THIS. IS. CARNE. ADOVADA! So this is a Northern New Mexico thing. I have learned that this is what we call Mexican dishes that have been tex-mexified not in the direction of Texas and Jalapeños, but in the direction of poverty and excess lard and green chile. Growing up, making carne adovada was always an extraordinarily tedious affair. One had to buy the right ristra at the right time. Then one had to let it age. Then one had to boil the chiles for just the right amount of time to reconstitute them, then one had to let the sludge sit on the pork for just the right time, then one had to add garlic and oregano and shit, and one had to put it on the stove for like two days. I called my dad up for the recipe. I mentioned something about my mother’s toiling, terrible recipe, which I was willing to improvise on. Since they’ve been divorced for about 8 years, my dad said “well, I can’t give you your mother’s. I can give you mine.” I’m so glad he did. Start to finish: 1hr, including 30 minutes in the pressure cooker. Czech it out. 1) GET A LOT OF PORK. 2) CUBE THAT SHIT 3) (add salt and pepper, because I’ve been doing a lot of Blue Apron and they salt and pepper everything multiple times and it seems to work) 4) BACON GREASE OHH YEAH 5) BROWN THAT SHIT 6) What follows is a brief interlude on “crushed” vs “minced” garlic. There are purists who say that garlic should always be minced because it tastes better. I am not one of those purists. I got into a discussion a few weeks back (ghostoffuffle?) about the amount of time necessary to crush garlic being equal to or greater than the amount of time necessary to mince garlic. Suffice it to say that Step (6) is intended solely as a refutation of this. All times include photography and herding a 2-year old sitting on the counter: 0:00 0:20 0:30 0:35 1:00 1:25 7) Here is the primary place where my father’s recipe and my mother’s recipe diverge. 99 CENTS BOYEE (granted you need two with this much pork) 8) with oregano, right before the lid to the pressure cooker goes on 9) We’re now waiting half an hour. Considering we’ve pretty much got “pork” and “red chile sauce” we’re going to wing a salad. 10) Can’t help much with the mangos, but here’s a special tool for nuking things. This benriner/mandoline was purchased exactly six months before OXO started making them. If I had it to do over again, I’d probably buy the OXO rather than the Zyliss. But that was 2003 and the sucker gets used maybe three times a week. Take that, Alton Brown. 30 seconds later: 11) Another tool that’s virtually impossible to find these days: A decent, old-fashioned juicer. My wife bought this one at a garage sale for 50 cents. That seems to be the only way to buy them. 12) with cilantro and mango and salt and pepper and, having tasted it, ginger: 13) Yes, I know how to cook rice. Yes, I still own a rice cooker. Not only that, I own what I think is one of only two stainless-steel rice cookers on the market. It is dope, and it is also used twice a week or more. 14) Serve on rice with avocado and sour cream. Or, since we’re health-conscious, low-fat greek yogurt. Tastes even better. Perfect for cold days. (recipe serves, like, 6)
Yum. Grubski is like a high stakes poker game of deliciousness where everyone keeps raising the table limits.
Bah. This is like the simplest of recipes. I have fancier stews but I was hungry for carne last night and it's stupid easy. No pressure cooker? Slowcook it all day. No slow-cooker? Put it in a pot, put it on the stove and cook it all day. Put it this way: when you're literally soaking pork in red chile sauce for multiple hours, there's very little else you can do to it to fuck it up. It's a klutz's recipe. Unlike my mother's version, which usually involved forgetting what you had been doing with your hands about 20 seconds after you whip out your johnson to pee.
Goddamn, that's a tasty looking dish. Wasn't me- in fact, I preferred crushing until a guest broke the plastic handle off my cheapo OXO crusher. Was always confused by the assertion that mincing introduces more oil than crushing. But you know what does it best? Mashing in a mortar and pestle. Followed a recipe that called for that and I was tasting garlic for days. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not that's a desirable outcome. Might have to put this on the menu for next week, goddamn.I got into a discussion a few weeks back (ghostoffuffle?) about the amount of time necessary to crush garlic being equal to or greater than the amount of time necessary to mince garlic.
You gotta get that polished marble deal, way easier to maintain. But the grinding is still a royal pain in the ass.
I'm still limping along with the same Eos5D I took to Thailand in 2007. It's not even a good lens - it's a 28-105/4IS. I've promised myself a D800 when I've converted all my slides to scans. Hiccup in the plan; I got sick of making a 1998 Minolta Dimage Scan Multi II SCSI work via Firewire so I sold the works. The next plan is a macro lens and my mother-in-law's Zeiss slide projector and then I'll automate. I only switched to Canon when Nikon steadfastly refused to go full-frame. Now that the D800 is like a gajillion megapixels at 24x36, I'll likely not just go Nikon, I'll go prime. I really miss shooting medium format and the D800 is as close to a medium format digital as you can get without going stupid $40k Leaf-back Hasselblad.
So, I just ate dinner and after reading through this and looking at the pictures, I'm hungry again. That looks and sounds really tasty. We don't eat a lot of rice, so I don't think the rice cooker would come in terribly handy, but that mandolin would sure be nice to have. We own a garlic press and I've never used it. It seems that some of the oils from the garlic wouldn't make it to the dish, am I wrong? Also, what is that blue tubular device? I hear ya on the juicer, they're nice to have. My parents have one. I use my little electric juicer at least twice a week for cocktails. It's bad-ass, easy to clean and super fast. Nice work KB. That looks awesome, I want to make it.
Get a rice cooker. You'll eat a lot of rice. ;-) Fried egg, parmesan and rice? Mondo breakfast. Pork loin, egg, scallions and pineapple? MONDO fried rice. And my daughter rawks rice balls. So Zyliss makes pussilanimous little garlic presses that break. I'm not iron man but I've shattered two of them. The Messermeister is a tank. Probably weighs a pound. And the oils from the garlic definitely make it into the dish. Especially as every clove you press goes through the last clove you pressed. This is the "blue tubular device:" (there's another video online of how they work, but the nebbish actually cuts the ends off before using it instead of just throwing them in 4-5 cloves at a time)