When you visit an Indian pueblo on Christmas day, you will be invited to join one or more families for the midday meal. In fact, you will receive invitations from many families. No prior acquaintance needed. Just seat yourself at the table, and you will be served the traditional dishes of
the native peoples of the Rio Grande valley. If you feel awkward, you are suffering from your own hang ups. Your hosts are hospitality incarnate.
One of the dishes you will sample is posole (pronounced po-so-lay). It’s made of pork, chicos (corn kernels processed much like hominy) and chili peppers cooked in water with oregano. No magic happens during the cooking. You’ll be served a stew of discrete elements in a watery broth. A serving of fry bread, which is just that, adds a little rib-sticking sinfulness to the meal. And fun. Poke a hole and steam comes out. Which gives you hot chili with hot bread. Guaranteed to chase the chill out of a cold December day. (But it won't look or taste like this pot of posole.)
The Limits of Authenticity
Now when people are extending this incredible hospitality to a complete stranger like me, I am not inclined to be a hyper-critical foodie. But posole as a side dish in a New Mexican restaurant isn’t much more interesting. The same insipid broth. The same non-communicative ingredients. Boring—unless the peppers are tongue-burning hot, in which case nothing else matters. Still, traditional posole is basic nutrition. It will keep you alive. You will get the same dish when you order posole at the New Mexico State Fair, and it’s the recipe in my ancient recipe trove, a skinny paperback entitled The Complete New Mexico Cookbook.*
So much for authenticity! Sometimes tradition shouldn’t be tampered with. Sometimes evolution is a good thing.
A More Succulent Version
Shortly after I arrived in Santa Fe, I was invited to dinner in an old mountain village called Truchas by an artist friend, who was born in Costa Rica and was raised in Los Angeles. He served what he called posole. Rich, succulent, delicious, it did what stews are supposed to do. The ingredients turned the cooking liquid into ambrosia, yet the underlying
flavor of lime-processed corn and oregano was unmistakable.
So I asked for the recipe, which I received, that very night, but only as a list of ingredients. No amounts. No prep instructions. Still, I knew where I was coming from (the traditional method) and where I wanted to go (my friend’s creative, unlabored approach), so I went to work right away. By Christmas I could serve my ver- sion of my friend’s version to my family, who converge annually on Santa Fe for skiing and hanging out. They loved it, and they continue to opt for seconds, every year, except when I get carried away with the super hot chilis. One year I made the posole so hot even I couldn’t handle it without ladling it over an equivalent amount of bland white rice.
Anyhow, here’s how it goes, with a bow to Alvaro Cardona-Hines:Figure on two pounds of stewing pork. Have on hand a 13 ounce can of diced tomatoes and a 13 ounce can of hominy, preferably Mexican style. (You can start by soaking the chicos overnight, just as you can soak navy beans for baked beans, and you’ll get a chewier version, but my picky food-loving family doesn’t think this element of authenticity is worth the extra fuss). You will need a cup and a half of the following very coarsely sliced/diced vegetables: onions, carrots, celery, green peppers. Ditto with the mushrooms. For spicing: oregano, bay leaf, black pepper, garlic, hot chilies. As for liquid, you can stick with water, in which case the stew will be infinitely better on day two, or you can use chicken stock, which, in its commercial versions, is hardly better than water.
Chop and fry the onions in olive oil (or canola or peanut—whatever you want) as you see to the left. Before they are too transparent, add the pork and stir the mixture from time to time. Once the pork is mostly white on the outside, add the carrots and the other vegetables. Add the hominy and tomatoes. Add 2 bay leaves, 1 tablespoon of oregano, 1 teaspoon of chopped garlic, ½ teaspoon black pepper and fresh green chilies enough for the burn you can stand. Stir. Cover with water or chicken broth. Simmer for two hours, adding liquid, if necessary. Correct seasonings, adding salt if you insist.
Serve the posole with corn bread and a green salad—and who cares if it’s authentic? It’s delicious. And it freezes well. Make it for yourself and you won’t have to cook for two weeks.
* By Jim Douglass, Santa Fe, 1977.