Chile Verde 26, Seahawks 20
This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook by preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks' opponent.
Seahawks vs. Chile Verde Preview
In the Southwest, chiles are hung outside doors and windows. This probably has something to do with tradition, drying them, or some cultural thing, like how we throw fish.
Chiles are more important to Southwestern culture than family or cocaine, which is why we were excited to run down to the market to pick out our poblanos, jalapeños, and cocaine.
We broiled the poblanos in the oven until their skin turned from green to black. Then we put them in a paper bag for twenty minutes, leaving us nothing to wear over our head when the game started.
Once out of the bag, we had to peel the skin off the chiles, so they charred easier. Then what was left of the poblanos was sliced and diced.
We are getting ahead of ourselves. There is much more to Chile Verde than chiles, there is pork as well. Does anyone know of a good butcher in the Market? The one by the fish tossers is closed either on Sundays or just in the morning.
We had to make do with what we could find at the zoo’s thrift store.
Following that, we made a quick stop at Safeway to buy some of the final ingredients. Currently customers are given an option to donate five dollars so Thanksgiving dinner can be purchased for an underprivileged family.
Well, the guy in front of us made sure that everyone around him knew that he was giving money. We hate stuff like that.
So when it came time for us to make a donation, we kept it quiet. Because even though we did donate, it’s nobody’s business but ours. We like to keep our giving a secret, and besides, so what if we donated the five dollars, which we did, who needs to know, that we did. Please keep your giving to yourself, like we do when we buy dinner for underprivileged families, like we did on Sunday.
If you would like to be as discreetly awesome as we happen to be, might we suggest making donations to Northwest Harvest this Thanksgiving and beyond.
Once home, we chopped the pork into one-inch cubes, diced the onions, garlic, and jalapenos.
Then we browned the pork and onions, added the chiles, spices, and our favorite, the cilantro. After we had a good sizzle going, it was time to add our chicken stock, and begin the hour-long simmer.
The recipe said to simmer on low heat for an hour. However, we can’t help ourselves sometimes, and in our desire to burn off more of the liquid, we used the hour to slowly turn the heat up. We have no idea if this negatively affected the outcome of our final product, sorry to drop the honest bomb on you.
Finally, much like the Seahawks’ season, our soup was done.
Outside, it may have been a typical 58 and sunny (damn you climate change for ruining the perfect end to this post) November day, but in our tummy it was hot and spicy.
NEXT WEEK: Seahawks @ Baked Ham with Glaze, 1:15 p.m.
Recipes from David Rosengarten's It's All American Food. Don't ask to borrow Seattlest Rachael's copy; it's covered in mildew, gross.
