Red Posole

Published Dec. 24, 2009 at 4:31 p.m.

I'm sitting there with three tubes of kraft paper, a ball of twine, two dwindling rolls of tape, and a small mountain of presents to wrap. Fat, juicy raindrops are pelting the window panes. Wind is making the bones of the house creak, and I suspect it will be dark by 3:30 this afternoon. There is a pot of day-old red posole bubbling away over a low, low flame in the kitchen. Which, by the way, is the warmest place in the house right now. I'm eager to pick through the pot to procure more than my fair share of flowered kernels. Kernels I'll then hide under thin whisps of pan-fried tortillas, a pinch of toasted Mexican oregano, and a bit of crumbled feta. It will be just the right thing to have for lunch on a day like today.

I've had posole on my mind for weeks now. And this is just one of a series of posole-centric pots I've cooked up since my friend Gwen brought a huge pot of posole verde and all the fixings to a big family-syle dinner we had at Lori's house in Napa - you might remember Lori from the posts I've done about her cabin. Hi Lori, hi Lisa, hi Gwen :) The posole that night? It really hit the spot.

Gwen mentioned using the posole verde recipe on the Rancho Gordo site, but tomatillos are scarce right now, so for this pot I went the red route. I started with Deborah Madison's posole recipe from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, which essentially gives you a base recipe for cooking posole/hominy. You then add her chile colorado style red sauce (to taste), which takes the posole into the red realm. I've adapted the recipe to combine the two components, and incorporated a few personal tweaks as well. You'll find posole is quite adaptable, so really, just season and make changes based on what tastes good to you.

It is worth mentioning, you'll end up with plenty of extra red sauce. Not a bad thing because it actually freezes well, as does drained pozole/hominy. So, while I don't normally think of pozole as an on-the-fly weeknight meal, if you have two of the components in the freezer, you can thaw them earlier in the day, and be ready to go, relatively quickly, later in the evening.

I'm just noticing that there aren't many popped kernels in the lead photo. There were plenty, but I must have spooned them all into my bowl! Merry Christmas & happy holidays everyone.

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