At East Fork, a staff member makes lunch for the rest of the team every Tuesday and Thursday. When it was co-founder and CFO John Vigeland's turn, he made a batch of pozole. This is what he had to say about his choice:
I grew up in Texas, and Tex-Mex cuisine's pretty engrained in my tastebuds. This soup hits all the right notes for me: the roasty heat of the chipotles, the flavor blast of all the cilantro, the acid of the tomatillos, the nourishing simplicity of the beans and hominy, and the unrepeatable smell of the poblanos when they are getting roasted on an open flame— and the luxurious frugality.
Pozole:
- 4 lb. dry pinto beans
- 75 oz canned hominy
- 1 can or 2 chipotle peppers in adobo (this is where the heat comes from)
- 20-30 poblanos
- 20 - 30 tomatillos
- 12 limes
- 6 bunches cilantro
- 5 large red onion
- Vegetable stock
Rice:
- 10-15 cups white rice
- Whole seed cumin
- 5 onions
- 1/2 cup butter
- 3 tbsp. tomato paste
- 2-4 limes
- Soak the pintos overnight and then get them boiling first thing. They'll take an hour or so.
- Roast the poblanos directly on a gas range (bonus if you roast them over your campfire of gnarled desert juniper boughs) until their skin is blackened, but not ashy grey. Cover and let them sweat a bit.
- Meanwhile, take the papery skins off the tomatillos and rinse away their stickiness. Quarter them and the onions and sauté them together for 5 minutes on medium heat, until the onions become translucent and the tomatillos are a bright green.
- With your hands, wipe off the blackened skin of the soft poblanos and pull out the seeds and stem. In a large food processor or blender, puree the following: poblanos, the sauteed tomatillos-onion mix, chipotles, cilantro, and vegetable stock (as needed to keep things flowing). Pour the mixture back into a big stock pot. Add hominy and pintos and bring it all back up to a gentle simmer.
- Squeeze in the lime and salt to taste.
- Make the rice by caramelizing onions with whole cumin seed in butter. In a big roasting pan, combine the caramelized onions and the dry rice and stir to coat. Add water (or stock if you've got it), tomato paste, and more butter. Cover and steam it in the oven at 350. When it's done, fluff it up and squeeze on some lime and salt to taste.
- Serve the pozole over rice. Garnish with sour cream or grated cheddar.
