Lasagnchilada Verde

Okay, same song different sauce.

Sort of.



Okay, start with about 1/3 cup olive oil, and get it hot while you dice up a huge onion. Or a couple of medium ones, but I had one that must have weighed a pound. Sauté those onions until they're turning translucent and browning a bit, then add a heap of minced garlic. By a heap, I mean big serving spoon, everything it will haul out of a big-ass jar of garlic.



Maybe a tablespoon of Chipotle powder.
Two bags of 'ground meatless' (veggie burger crumbles)
A small can of Extra-Hot Ro-Tell
a 28oz can of Enchilada Verde sauce



When all that stuff is simmering, and you've heated the oven to 425ºF, layer some corn tortillas in the casserole dish; a layer of meatless verde sauce, a layer of shredded cheese (in this case, Colby-Jack-Mozzarella shreds). Two pounds of cheese in all.









Another layer of tortillas, another layer of magic verde, another layer of cheese. Repeat until you're out of stuff to repeat it with, then bake for 25 minutes at 425º.

Chile Verde

This started with a recipe search for something else, the chocolate fondue that didn't work.

But I came on this Chile Verde at 'Simply Recipes,' along with a Carnitas recipe at a time when I had a couple of pork roasts on hand.



All the 'verde' stuff I've ever worked with has come from a can. But if felt like time to branch out. This isn't exactly their recipe, I used more garlic, added the citrus (and the sugar it ended up requiring because of the citrus), but other than that it's the same idea.



So:

1-1/2 lbs tomatillos
12 cloves garlic, peeled
2 jalapeños (skin & seeds removed)
2 Anaheim peppers (skin & seeds removed)
2 Poblano peppers (skin & seeds also removed)
1 bunch cilantro, cleaned & chopped
Pork roast (in this case a sirloin tip roast, 98% fat free) cubed
Juice of a lemon
Juice of a Lime
1/4 cup sugar
Salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste
olive oil
2 yellow onions (actually one really big one)
3 cloves garlic, peeled & chopped
1 tbsp dried oregano powder
2-1/2 cups chicken stock (a quart of 'broth' boiled and reduced to about 2-1/2 cups)
1 clove (recipe called for a 'pinch' of ground cloves; I had whole cloves so I threw one in the chicken stock while it was reducing and fished it out before adding to the chile)

First I cubed the meat. Then I squeezed the lemon and lime juice on it and set it aside to marinate.





The tomatillos and peppers, and the dozen cloves of garlic, I roasted under the broiler for seven minutes. Cut the tomatillos in half and place them cut side down on sprayed foil and go for it. The garlic and peppers needed more time, so I gave it to them while I put the tomatillos in the blender.





The peppers & roasted garlic join the tomatillos in the blender, along with the cilantro.







Meanwhile, the pork gets browned in the olive oil. I included the marinade with the last of the meat and reduced to nothing. Then I sautéed the onions and the 3 cloves more garlic and added that to the mix.



Once it's all combined, simmer it for two to three hours, until the pork is 'fork tender.' The pork in mine never got quite as tender as I wanted, but I think that's a problem with browning stuff. The high heat to brown the meat also cooks it fast and tough. There was plenty of acid from the tomatillos and citrus, so much in fact that I added the sugar after to bring the dish back into balance, but the meat still has quite a bit of tooth to it. If the carnitas I'm making turns out, that's the way to treat the pork for this recipe.

Carnitas Según lo Previsto

This is more like it. The Carnitas recipe at Simply Recipes is more or less what I did. Except, as I said in my last post, I burned the first batch to a crisp and reused the liquid from the crock pot for the replacement pork roast.



The recipe (not entirely as presented at Simply Recipes, this is what I actually did):

1 pork roast (sirloin tip)
1 14.5oz can Ro-Tel tomatoes, undrained
1 16 oz. can diced tomatoes
1/3 cup Mrs. Renfro's Habanero Salsa
Juice of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 lime
1 pint chicken broth (to finish covering meat)

The recipe called for 2 cups of salsa, but the only salsa I had in the house was the Mrs. Renfro's and I wanted this to be something I might con Em into trying. Mrs. Renfro's Habanero has a great flavor, best salsa on earth in my entirely un-humble opinion, but it does pack some heat. Not as much as the name implies, but it's pretty intense.

And Em thinks black pepper is hot and spicy.



So I used just a touch of Mrs. R to give it flavor, and diluted the heat of the Ro-Tel with just plain diced tomatoes. Plus, the roast is whole while it cooks in this stuff, so there's a limit to the infiltration of capsicum, I think. Hope. We'll see if Em goes into full meltdown when she tries it.*

Combine all this stuff in your slow cooker and let it simmer on low forever. I put this in last night after I ruined the first batch and let it go until I got home from work this evening. The roast was so tender by then it was impossible to transfer whole to the roasting pan. If you looked at it cross-eyed, it came apart.



To 'pull' the pork, I just kind of mashed at it with a ladle and it came apart in gloriously tender strings.

20 minutes on 400 to remove a bit of moisture and caramelize it and you're good to go. Goes excellently, by the way, with Chile Verde. Next time I make that dish, all the meat that goes in it will get this treatment.

*Postscript:



Mo ate the Carnitas like she'd just got out of a Turkish prison. Em liked it at first, but after awhile decided it was too dry. I suggested she try some ranch dressing, since I knew she wouldn't use salsa or the Chile Verde that was also on the table, which was what I was combining in my Carnitas wrap.

She decided the ranch dressing was too tangy, then, and really she didn't eat all that much. When we got back from her dancing, she claimed to be starving and fixed herself a sandwich. She's officially a teenager today, and I guess officially a high maintenance one. at that.

Carnitas Quemado

Well, I tried to make Carnitas according to Simply Recipes formula. I put the pork roast in the crock pot around the time I started my Chile Verde and it took a lot longer for the pork to get tender than I anticipated.

I was pretty shagged out from the weekend's festivities, too, and it was late when I finally pulled the pork and put it in the roasting pan. When the oven was up to 400ºF, I put the pan in and came down to my den to wrap up my blogging activities with an eye to going to bed.

When I woke up, the house smelled of burning meat. You're supposed to roast it at 400º for 15 to 20 minutes, not an hour and a half.

The roasts I used today had come in a three-pack, so I threw the third into the crock pot, which still had the tomato based liquid the meat slow cooks in. I figured it could take its time finishing, set the cooker on low and go to bed.



What was in the roasting pan, I wouldn't even give to Barley. He looked interested, but as far as I know he doesn't need an activated charcoal treatment.

Lasagnchilada Verde

I would have rather grilled some chicken breasts for this, but I because Congress failed to sprinkle magic dust on the economy, I had to make do with canned chunk chicken breast.



Okay, I was really just too lazy to go get fresh breasts and fire up the grill. With all the seasoning in this casserole, the chicken serves more as cheap, abundant protein than a flavor anyway.



So to a pair of drained 12.5oz cans of chicken, I added:

1 white onion, chopped and sauteed
1 tbsp. minced garlic
1 10 oz can Extra Hot Ro-Tel tomatoes
1 28 oz can Enchilada Verdes sauce
12 oz. Soy-Sation fake mozzarella
12 oz. actual cheddar
20 corn tortillas

I layered the ingredients, the tortillas, the stew, the cheese, until it was all used up (three layers deep), then covered with jalapeño slices and baked for 40 minutes at 375ºF.









While I cooked this up, the United States Senate decided to pass a version of the $700 billion bailout. And me with no Anthrax to mail.



This is a bad idea. The consequences of lending irresponsibly are bad. Thank Bill Clinton for starting it, thank George W. Bush for doing nothing whatsoever to stop it, but don't pretend making the Secretary of the Treasury a three-month God is going to fix it. Junk-sickness is bad, but giving the junkie money for 'just one more fix' is not helpful.



Plus, in three months there will be whoever Obama picks as Secretary of the Treasury. So even if Paulson is the genius he's touted to be, he's only there until Christmas.



And yes, I am morbidly certain that Barrack Obama is our next President. I'm not happy about it, even less happy that if he truly fulfills his 'destiny,' he'll be succeeded by President Biden, but I can't see how it's not going to happen. Even conservative Republicans I know are uncomfortable with Palin. I like her, but I like her for the very reasons she's going to lose McCain any chance he ever had. Which is fine as far as it goes, McCain is not really going to govern any differently than Obama would, except that he might keep Paulson on at Treasury. Which would only matter if Paulson isn't shitting us when he says he can fix this.