Green chili, tortilla chips

Green chili made with tomatillos and both fresh and tinned chile peppers, 

I learned something. The amount of tomatillos I used caused the whole batch to be way too much acid. I pondered what I could add to counteract that so it doesn't taste so tart. 

What should I add?

I added one level teaspoon of baking soda. It foamed up exactly like the 3rd grade volcano demonstration. It kept foaming and foaming and foaming and as it boiled it continued foaming even more. It foams up like the dramatic moment of making caramel, like dropping rice noodles into oil, like popcorn at its climax of popping, except better than all that. And it altered the pH to pleasantly acidic and not tart-candy like acidic. 

My next batch will use poblanos and tomatillos and that will be better. 

Green chili, fried egg, chickpea polenta, tortillas

Tortillas made with butter this time instead of lard or yellow margarine, flour, salt, baking soda, water

1/4 cup dried beans, 3/4 cup chicken stock, butter, spices, herbs. Stirred four times while microwaving in pulses for 1.5 minutes or until boiling temperature throughout. 

Pork chili from yesterday. 

Tamale wonton poppers

Jalapeño poppers meets tamales. East meets West. North of the border meets South of the border. Old meets new. Entree meets hors ďoeuvres. Flogged rhetorical construction meets pistol. BANG! They are odd little things and they are delicious and they are addictive. I ate the whole pile and when you see the pile you are going to be shocked. 

The other odd thing is that part of the filling, the masa de maíz, could very well have been the wrapper. Wontons can also be sliced and used as noodles but that is irrelevant to what is going on here and I'd appreciate it if you would avoid getting off topic.

The green chili from before is too lumpy for wontons so it must be processed further -- with a fork. It is also not hot enough so additional jalapeños are added. Jalapeños come in different hotnesses, this is the hottest. I used the entire tin, it's also the smallest tin. After all that, the finished tamale poppers still are not hot at all. Everything else tends to deaden the effect of capsaicin, the masa, the cheese, the wrapper, the cooking oil. Maybe that's why poppers are so successful, they are more simple and more directly and powerfully jalapeño whereas here with the tamale poppers the jalapeño is muted. 

Regular masa harina for tamales, the powder that comes in bags and mixes with water. It is a wonder to behold. Incredibly easy to mix, amazing aroma and flavor, versatile and inexpensive. Plus, the removal of the pericarp by an alkaline soak and cook makes available the nutrients within corn and the process eliminates some pathogens on corn, mycotoxins and the like. I read it in a jaw-droppingly boring paper. They might pull it down out of embarrassment, it is a government research paper. 

Oaxacan cheese 

Green chili, masa de maíz, Oaxacan cheese are set to the side mise en place. 

Half the package of wontons arrayed to accept the layers of filling.

Please pardon the shift in viewing angle. If you sense a rush of vertigo coming on I suggest closing your eyes and grabbing the seat of your chair. 

It turned out to be too much filling. About 1/8 was removed from each one. 

Edit: I'm changing my suggestion. Do not shut your eyes if you feel a spate of vertigo coming on. Instead, keep them open and stare at something steady. The steadier, the better, like a mountain is a lot better than staring at a hamster in an exercise wheel, and grab the arms or the cushion of your seat. 

Green chili

You're probably thinking, "Hey! that chili is red, not green." 

The chiles in the chili are green. The tomatoes turn the overall color red. 42 oz tomatoes out-colors 27 oz green chiles. There is also jalapeño chiles but the tins are much smaller. 

No matter what I do along these lines I am always pleased with the result. I've tried all cuts of pork, beef, lamb, and chicken and they all work very well. 

As to what is not shown, it is all in tins except for an onion and the cloves of half a garlic bulb. 

I thought I would go easy this time. One small pork roast, one 27 oz tin of Hatch type roasted green chiles. Three 14 oz tins of diced tomato, two medium size tins of jalapeño chile peppers in strips. That would amount to a small batch, so I thought. 

Herbs, of course: coriander, cumin, cayenne chile pepper powder, sea salt, black ground pepper.

The pork was still partially frozen. When I cut the pork into cubes it became very wet there on the cutting board. I had already seasoned it and I didn't want that rubbed off. In two batches, I dusted the pork cubes with flour to absorb the wetness. This instead of a paper towel because of the herbs already on it. You can see the seared caramelized flour encrusted the pork. As the pork released moisture and steamed, it picked up the fond stuck to the pan and adhered it to the surface of the pork. So a textured surface developed. Those cubes of fond-encrusted pork were utterly delicious just as they were. I ate six of the cubes for sort of a first course. 

Then the onion and garlic.

Then everything in the tins. This may sound to you like a cheapskate low down no good dirty rotten shortcut-take'n can-openin' inauthentic, gringo-choice-makin'n way of doing this, and maybe it is, but I roasted piles of chile peppers before lots of times on the grill, in the oven, broiled, stove-top, gas, electric, peeled the charred skins, I've peeled fresh tomatoes, I've peeled the sticky paper off tomatillos, found and used weird herbs like epazote, and insisted on specific cuts of pork, but honestly, when it all boils down, and it does boils down, it's not that I cannot tell the difference between fresh and tinned, it's that I don't care. It's all fantastic to me.   

Flour tortillas were made the usual way. 

* 2 cups a/p flour

* 3 tablespoons lard

* 2 level teaspoons baking powder

* 1 cup warm water 

Water added in increments until a workable dough is attained. This dough has salt and pepper and Mexican oregano. I guess it's not usual to season tortillas, but hey, what the heck. The dough balls are rolled out and fried. 

Breakfast burrito

Where breakfast occurs at 1:00 a.m.

*  Leftover scalloped potatoes
*  Baked beans that started out white beans but turned reddish brown along the way.
*  green chili, which is actually more red than green, made from Hatch chiles.