cook: posole

A few nights ago, I invited a couple friends to go to a speakeasy at one of my favorite eateries in San Mateo. Unbeknownst to many entering Wursthall, there's a secret bar below the stairs to the restrooms of the restaurant which also includes the entrance to Wunderbar. You follow the painted white rabbits along the baseboard to an entrance with a red velvet curtain to lead you to this hidden door. As with a speakeasy or to be in the know about a hidden bar, you have to make reservations. And we were told by the maître d' to rub the belly of the white rabbit. And really it's a motion detector which I loved for its cleverness of design.

And just like a speakeasy in the 1920s, the bar is not just hidden, but dimly-lit and unidentifiable except for the mirror with the restaurant's logo and through which you can glimpse from the outside the mixologist moving about behind the bar and you're able to hold a conversation inside unlike the very noisy and chaotic hubbub of the restaurant upstairs. I only ordered one drink, and I'm just noticing now that the orange peel is cut in shape to look like the head of a snake.

My cocktail was delicious, and I want to return to sip a cocktail called Lost at Sea.

Because of the pork broth, I'd boiled last weekend, I was inspired to cook posole which I’d hadn’t cooked in a few years. I think I can cook it now from memory. I denuded two arbol and two guajillo chiles of their membranes, seeds, and stems and poured boiling hot water in my blender. While they were soaking and getting soft, I chopped cabbage, radishes, jalapeno, white onion, cilantro, and lime into wedges.

I had leftover spare ribs from my sinigang and started browning them with a few cloves of garlic. I then added the pork broth and the pulverized chiles.

 

I didn't add any tomatoes either and relied on the chilies to make the soup red. After an hour of boiling and then simmering, I added the can of hominy to also soften in the broth for another hour.

 

While the broth was simmering, I had exactly one corn tortilla left, which I sliced into thin strips and then fried to be another garnish for the soup.

The soup was as delicious as when I had cooked it about 3 years ago. And maybe my next chili will be something similar with those chilies and ground pork and Gordo beans for my version of Chili Colorado.