Green Chile Posole with Pork

This is out of the best cook book EVAR, Isabel's Cantina. Her restaurant, Cantina, in San Diego is one of my all time favorites. I was super intimidated when I first got the cookbook because her food is amazing and insanely flavorful, two things that I'm not exactly a master of in the kitchen. Surprisingly the recipes aren't that hard and taste effing AWESOME.

Serves 6

Ingredients

-3 Tbl olive oil
-2.5 lbs boneless pork shoulder, fat trimmed, cut into 2 in chunks (I couldn’t find boneless, so I bought bone in. Kind of a pain in the ass, but not a huge deal) (update: apparently 'pork pieces for stew' work just fine too and they're already cut! If you don't mind eating random mystery pork parts which, apparently, I don't)
-kosher salt (whatever, I used regular salt)
-black pepper
-1 med yellow onion, diced
-2 garlic cloves, minced
-4 cups chicken broth
-roasted chile verde sauce (there’s a separate recipe for this, but I just used one bottle of the bottled sauce)
-1 24oz can of hominy, drained

Directions

Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Dry the cubes of pork with a paper towel and season them with salt and pepper. Working in 3 batches, sear the meat on all sides. Don’t move the meat around until it has browned well on each side-about 3 mins per side. Use tongs to transfer the meat to a platter while you sear the next batch.

When all of the meat has been browned, add the onion and garlic to the pot and stir with a wooden spoon until the onion has softened, about 2 mins. Add the chicken broth, a little at a time, stirring the browned bits off the bottom of the pan (right about now it starts to smell reeeeally good). Return the pork to the pot and bring to a gentle simmer. Lower the heat to maintain the simmer and cook for 1 hr, skimming occasionally (I didn’t really see anything to skim, so I skipped that).

Add the chile verde sauce and the hominy (I also added cubed potatoes because, well, I had them) and continue simmering until the pork is exceptionally tender (umm…ok?) and the soup is thick and richly flavored, about 1 more hr (gets super thick and cooks down quite a bit).

Faryn’s host mom during her semester in inner-city LA used to make this, and she served it on tostada shells with sour cream and avocado. Sounds heavenly! We just ate it plain and it was freakin AWESOME. Nicole proclaimed that she wanted to bathe in it and be buried in it when she dies. Score! It took a good chunk of time to make, but it was totally worth it. Next time I’m gonna make a bunch of it and stick it in the freezer to eat forever and ever.