Red Rice Pilaf, page 461

At Mark Bittman’s suggestion I made red rice pilaf to go with the pozole with pork and hominy. It sounded simple enough and I knew it would be a great side with the dish.

The recipe suggests diced tomatoes which I thought I had in my pantry. Turned out I had whole canned tomatoes or tomato sauce. I decided to use the tomato sauce because a) it was the right quantity and b) I never use the stuff and wanted to get rid of it. This was probably a better choice for us than the diced tomatoes because of Bryan’s aversion to tomatoes. He’s gotten a lot better about them, but having the tomato flavor without seeing it prevented any arguments. We were both happy.

Pozole with Pork and Chipotle, page 496

Hi Guys! It’s been a while, I know. I’ve gotten on a kick of cooking from other cookbooks or from recipes I find online. I needed a break from How to Cook Everything. Recently I got an iPhone and even more recently I finally downloaded the HTCE app! It’s really well done and I enjoy the interface. It’s great to be able to click on a link to an suggested recipe instead of having to flip back and forth in a book.

Last week I was working on a meal plan at work when I downloaded the app and incorporated two recipes into the plan. Most of the time when I’m meal planning I’m not sitting down with cookbooks, I’m kind of going off of what I’m craving or what I’ve been inspired by lately. Although over the summer I concentrated on a cookbook a week so in those instances I did meal plan around a book.

Back to the book. Another great thing about the app is that it will bring up recipes you wouldn’t have thought to look for. For instance, as I was making my plan I wanted to incorporate a pork dish. I pulled up pork on the app and found this dish. When it came time to cooking it I flipped through the pork section and couldn’t find it. After researching in the index, I found the recipe in the grains section. A section I haven’t really spent that much time in.

I’m not really sure what hominy is and its not something I’ve used very often (maybe twice in my cooking life). But we both really enjoyed this dish. The pork is braised and has a delicious smoky, spicy flavor. I served ours with Red Rice Pilaf (coming tomorrow), some leftover guacamole, and lots of cilantro.

As the book suggests, its even better the next day. Bryan loved the left overs.