Pumpkin Seed and Green Chile Posole
Warm and hearty, posole makes a great dinner on a cold winter night. The savory combination of slightly smoky and spicy flavors is delicious!
This recipe was in this February’s edition of Sunset magazine and I could not resist making it. Onions, chiles, garlic and tomatillos are roasted first to bring out a smokey flavor and then pureed to make the posole base. I think this may be the first time I’ve ever eaten posole. It’s usually made with pork but I did not miss the meat at all. This can be a vegan dish if you omit the cotija cheese garnish. Posole tastes even better the next day!
Creamy pumpkin seed and green chile posole
from: Sunset Magazine
Serves 8
1 large yellow onion, cut into wedges
3 large poblano chiles (I could not find fresh poblanos so I substituted Anaheim chiles instead)
1 serrano chile (serranos are spicy and I wanted my kids to eat this so I left it out)
1-1/2 pounds tomatillos, papery husks removed and rinsed (I did not know how to pick a tomatillos so here is interesting article on how to pick tomatillos ripe)
4 unpeeled garlic cloves
2 dried ancho chiles, stemmed and seeded (I could not find dried anchos so I substituted dried pasilla chiles)
About 1 cup salted, roasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas), divided
2 cans (29 oz. each) white hominy, rinsed and drained
5 to 6 cups vegetable broth
About 5 teaspoons dried Mexican oregano, divided (I used regular oregano)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 large zucchini, cut into large dice
Accompaniments: corn tortillas, chopped cilantro, thinly sliced green onions and crumbled cotija cheese
1. Preheat broiler with oven rack about 3 inches from heat. Place yellow onion, poblanos, serrano, tomatillos and garlic on a rimmed baking sheet. Broil, turning, until vegetables are browned to blackened all over, 15 to 30 minutes, moving them to a bowl as they get browned. Let cool.
2. Toast ancho chiles in a large pot over medium heat until fragrant, pressing down with tongs and turning occasionally, about 3 minutes. Turn off heat.
3. Peel and seed poblanos and serrano. Peel garlic. Whirl serrano, garlic, onion, tomatillos and any juices and 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds in a food processor until very smooth. Pour into the pot with the anchos (they’ll fall apart as they cook). Coarsely chop poblanos and add to pot (I accidentally pureed the poblanos with the rest of the vegetables from the oven and this was fine too).
4. Stir in hominy, 5 cups broth, 2 teaspoons oregano and the cumin. Cover, bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until cumin flavor is mellow, about 45 minutes. Discard any large pieces of ancho chile.
5. Stir zucchini into posole and simmer just until tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in more broth if you like a thinner soup.
6. Ladle posole into bowls and serve with remaining pumpkin seeds and oregano and other accompaniments to taste.
Sausage and Spinach Soup aka Meatball Soup
The chill of fall is in the air and it’s the perfect time of year to cozy up with a piping hot bowl of delicious soup. This is a hearty soup; the perfect dinner to make on a weeknight. Super quick and easy.
At home we call this Meatball Soup but it doesn’t really have meatballs in it. What it does have is fresh pork sausage fried with onions and then it’s combined with stock, pasta and spinach. I started making this because my kids loved the canned Italian wedding soup. I was looking for a cheaper and more plentiful version of it to make at home – one can of soup looks very small when you’re trying to feed a family of hungry boys 🙂
The pasta I use is called Acini di Pepe by Ronzoni. They are very tiny pieces of pasta and it cooks into little pasta balls. It looks like this before it’s cooked:
The tiny pieces of pasta actually look quite large in this photo!
In Portland, you can find this pasta at Freddie’s or Winco. If you can’t find it, any small pasta will do. I serve the soup with bread (the boys love to dip bread into the soup and eat it) and fruit or salad for a fast weeknight dinner.
Sausage and Spinach Soup
serves 4 hungry people plus plenty of leftovers for the next day (it tastes even better!)
adapted from the recipe on the back of Ronzoni’s Acini di Pepe box
1/2 pound bulk sausage
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon olive oil, if needed
2-32 oz. cartons of chicken broth
1 cup Acini di Pepe pasta (or any small pasta)
10-12 oz. frozen chopped spinach
1. In a large pot, cook the sausage over medium high heat, breaking it up into small pieces. When browned and cooked, lift the sausage out of the pot.
2. Add the chopped onion to the pot and cook for 5-10 minutes until soft. Add the olive oil to the pot if there’s not enough oil from the sausage in the pot to fry the onions.
3. Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil.
4. Once boiling, add the pasta to the broth and cook for 10 minutes until the pasta is done. If you used larger sized pasta you may have to cook for a little longer.
5. Add the frozen chopped spinach to the soup along with the reserved sausage.
6. Bring soup back to a simmer and serve.