I need a quick and dirty main dish. Last night I made 4 cups of chile puree. There are two frozen chicken breasts in the freezer. So...

• Chile puree, 4 cups
• 2 frozen chicken breasts
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp salt
• Yellow onions, medium, 2
• Garlic, 2 cloves, minced
• Potatoes, medium, 2, sliced into 1/4" wedges
• Olive oil

Throw olive oil into a large non-stick pan. Heat over medium. Begin sauteeing onions for three or four minutes, but not to the brown stage. Throw in garlic. Cook until fragrant. Mix in chile puree, potatoes, and spices. Throw in chicken breasts. Turn chicken breasts occasionally as they cook over 40 minutes, and of course stir occasionally. After 40 minutes remove chicken breasts and cut into bite size pieces. Cook further until chili ceases to be watery and achieves a pleasing thickness.

Result? Tasty!

In my desire to finally learn the secret of good green chile, I'm returning to a recipe I found at Simply Recipes. Last time I hosed it by overdoing the pepper, and heaven knows messing up what else. Way too many substitutions. This time I stuck to the recipe much more closely, outside of cutting the proportions in half. Among my minor variations, I added two pasillas, and I used the amount of liquid for a full recipe, which was a good call because in a low humidity environment like Tempe, the liquid vanishes quickly while simmering. I even added an extra cup of boiling water an hour before it was done. Here's how the calories add up:

Divide that up into four portions and you have 490 calories a serving. Actually, it's hard to say how the meat calories go. I bought pork shoulder, but to which of the dozen "pork shoulder" references at nutritiondata.com does it belong? HeckifIknow.

This was my most successful green chile yet. I'll definitely repeat the recipe.

This afternoon I improvised a chili recipe. I started with 20 ounces of ground turkey and fried it with a little black pepper, some cumin, and some thyme. Once cooked I added three cups of chile puree that I had made earlier, added some chile tepines and some sea salt and then simmered it until the broth was no longer watery. Tasty. Divided into four portions, it came out to 304 calories per serving, which is reasonable for a main protein dish in a meal.

In my quest to master green chile I have returned to Simply Recipes. It's still around 100 degrees here each day in the Phoenix metro area, so I really don't want to have something heating up the stove for three hours. I'll try to crockpot it instead. The trouble with this particular recipe is that it just makes too much; it would take me forever to eat it all. So I varied the ingredients like this:

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds tomatillos
• 5 garlic cloves, not peeled
• 2 jalapeños, seeds and ribs removed, chopped
• 2 Anaheim chiles, roasted, remove seeds, skin, and stems
• 2 pounds pork shoulder (also called pork butt), trimmed of excess fat and cut into 1 to 2-inch cubes
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Olive oil
• 2 yellow onions
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 Tbsp of chopped fresh oregano or 1 Tbsp of dried oregano Actually, I forgot the oregano
• 1 cup chicken stock
• Pinch of ground cloves Actually, I forgot this, too

Method

1. Remove papery husks from tomatillos and rinse well. Cut in half and place cut side down, along with 5 unpeeled garlic cloves, on a foil-lined baking sheet. Place under a broiler for about 5-7 minutes to lightly blacken the skin. Remove from oven, let cool enough to handle.
2. Place tomatillos, skins included, into blender. Remove the now roasted garlic cloves from their skins, add them to the blender. Add chopped jalapeños, Anaheims, and salt and pepper to the blender. Pulse until all ingredients are finely chopped and mixed.
3. Heat olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium high heat and brown pork chunks well on all sides. Work in batches so that the pork is not crowded in the pan and has a better chance to brown well. Using a slotted spoon or tongs, lift pork out of pan and place in bowl, set aside.
4. Pour off excess fat, anything beyond a tablespoon, and place the onions and garlic in the same skillet and cook, stirring occasionally until limp, about 5 minutes.
5. Put everything in the crockpot, including just enough chicken stock to cover the meat. Put the crockpot on your patio so you don't heat the house. Cook on low eight hours.

Notes

The original reciped called for cilantro. Cilantro is the Herb of the Antichrist, so of course I skipped that.

The original recipe said to salt and pepper the meat generously and brown it. Instead I ground the peppercorns in my mortar and threw them in the blender with the chiles. Having tasted the raw sauce, I wonder if that was a mistake. It left the pepper too green tasting, so to speak. Now I see that the pepper needs to be cooked. I'm hoping the eight hours in the crockpot will help.

Later: the unfried fresh pepper was definitely a negative. Next time I'll make sure to cook the pepper in the oil with the onions.

Today I'm trying a variation on cousin Jeannie's advice on green chile.

Ingredients

• Seven bone roast, 2.07 lbs
• 2 onions, thickly sliced, 18 oz
• 3 tomatoes, cored and halved, 13 oz
• 3/4 cup of diced tomato in juice
• 1 cup chicken broth
• Diced green chiles, 7 oz
• 2 stalks of celery, cut large
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 3/4 tsp salt

Procedure

1. Put everything excepts salt in crockpot. Cook on low for 9 hours.
2. Remove meat and shred it in a separate bowl.
3. Remove celery chunks from crockpot. Transfer 1/2 of liquid and vegetable matter to a blender and blend it smooth. Add salt. Pour into bowl with meat. Mix together. Serve.

Thoughts

• I forgot to add garlic this time.
• By using the veggies in the blender, you thicken the sauce without flour.
• Keeping the tomatoes in gave the liquid a red color, which is odd for a green chile recipe. Next time I might want to not use the tomatoes in the blender.
• For more green maybe add a couple bell peppers?

Today I made gazpacho for the first time using the recipe from the food processor instruction book. Tasty. Here's the recipe.

Gazpacho

Ingredients

• 1 medium cucumber, peeled & quartered
• 1 medium green pepper, cored & quartered
• 1 small onion, peeled & quartered
• 2 sprigs of parsley
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 cup chilled tomato juice
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp pepper
• dash of Tabasco sauce
• 6 ripe tomatoes, peeled and quartered

Preparation

1. Place cucumber, green pepper, onion, parsley and garlic in food processor. Process at low to chop to desired texture.
2. Add tomatoes and process at medium using momentary action until tomatoes are chopped. Pour chopped ingredients in bowl.
3. Process remaining ingredients in food processor at medium speed. Pour into bowl and mix. Cover, chill, serve.

Tonight I made Caveman Chili from “The Garden of Eating.” It was okay. I cooked it in a steel pan that was pretty thin, and I wonder if that didn't burn the ingredients a bit more than intended. It also seemed to me that there wasn't quite enough liquid in the recipe, so halfway through the cooking I added a cup of boiling water, and then near the end another cup. Most likely it was a bit dryer than the chef intended because I only found tomatoes that weren't quite ripe enough. I look forward to trying the recipe again.

On second thought it's possible that I also cooked it on too high a heat. I kept it boiling as opposed to reducing it to simmering, so that may have been part of the dryihg out problem as well. It's all still quite edible, though. None of it will be thrown out.