Pot Luck

Having returned to having potluck dinners on Friday at work, I went on a quest for inspiration in the frozen food section of the garage. The trusty harvest gold Montgomery Ward Signature Deluxe freezer (38 years old this year!) offered up three pork roasts totalling about 6 pounds and some corn that was amazing when we bought it at the produce stand in Gig Harbor in August but is now suffering the long-term effects of a geriatric vaccuum sealer. I also came across yet another package of John Booker's wonderful roasted peppers. I'm glad he and Chaia are coming up for a visit in June because I should be just about out by then!
Armed with ingredients, I went looking for inspiration and found it in Susan Herrmann Loomis's Farmhouse Cookbook. In her tribute to America's rural cooks she has a recipe for Posole by Caryl Smith that looked like it would fit the bill. Caryl's recipe calls for a cup of ancho chile puree; I have no idea what John's peppers are, other than tasty, and I didn't quite get the full cup of puree after I stemmed and seeded and sieved them, but I did have a partial container of pasilla sauce that I brought back from Mexico, so I mixed them together. Not being a huge fan of hominy, I don't generally (never) have any in the pantry, but hominy is corn, right? Check. I cut the pork into large (2") cubes and browned it hot and fast in a couple of tablespoons of lard after softening a couple of chopped onions in the same pan on much lower heat. I put the onions in the bottom of a crock pot and put the browned pork on top of that, then mixed the pasilla, pepper puree, and a bottle of beer with a couple of tablespoons of Mexican oregano and poured it over the top. I cooked the meat in the sauce on high for about 3 hours before adding the kernels stripped from 8 ears of corn and cooked it for another two or three hours, until the meat was fork tender. It was pretty tasty and I'm visualizing the leftovers layered with corn tortillas and enchilada sauce in a casserole....