Green Chile Pork Stew — Dale Knows How To Host

Mom and her smoker, image from my parents’ book about NC BBQ, Holy Smoke.

Mom and Dad with their friend, the author Calvin Trillin, at the now defunct, mightily missed, Allen & Son BBQ in Chapel Hill, NC. (Dad also took the author Michael Pollan to Allen & Son. It was our go-to.)

Mom with photographer friend, Chip Cooper, at a BBQ joint in Mississippi. Full disclosure, I’m not sure this is pork. :)

Mom and Dad at Thelma’s BBQ in Houston. This must’ve been when we lived there in the early 2000s.

Mom and Dad meet their first grandbaby in a Southern Foodways T-shirt and Underwood’s BBQ (Texas) T-shirt.

One of the baby pigs who talked to me that day at the Cron Farm in Oregon.

My holiday card for 2005. This is when we lived at that ranch in Wimberley, Texas. Our pig, Ed, is on the far left.

I’m out in the desert of West Texas, about to host my 18th Head West Yoga & Creativity Retreat with my partner, Wilma. I came out a little early to help with cooking and prep and our friend, Laura, invited us to dinner at her ranch. It’s a stunning piece of land, situated between the town of Marathon and Big Bend National Park. Sitting on her porch we caught up and watched the sun set next to Santiago Peak. During dinner outside we were visited by a squadron of javelinas. Did you know that is what a group of javelinas is called? I love all of those names: a murder of crows, a congregation of alligators ….. I just heard the BEST one last week: a loveliness of ladybugs! My friend, the artist Julie Speed, did a series of collages about a mythical group of nuns, she decided that that assembly should be called a “purgatory of nuns”. I had a custom beret made for her with “purgatory” stitched on it as a gift.

Anyway, my friend Wilma had a run in with some javelina on her property last year. She was walking across the field and they were getting too curious about her so she had to summon her most aggressive voice (not hard to do when being pursued by javelina) and shriek at them to get away. It worked. And, actually, now that I think about it, my artist friend Julie suffered an injury while retreating from some javelina in her yard. Apparently she was grunting at them and walking backwards toward her house, tripped on something and fell, hurting her shoulder. Her injury was not inflicted by the javelinas but it was certainly related. So, when countless javelina came a callin’ at dinner at Laura’s, Wilma and I were a little apprehensive. (Wilma more so because her back was to them.) But, it turned out that Laura is a javelina whisperer. She knows them and feeds them. There were some twin babies in the squadron. About eight of them came up to within feet of us, drank some water, and went away. It ended up being a super cool West Texas experience.

The next morning at the local diner we, of course, ran into Laura. (There are literally two places to eat here.) Talk turned to the javelinas and I asked her if she thought they were her spirit animal. She said no, hers was a hawk (her place is called Soaring Hawk Ranch), but that she just really liked javelinas. She asked me what my spirit animal was. (I can just see Dad rolling his eyes as he reads this. This is what all that art school tuition got you! Deal with it! ha ha.) So, I told her my spirit animal story. Maybe ten years ago I was working on a book about a friend’s produce co-op. I went to Oregon to photograph seasonal produce and canning. There we went to a farm run by very old twin ladies, truly a David Lynch moment. They were called the “Cron Twins”. Why, you ask? Was their last name Cron? No. Years before they had spelled “Corn” wrong on a roadside sign and a nickname was birthed. So, at the farm, my friend Hynden and I were talking about spirit animals. Hers is also the hawk. We were standing around a pen of baby pigs. I was feeling bummed, not knowing what my spirit animal was. Whump whump. Hynden said, “Well, those pigs aren’t talking to me.” I paid more attention and, sure enough, the baby pigs were gathered by me squawking up a storm. Dammit! Of course the dang pig was my spirit animal. ha ha. When my husband and I lived on a ranch in the Texas Hill Country we had a pig named Ed and I adored him. When it got cold I would make him a bed of straw in the greenhouse, put a heat lamp on him, and feed him tortillas. So, a pig as my spirit animal made sense but, to be honest, I wanted something more sexy, like a cheetah. But, nope. I got a pig. A little research confirmed it, pig spirit animals mean you are lively, social & lucky. Yup.

And, it just so happens that my parents write about PORK BBQ for a living. Analyze that, Dr. Freud!!! When Mom was dying, one of her favorite lunches (when she was feeling good) was a BLT. Go to my Dad’s house and there is a neon pig in the front window, a cement pig on the walkway (Mom used to put beads on it for Mardi Gras), pigs to the left of you … pigs to the right … and they are good for the eatin’!!! (I was a vegetarian for decades but realize the fight is futile here.)

Once, in Elementary School, Mom made me a Miss Piggy duvet cover. It was really creative. Duvets were not commonplace at that point, Mom must have seen one in Europe or somewhere. She decided that we would all get one. So, Mom let us pick decorative sheets (mine had Miss Piggy descending an elaborate staircase - pretty fabulous!) and she sewed that to a more utilitarian sheet for the underside, leaving the bottom seam open. She then stuffed in our old Coleman sleeping bags. (I always hated that sleeping bag. My dad bought it without consulting me. At sleepovers my friends all had cool, shiny mummy bags from The North Face or somewhere like that and I had an ugly, brown, rectangular fabric sleeping bag with deer illustrations on the inside.) Mom then rigged some sort of system with strings, tethering the sleeping bag to the bottom of the combined sheets and, voila, I give you a duvet, people! Mom was a genius.

So, for today’s recipe, I had to go with pork, of course! It’s finally getting cold in Texas and it’s perfect stew weather. This Green Chile Stew recipe is from Mom’s cousin, Janet, who used to live in New Mexico.

Enjoy eating my spirit animal!

GREEN CHILE PORK STEW
courtesy of Janet Tanksley

Serves 4

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
½ tsp cumin
¼ tsp black pepper
pinch oregano
1 ½ to 2 pounds pork cubes, cut as for stew
8 whole fresh green chiles, roasted, peeled, and cut in small chunks
5 cups chicken broth
2 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped [about 2-3 cups]

Heat the oil in a 2-quart saucepan. add the onion and garlic and cook, covered, about 5 minutes to wilt the onion. uncover pan, raise heat to medium, and stir in the cumin and pepper.

Stir 2 or 3 minutes, until the onion begins to brown.

Stir in the pork and the oregano and chiles.

Stir in broth. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer slowly 2 or more hours.

Add the potatoes and simmer until they are done, about 45 more minutes.

Serve with hot flour tortillas.

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