another 5 or 10 minutes.  Stir a few times.  Serve alone or on tortillas.  The tortillas would have been nice for the picture, but I didn’t have any available.  Have a glass of water and a tissue near by.  You’ll need them.

Notes

While searching for salsa verde in a quart size (or possibly larger), I was surprised to find it not readily available.  The local supermarkets at best only had small jars used for dips.  Even in the Mexican market, 1/2 liter was all that I could find.  To make a large quantity of chili verde, you’ll need a large amount of salsa verde.  Even though I couldn’t find commercial salsa verde available in larger quantities, I did find several recipes for salsa verde and the ingredients for that in quantity.  That could be my next project.

While I’m pretty sure my local restaurant used roasted pork in their recipe, chili verde is really made as a stew.  Using roast pork works just fine, especially if you happen to have about, as I did, 10 pounds sitting in the freezer from summer outdoor smoking.  Once I solve the salsa verde issue above, making this as a stew could be part of the next project.

Tags: chile verde, chili verde, cooking, food, mexican, pork, recipe, recipes, salsa, salsa verde, tomatillo sauce

This entry was posted on 11/27/2010 at 11:48 and is filed under Recipes, Recipes, food, cooking and related items. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.