Carnitas!

How to make carnitas...

Start with some boneless country pork strips or other hunks of porky flesh. (That sounded rather odd - but I think I'll leave it.) How much? How many people are you having over? Might as well have some leftovers. Get enough meat. I used maybe 2 1/2 lbs or so. Cut up your pork into roughly 2" chunks.

Put this in a large pot with a heavy bottom and add water to cover plus a few inches. Put this on the stove on high and start adding your seasonings:

Add two jalepenos - I just throw them in whole. Toss in two oranges cut into quarters - skins and all. One medium brown onion cut in half goes in as well along with some thyme. Let's be honest here - I'm not much of a measurer - but it was roughly a heaping tablespoon. Since I didn't use stock I also added some chicken boullion. I was out of garlic or I would have thrown in some of that too. Sometimes I use cumin as well but this time I didn't. Use what sounds/smells good in your spice cupboard and has a sort of mexican flair to it.

Now bring it up to a boil, reduce heat to simmer, put on a lid and cook it for a few hours until it's really tender. Stir it up every hour or so and check on it.

When ready, seperate the broth, meat and cooked veggies. Throw away the veggies.

You have two options now - oven or stove top.

For oven, get out an oven safe skillet, put in the meat and about 1/2 cupish + milk. Yep. Milk. Mix it in and put it in the oven at 425. The milk will help it to brown. Reduce the broth on the stove. After 15 minutes, check meat. If well browned, begin adding reduced stock, scraping up browned bits and return to oven. Repeat this until stock is gone and meat is irresistable.

For stove top, brown meat in a little oil on stove and add some stock to pan to scrape up browned bits. Add salt and pepper to taste - since you're not using all the stock you may need to add some. This method is best for when you forget to start cooking the carnitas early enough in the day and now it's getting late - so come on and cook them and let's eat! ;)

Good served on flour tortillas with pepper jack, salsa or tapatio, sour cream, lettuce and lime juice. Or just straight from the pan.

Leftovers for lunch

Yesterday I found myself heating up some leftever rice and teriyaki chicken for lunch from dinner the night before... but no veggies to go with it. Hrmmm.

I did just make a batch of spicy salsa though. I threw a bunch of that in and wow-wee! The teryaki and salsa had a baby they called delicious!

I suppose this is what they call fusion food? What a great idea! I should try this sort of thing more often - especially with leftovers. Either by combining two different kinds of food - or heck, just dump salsa on everything. ;)

Salsa!

Whenever you say "salsa!" it should come with an exclamation point after it because salsa (!) is just that good. As far as snack food goes, you could do a lot worse with onion dip and potato chips.

So - what do you need?

Tomatoes - I like to use 8 roma tomatoes but use your head to figure out how many you need if you pick a different kind. I've made this with yellow and orange tomatoes too so whatever you can get is cool.

Onion - 1 large yellow one or 2 small ones. Cut off the ends and cut them in half.

Jalepenos - 2ish. You can never be sure with jalepenos if they'll be really hot or not hot enough. I usually just go with two and sometimes it's too spice and sometimes not spicy enough.

Pasilla pepper or another kind if you want that's not very spicy.

Lime

Salt

Cilantro - one fair sized bunch

Get a large non-stick skillet and get that baby super hot. Throw in the tomatoes (whole), onion (cut as directed), and whole peppers and burn them. That's right. BURN THEM. Turn them over a few times until they nice and black in spots.

Tear off the leafy tops (in one twist to the whole bunch) of the cilantro and put in a food processor along with the veggies you've burned after cutting off the ends of the tomatoes and the jalepenos. Remove the seeds of the passilla pepper. Leave the seeds of the jalepenos, unless you want no heat at all. (and what fun is that?)

Add the juice of the lime and a good sized pinch of kosher salt. If you use regular salt you'll use subtantially less.

Pulse it until it's good and chopped but not liquified. It's going to be warm so you want to refridgerate it.

Because it's a partially cooked salsa (Salsa!) you get the best of both a cooked and uncooked salsa.

I hope you try it. Goes great with Juanita's branch of tortillas chips from Winco. ("The chips in the red bag".)

So I'm going to blog?

I had to sign up for a blog in order to comment on other people's blogs. I don't *have* to fill this space but hey, why not. Maybe I'll have something important to say. If nothing else, it's a spot to write down various things I cook so I can reference them later. I can see it now - I'll be hosting some beautiful dinner party and someone will kindly ask for the recipe for my... um... something really tasty whatever it is, and I'll direct them to the House of Ferg Blog. ha HA!

Or something. If this is the last post ever*, we shall never speak of it again. ;P

*well - next to the last, I was thinking I'd go post a recipe right now.