Boatyard Chile Verde: Gluten-free and Company-worthy

Note: Versions of this recipe appear in a 2019 and again in  2021 La Bloga-Tuesday column (links). Today’s recipe employs high-tech machinery, a Ninja food processor that reduces preparation time to minutes.

Michael Sedano

One of the first places I visited after I was discharged from the US Army in 1970 was Santa Barbara. Before the service I’d gotten a BA at UCSB and was one year into an MA in Speech when my uncle Sam he said a’knock-knock, here I am.

Nostalgia aside, I wanted to help Kathy and Jim build their dream, a 40-foot cement boat.

Kathy and Jim were the most adventurous people I knew from before the service, and here they were, living in a shack of the boatyard next to the railroad tracks, planning a dream.

I positioned my Valiant over the railroad track rail located in a grassy lot with other railroad detritus. I lifted an end to allow Jim to get a rope around the steel and over my bumper. We lashed the other end to the Valiant and slowly I drove the few miles to the boatyard, thankful for level streets and underground drainage. The keel of the dream awaited a framework.

That was Day 01 of the cement boat tragedy. Two years later, Jim had constructed a re-bar and steel mesh superstructure. A crew of friends reported for two full days of hard work pounding cement into the wire gaps. 

They had to eat and I created this recipe for chile verde. It's uncomplicated and expandable to feed fifty, or just enough to feed two to four.

When Kathy and Jim had the craft seaworthy, Jim sailed off to Southeast Asian waters and disappeared. Kathy went in search of her partner, signing on as cook on freighters plying Southeast Asian waters. Kathy’s most-requested dish was Boatyard Chile, a recipe originally prepared on a one-burner gas stove in a decrepit boatyard shack.

That was circa 1971, we cemented the boat. Fast forward fiftysome years, after Alzheimer's, after the fire, to an actual house of my own, a modern kitchen equipped with a fancy Ninja food processor and guests scheduled for a holiday house warming. With the right tools a cook can do anything, including recreating a labor-intensive pork and chile stew in no time at all.

Note to hand-choppers: don’t be dismayed. The electric devices are convenient shortcuts but not a secret to delicious chile verde. It’s ingredients, preparation, time, and love.

Tools Save Time on the Front End. Cooking takes all the Time required.

Fresh and manufactured ingredients. Today's preparation used ½ lb tomatillos.

Choose a meaty piece of pork. The meat shrinks in half from cooking, so plan the raw weight with shrinkage in mind. A quarter pound of cubes per diner will be just about right for small appetites. 

I start the night before with the pork and the beans, clean the kitchen, and in the morning everything's in order for a day's joyful kitchen business. It's a party I'm giving and there are flan and frijoles to make. The frijoles cooked to done last night and need reheating. I get the pork on the low flame and turn to dessert. Flan is really easy--eggs and canned milk. Bake the concoction in a bain marie. Refrigerate and just before serving, turn it over onto a glass dish for a spectacular presentation that tastes as good as it looks.

The Thing Itself: Chile Verde  

Toss the raw pork into the freezer for at least an hour to partially freeze it. The solid icy texture makes trimming and cutting fast and easy.]

Trim away the bigger pieces of white fat and cube the meat into fork-size tidbits, about ½" cubes. Toss the cubes with seasoned corn starch (salt, pepper, garlic powder, cayenne or Gebhardt's chile powder). 

Refrigerate the cornstarched pork overnight.

Three hours before serving time, start cooking. If you make this first thing in the morning you give the chile verde several hours to sit and build more deliciousness when you reheat it.

Rattle Those Pots and Pans

Take the cornstarched pork out of the icebox to come to room temperature.

On lowest flame, fry the fat trimmings, adding water to prevent burning. You are rendering the fat from the gristle. Every once in a while, add water and smash down the sebo chunks to release the tasty oils. Lower the flame and turn to the main event.

Prepare the vegetables.

Wash everything, hands and knives and cutting boards, and vegetables.

1 lb+ medium size tomatillos

2 chiles Anaheim / canned chiles are useful when fresh aren't on the market

1 bell pepper

big pinch of cilantro leaves and a few stems

1 medium onion

six to 8 dientes de ajo

two roma tomatoes

Ninja or food processors don't work magic without help. Quarter all the vegetables--or smaller--before committing them to the chopping vessel. A few seconds is all the veggies require to be ready to cook down into a delicious, semi-thickened chile stew.

This good chop will cook down rapidly into a flavorful ambrosia.

Heat olive oil on high flame in the bottom of your deep soup pot. Lower to medium heat and add the chopped vegetables, a can of El Pato tomato sauce, a can of diced tomatoes (or double your fresh ones), a generous helping of Gebhardt's chile powder,  and a TBS water. Stir vigorously, lower the flame.

Use the pan you're rendering the fat--remove the fried fat. Cast iron works best for frying and browning pork chunks. Add the starched pork and lower the heat to medium flame. Stir the meat around until no pink shows on any surface.

A few more minutes to get rid of the pink

Add the meat to the cooking vegetables and stir.

Add some water to the pork pan and scrape the bottom as you boil the water. Pour this gravy into the cooking chile verde. 

Waste not, especially all the flavor in the frying pan!

Cover, lower the flame just above its lowest point, and simmer an hour. After 45 minutes, test the pork; it should fall apart on your fork when it's ready to serve.

When The Gluten-free Chicano feasts in large groups--as he did recently to kick-off the holidays-- Boatyard Chile is on the menu accompanied by red enchiladas, frijoles, and flan. 

Cooking these delights is a two-day pleasure of meticulous work, patient cooking, and happy guests.

Provecho!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukha, Happy Kwanzaa, Feliz Navidad. Prospero and Gluten-free Año Nuevo!