The Hungry Tiger

Okra lunch

Brown rice on one side, delicious okra on the other. You know, don't you, that there is a pretty simple trick for preventing okra from getting slimy? The key is that no water (or anything with a high water content) should touch any cut surface of the okra until it has been seared, generally in hot oil and spices. This means that you must dry your okra VERY VERY thoroughly after you wash it. Very! Dry them as well as you can and then let them lie on a fresh dry towel or cooling rack to airdry some more.

Don't use a wet knife, either; even if your knife is just damp from cutting up another, wetter, ingredient, strings of mucilage will begin to multiply. Similarly, if you are pickling okra, do not prick it with a fork! It is also best to ensure that the wet ingredients in your recipe, which you add later, are acidic: use plenty of tomatoes, vinegar, lemon juice.

This new bento/lunch box, made by my favorite purveyors of plastic food storage containers, Lock&Lock, is just right for me. The Lock&Lock lids are easy to open and close and have an excellent seal, thanks to their gasket. I usually don't have it in me to make lunches that combine more than two or three elements, but often like to bring exactly two, so the divider configuration suits me very well, and the amount of food that fits inside is also just about right. I'd also be delighted to have some of these for three-item days, but they're hard to find. In the meantime, of course, I can always bring a second little container when I need one, or nestle two things on one side. In other news, ugh! The most recent photos I've taken have all been horrendously lit and therefore generally horrendous. Hélas.

Pozole verde

This is one of the things you can do with all that salsa verde you just made. (Didn't you?) It's unfussy, lively-tasting but substantial, texturally pleasing, and most likely not something you can get just as easily at a nearby restaurant.

Posole or pozole is, I have been given to understand, the name of both dried, slaked corn (aka hominy, the same stuff that is ground up to make hominy grits) and of soup or stew made of that corn. You can get hominy ready-cooked in a can, or buy it dried and simmer it yourself, which takes some time but hardly any work, and the results are more delightfully toothsome and less can-tasting than the canned kind.

This recipe will make six servings of pozole verde on the more soup-ish end of the spectrum. As you can see from the picture, I opted for fewer servings of something more towards the stew end of the spectrum--easily achievable by the simple method of adding less broth--with plenty of cheese on top. I also threw in some chopped leftover kale, because we had it around. This was a success.

If you already have some cooked hominy and a batch of salsa verde, you can wing it, like so: Use about a cup of salsa for every four to six ounces (in weight, that is) of cooked hominy. You'll also want a splash or two of olive oil; some quantity of additional hot pepper, minced; broth; salt and pepper; and garnishes, which is to say cheese. Then it's all very simple: heat the oil and add the salsa, plus the extra minced pepper. Cook for about ten minutes, then thin with broth. Add the hominy and simmer at least until heated through. You can add leftover greens, or shredded leftover chicken, at this point, too. Add more broth if you want it soupier, cook longer if you want it to be thicker. Add salt and pepper to taste. See, simple!

Simple pleasures and salsa verde

At last, it's (what I think of as) summer at the farmer's market! Hallelujah. As a result, I made buckets of salsa verde yesterday, and tonight we gorged ourselves on a mere fraction of the ripe tomatoes in our kitchen.

In fact, tonight's dinner was an especially fine example of simple food elevated by virtue of having all the components be extra good examples of their type: tomato salad made with good, ripe, long-awaited tomatoes; beautiful fancy beans topped with a extra-crisp young onions in vinegar and cilantro from the pot on our own back porch; and tortillas I made with my very own two little hands. It was lovely.

Maybe you would like a recipe for something now, since it's been a while. How about the salsa? It didn't feature in tonight's dinner, but it will appear later in the week. There are many variations on salsa verde, but this is the way I make it, and I think it's very good. This type, with cooked tomatillos, will keep a week or two, tightly sealed, in the fridge, but it also freezes beautifully, so feel free to make enormous batches while tomatillos are in season. It's good with chips or on top of a quesadilla, but also serves as an ingredient in dishes like chilaquiles, pozole verde, and enchiladas.

INGREDIENTS

• Tomatillos
• Serrano or jalapeno peppers: for a base, I like to start with about one for about every pound of tomatillos. This makes a mild but not utterly kickless sauce; I add (or don't) more minced chile to suit the final dish, depending on what it is and who I'm serving it to.
• White onion: about half a smallish one for about every pound of tomatillos, roughly chopped
• Garlic: a clove for about every pound of tomatillos
• Several sprigs of cilantro
• Salt to taste

TO DO

1. Husk your tomatillos. They have a tendency to be sticky underneath their husks, so I find it easiest to do this under running water. Twist off any stems.
2. Lightly oil a large baking dish, or several, depending on how many tomatillos you have. Put the tomatillos in a single layer in these dishes, and tuck the chiles in between them.
3. Broil the tomatillos under a high flame for about 4-7 minutes, until they start to turn brown on top. Flip them over and cook a few minutes more. Let cool. Cut the stem ends off the chiles and discard.
4. Now, puree all the ingredients together, in a food processor or blender or molcajete. If you are the kind of person who makes your salsa in a proper molcejete, I wonder why you are getting your recipe from the likes of me, but I bet it will taste great. You may have to do this in batches, which is also a nice way to give yourself a chance to adjust proportions to your taste. Puree ten tomatillos with the proportions of other ingredients I suggest and then give it a taste. Too much or too little spice, or garlic, or whatever? Compensate accordingly next time and mix together to get the balance just right.