Yeah yeah this isn’t touhou related… But know what? This is my website and I think you will all like this recipe. It’s fairly common to find this with a few variations in Hidalgo Mexico, usually served with beans and tortillas (corn).

So we begin with a kilo of tomatillo (the smaller the better), half a kilo of pork, 7 nopales (maybe more or less depending on size, mine were medium, about the size of my hand). So here we have the ingredients.

Here we remember we have to drink water, add half a pineapple you have in the fridge because why not. Yeah this wasn’t in the plan but it’s how cooking often turns out, you make one thing and end up making two.

Some frozen strawberries. Look at the beautiful assemble

Okay we overcrowded the blender… So we divide it into two to blend.

Okay finally blended! Now to add honey, sugar and of course more water (this is for 4 liters)

Okay the shot is done (that glass is for mom) now to serve myself with a less pretty but more sturdy glass since I’ll be in the kitchen dancing around.

So now we cut the nopales, for those who had never minced a nopal before don’t worry. You make parallel cuts but DO NOT CUT THE EDGE, nopales are slippery and gooey, you are welcome to not listen to my advice but believe me you’ll regret it.

Put them in a pressure cooker with just enough water to cover them

Just a nice shot of my water container, nice talavera

Now to mince the pork (it was in the white container) since it was still a little frozen I needed to bring in the big knife. It can be any cut you want, quite literally I went to the butcher shop and asked for a hunk of pork meat, froze it until I needed it, at first I wanted to make pork gorditas but with nopales is way healthier and tastier (also takes 4 more hours to make, don’t worry most of it is waiting time).

Of course it can cut it, bought the cheapest cleaver I could find on amazon, used a wetstone to sharpen it, not my best knife but it’s great for what it is. I use it mostly to cut large vegetables, on friday I used it to make pumpkin candy it was perfect for cutting a large castilla pumpkin.

Now we get a pot searing hot (left a small piece of pork as tester)

Once the oil is ripping hot put the rest of the pork and let it brown a little

While the meat browns it’s time to cool off the pressure cooker (you can let it cool off on its own) a neat trick is to put it under cold water so the pressure drops. The indicator valve has to drop down, a pressure cooker is at supercritical conditions if you want to know what supercritical water steam is like check a video on youtube, don’t try this at home because that’s how you end up in Chubbyemu videos.

As a small parenthesis, critical conditions is the point at which a fluid and its steam have the same density, meaning that there are water droplets floating freely in the mix. Supercritical means you are beyond those conditions, open the pressure cooker or take off the security valve and the water droplets of literally boiling water are going to get out at a high pressure (duh) and if you are lucky leave your kitchen in a very dirty state. Pressure cookers are a beautiful thing but please be very careful when using them

While we still wait for the pork to brown (hey it was frozen it will take a long time) put the tomatillos in a comal (cast iron grill very normally used in Mexican cuisine) or in that ugly pan or pot you don’t care about. We will let them roast, usually people do not use tongs or tools of any kind to flip things in a comal, I recommend you use something, to learn that ability is something that requires years of practice… and a lot of ointment.

Okay finally our pork has browned! Don’t mind if there is little fond, you will get more soon. This is a stew and the meat has to be so tender you can break it with your tongue

Well to get that tenderness we will need to boil the meat in a lot of water, for this, about a kilo of pork I used 2 cups of water, add enough water to cover your meat, then add another cup for good measure.

Now we wait… During that wait we flip our roasted tomatillos, once the color of the skin that isn’t burned turns a darker shade of brown they are ready, note not all will be ready at the same time so it’s a slow process of turning and waiting, you can take a shortcut and just boil them but honestly the roast gives the stew a nice smoky flavor.

Once the tomatillos are roasted we add the secret ingredient! It’s not really a secret, since this is a very typical dish in the area of Hidalgo my family is from. It’s called Rallado, a chile that only grows in a far away town called Progreso, you grow it anywhere else the taste is off and it doesn’t taste as spicy. As a note to those who manage to get a hold of it, it’s way spicier than a chipotle, add them to your sauce one by one and taste it. If you don’t have access to this small chile you can use dried chipotles (canned is fine too) and roast them (yeah you cannot roast the canned ones sadly). Roast them lightly, believe me you will know when they are ready, after all you are roasting chiles, actually it’s a common flu remedy here too not a punishment like they said in the Mendoza Codex (maybe it was but now the chancla is the punishment, burning chiles is a flu remedy).

Now everything is done… Well everything but the meat, well we wait for it to boil off all the water

And wait… Oh wait I forgot to blend the chiles and tomatillo!

Now that everything is done we go back to waiting

Okay that will take a long time… May as well get myself comfortable (British friends please forgive me but good gin is is very expensive here)

Let’s see… Nope okay back to waiting

And waiting

And waiting

Oh hey look if I wait for long enough my phone will realize this is Mexican themed and put that annoying yellow filter on my glass! Well here is proof, Mexico isn’t sepia it’s technology.

Almooost

Okay now it’s ready!

After the meat has properly cooked, now we add the salsa and our cooked nopales. Do not add raw nopales, they will let the goo out inside your stew and make the sauce gooey.

For spices you add marjoram, pepper, oregano and cumin, about half a teaspoon of each maybe even a cube of bouillon in there. Salt it until the very end when the thing is almost ready. Right besides it is the candied pumpkin.

Let this on high heat until it boils, then lower it to let it simmer with the lid for 3-4 hours. Everything up until the simmer is done with high heat.

If you feel like cooking this but want to vary it a little feel free to comment, I’ll gladly help