Posole

One of the foods I miss most from the USA is hominy. Occasionally you will see an overpriced can for sale here, but never dried hominy. For years, I've been hoping to try making it from scratch -- starting with field corn, and nixtamalizing it (cooking/soaking with slaked lime) -- but I couldn't even find field corn for sale.

Then, suddenly field corn turned up in my favourite continental grocery store. So, I made a trip to the Thai grocery store to pick up some slaked lime. I consulted a long-bookmarked post on the Cooking Issues blog. And then today I made nixtamal, and posole.

Only took 6 years or so...

Vegan chorizo and potato tacos

SO GOOD!

With homemade vegan chorizo, and perfect fried potatoes (parcooked with vinegar) -- all from Serious Eats.

Jackfruit carnitas

Courtesy of the new Hot Knives book, jackfruit carnitas:

I dehydrated the jackfruit (in my new dehydrator!) for about 2 hours, then smoked it (in the stovetop smoker) for about 25 minutes. (The recipe actually called for a long, slow smoke on an outdoor grill, but I don't have one.) Then it went into an ancho and chipotle chile sauce inspired by the Hot Knives recipe. This is definitely the way to go with jackfruit: the dehydration step gives it a great texture, and readies it for soaking up the sauce.

Here's the dehydrated and smoked, and then torn-up, jackfruit before it went into the sauce:

Tacos

We had these tacos three times this week. I am not one to repeat recipes, usually, so this is saying something.

In case I forget, this is how you make amazing tacos:

1. Steamed white seitan from Viva Vegan!, baked in the marinade suggested in the recipe for Chipotle, Seitan and Potato Tacos from the same book
2. Homemade corn tortillas
3. Avocado
4. Thinly shredded cabbage with a simple viniagrette
5. Essential Roasted Tomatillo-Chipotle Salsa from Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen
(6. Optional: sauteed mushrooms and red capsicum)

The salsa really made this exceptional. It's quite simple (just rehydrated chipotles, roasted garlic and tomatillos) but so smoky, hot and satisfying. I wanted to lick my plate to get every last drop of it when I was done with my tacos.