IN THE KITCHEN : A Hominy Habit

I love Southern California, but after living here for the better part of 10 years, I have to confess that I still have not warmed to the idea of Christmas here.

Maybe I am spoiled by having lived so long in New Mexico, a place that seems made for the holiday. There, at this time of year, the air is crisp and cold and fragrant with pinon smoke, snow is on the ground and the narrow streets and sinuous brown adobe walls are lined with farolitos --little paper sacks glowing with lit votive candles. This, of course, is the idealized picture. In reality, you’ve got shopping malls, tourists and traffic, and sometimes the smog is so bad it’s literally against the law to use your fireplace.

Still, stack that holiday dream up against the one a friend--a lifelong Angeleno--once painted of Christmas in the Southland: “Oh,” she enthused, “It’s the most unbelievable time of year. There’s no traffic and no smog.” Sorry, but any holiday celebration that is marked by the absence of things rather than their presence is skating on thin ice. But live here we do and we celebrate as well, creating our own traditions in the best Southern Californian manner.

This is our second holiday season spent in Wrigley, a smallish, older neighborhood just off the Los Angeles River in Long Beach. For the last 40 years, the community has had its own Christmas parade. This is not a Macy’s/Rose Bowl/Gimbel’s type of deal. This is an old-fashioned, small-town celebration. It seems the parade route is no more than four blocks long and is filled with politicians riding in old cars, Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops marching and a couple of high school bands. No giant helium-inflated Bullwinkles here, though the police department float last year did have a rather large Elvis impersonator singing carols.

The parade is only a couple of blocks from our house, so beforehand we invite neighbors to celebrate the season. We make Christmas cookies and spiced apple cider and decorate the tree. And I make posole, my touch of New Mexico. Made from pork, red chile and hominy, it is arguable whether posole is a thick soup or a thin stew. Whatever it is, it cooks for a long time, filling the house with its distinctive earthy-spicy smell.

*

It’s an essentially simple dish, with few ingredients and, like almost all such dishes, it is the very devil to get right. A poorly made posole is still OK, but a great one, well . . . I still remember one I made several years ago. The meat was falling-apart soft, the hominy just the right stage of chewiness, and the two had cooked together with the chile long enough that the whole had developed those mysterious “extra” flavors--that deeply delicious, utterly indefinable savor that comes with things that have cooked a long time.

It’s a taste that can’t be traced directly to any one of the ingredients, but rather is a result of time and their combination. It’s the kind of thing that moves cooking from science to alchemy and is difficult to reproduce. At least it seems so to me, for every time I’ve made posole since, I’ve tried to duplicate the great one--and each attempt has come up short.

But this year, I decided, I would get it right, and neither ingredients nor time would get in the way. I brought in ground red chile and frozen posole corn from northern New Mexico. I started the night before, making a stock from chile, pork and bones and pigs feet. This cooked all evening, at least four hours. Then I put a cover on it and set it on the back porch to cool (waking up to the pungent smell of posole is only for true die-hards).

The next morning, I skimmed the fat from the surface of the stock and picked the meat from the pigs feet. Out went the bones and the other stock ingredients and in went the hominy. This cooked for another four or five hours, maybe even longer.

By this time, a storm front was passing through and the day had turned to that kind of damp, dank cold that I associate with California winters. The windows were fogged with steam, the house was full of the smell of posole and a fire was burning in the fireplace. The rain began to fall in buckets, drowning out the parade, but who cared? The house was warm and full of people and the posole was so good I could almost smell the pinon.

*

If you can’t find frozen posole corn (whole, large white kernels sold in most Latino markets as “maiz para pozole”), substitute 1 to 1 1/4 pounds of dried and cook in abundant salted water for two to three hours before adding to the stew. As a last resort, substitute canned hominy, draining and rinsing well and adding at the most a half hour before serving.

POSOLE

2 1/2 pounds pork butt

2 pigs feet, split

2 onions

6 cloves garlic, minced

2 bay leaves

1/2 cup ground New Mexico chile

1 (2-pound) bag frozen posole corn

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

1 teaspoon dried oregano

Trim as much visible fat as possible from pork butt and discard. Trim remaining meat into 1-inch cubes, reserving any bones.

Place pigs feet and pork bones in bottom of 6- to 8-quart stock pot and add meat on top. Add onions, garlic, bay leaves and chile. Fill pot with water. Bring to boil, skim scum that floats to top. Reduce heat to very low and cook 4 hours, using flame-tamer, if available. Remove from heat and cool overnight.

Next day, using slotted spoon, skim congealed fat from top of stock. Remove onions, bones and bay leaves and discard. Remove pigs feet and separate meat from bones. Chop meat (including skin) coarsely and return to stock pot.

Place over low heat and cook another 2 hours. Add posole corn and cook another 2 hours, at least, until kernels open and meat is falling-apart. If soup becomes too dry, add more water. Season to taste with salt and plenty of pepper. Add oregano. Stir and cook another 1/2 hour to let flavors meld. Serve with warmed flour tortillas. Makes 10 to 12 servings.

Each serving contains about:

257 calories; 446 mg sodium; 68 mg cholesterol; 12 grams fat; 18 grams carbohydrates; 20 grams protein; 1.87 grams fiber.

caption