pozole party

Lately, I've been obsessed with pozole. For those of you who may not be familiar with this dish, it's a Mexican stew made with hominy and some kind of meat—usually pork— that comes in a number of variations, including verde, rojo, or blanco. It's quite popular as a fiesta food since guests can customize their bowls of pozole with a number of garnishes, including cabbage, radishes, oregano, lime juice, and avocado. Pozole is traditionally eaten with tostada shells rather than tortillas.

A short history

Culinary writer John Thorne noted that the word pozole is derived from the Nahuatl word posolli: a thick, mushy, fermented drink made from maize (or corn, as most of us know it), the staple crop of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations. It was from that ancient food that pozole descended—the main connection being the nixtamalized corn (hominy) that is used as a main ingredient in the dish.

Nixtamal-what?

Here is the skinny on nixtamalization: it refers to a process devised by the Aztecs and Mayans in which whole dried corn is soaked in an alkaline solution to separate the outer hull from the grain, soften it, and increase its dietary value by making niacin nutritionally available. Apparently, the explorers who introduced maize to Europe and beyond were unaware of this trick. So while Mesoamericans could happily subsist on their maize-based diets, malnourishment and vitamin deficiences like pellagra became epidemic among polenta-eating peasants in Italy and people in Africa and other places where corn became a food staple.

How to start from scratch

Nixtamalizing your own dried corn is actually not very complicated. I followed these directions from the San Francisco Chronicle (the accompanying article is quite interesting and informative, too):

1. Soak the dried corn overnight in water to cover. Drain and rinse in a sieve.
2. For each pound of corn, bring 2 quarts water to a boil. Stir in 1 tablespoon calcium hydroxide. [We bought calcium hydroxide from our local Mexican market. It's white and powdery and comes in a small packet labeled "cal lime."]
3. Add the corn and adjust heat to maintain a simmer. The corn will turn bright yellow. Cook 15 minutes, then cover and set aside for 1 hour.
4. Drain and rinse repeatedly, rubbing the corn between your fingers to remove the papery outer skin. Rinse until the corn is white again and no longer feels slippery.
5. Pinch off the tough, dark germ at the base of each kernel. This is a tedious task, but it will allow the corn to open like a flower when it is tender. Recruit a helper to make the job go faster.

One pound dried whole corn yields about 8 cups cooked.

Of course, canned hominy is available and using it would probably save a lot of time. I like preparing the corn the traditional way, but if you must go the canned route, I hear that certain brands sold in the United States, including Juanita and El Mexicano, taste better than others.

Pozole Rojo

To make our pozole, I modified a recipe I found in March 1999 issue of Gourmet magazine.

Traditionally, Mexican cooks start the soup by boiling a pig's head. Personally, that was out of the question for me, so I substituted pork cushion meat and ribs.

Ingredients

1 large head garlic
12 cups water
4 cups chicken broth
2 pounds pork cushion meat
2 pounds pork ribs
dried Mexican oregano, crumbled
1 pound whole dried hominy, prepared for cooking
salt

For the chile purée:

2 large dried ancho chiles
2 large dried guajillo chiles
2 cups boiling-hot water
1 small white onion
4 garlic cloves (set aside from the head of garlic)
salt

To garnish:

shredded cabbage
sliced radishes
quartered limes
avocados
minced white onion
crushed red pepper

Peel garlic cloves and reserve four for chile purée. Slice remaining garlic. In a large pot bring water and broth to a boil with sliced garlic and pork. Skim surface and add a couple teaspoons of oregano. Gently simmer pork, uncovered, until tender, for a couple of hours.

While the pork is cooking, prepare chile purée. Discard stems from the chiles. Cut open and shake out seeds. Toast chiles on a griddle by pressing them against the hot surface with a spatula until fragrant and slightly browned. In a bowl, soak chiles in the 2 cups of boiling-hot water for 30 minutes until softened. Combine chiles, soaking water, white onion, four reserved cloves of garlic, and a couple teaspoons of salt in a blender; puree until smooth.

When the pork is done, lift it out of the pot and transfer it to a cutting board. Shred meat and discard bones from ribs.

To the broth mixture add the chile purée and hominy. (At this point, the broth mixture in my stock pot had reduced quite a bit so I added a few more cups of water). Cover and simmer for about 3 hours until the corn kernels are tender. Return the shredded pork to the pot and season generously with salt.

Ladle into big bowls and add the mix-ins of your choice.

We like to eat the pozole with a spoon in one hand and tostadas smothered with guacamole in the other.

This makes a lot. It will last us for a week.

I think I might try making pozole verde next.