This is a recipe for when you’ve got some time to prep, but it’s worth it. You can impress fancy people or use it to look down on people who don’t deserve to be anywhere near you. What I’m saying is this is a statement. A strong one. You create a delicious tomatillo salsa then braise some beans and pork in it. It’s not complicated, just tedious. It’s like life, you know what you’re about to do is hard, but you know when you do it, you’ll feel that nice, fleeting sense of accomplishment before you sink back into your daily drudgery. Cook this, you’ll like it.
Ingredients
Salsa (makes 4 cups)
2 lbs tomatillos, husked and rinsed
8-10 serrano chiles, stemmed (I used 4 for this recipe because I wanted it mild)
1 large white onion, sliced into ¼-inch thick rings
6 garlic cloves, peeled
1 cup water
2/3 cup cilantro, loosely packed
2 tsp. Salt
2 tsp. white sugar
Main Dish
1 cup small dried white beans (great northern)
1 tsp mixed dried herbs (thyme and oregano are classics)
3 bay leaves
4 thick slices of bacon
2 lb boneless pork loin (or two one-pound loins)
3 cups of the salsa you made above
For the salsa, put the tomatillos and chiles on a baking sheet and roast them under the broiler. After 6-8 minutes they will blacken, turn them over and put them back in. Once they’re blackened on both sides, take them out of the oven and turn it down to 350 degrees and transfer the tomatillos and chiles to a blender/food processor. Put the onions and garlic on the same baking sheet and put it in the oven and keep an eye on it, stirring the whole mess every few minutes while you look for it all to get soft and translucent. Blend/process the tomatillos (in batches if you must), then add in the onions and garlic and make it one big sauce. Let it all cool then transfer it to a big bowl and taste it, salt it, sugar it, then salt it, then sugar it, then repeat until it tastes good. Now it’s done.
At this point you could take that tomatillo salsa and just live in it. But we’re reaching for greater things here. We know what success looks like – or at least I do. Take a medium sauce pan and put the dried beans in there with 3 cups of water and the bay leaves/herbs. Bring it to a boil then cover it and reduce it to a simmer. You’ll cook it until they’re tender, which will take about an hour. Keep an eye on it and add water to make sure the beans are always covered. YOU WILL BE DOING OTHER STUFF WHILE THIS HAPPENS.
Heat the oven up to 325 degrees for later. Cook the bacon in your Dutch oven over medium heat until they’re crispy then move them to a plate with paper towels to dry. Take the bacon fat AND ADD IT TO THE BEANS!!
Lay the pork (or pieces of pork) into the Dutch oven and brown on both sides (about 10-12 minutes). The pot should be real hot and now add in the salsa and it should make some really good sounds and give off some steam. Cover it and put it in the oven for about 30-40 minutes until it hits about 140 degrees in the thickest parts.
Take the pork out of the pot and put it on a cutting board, tented. Take the beans and drain the water, put the beans in the salsa/pork cooking liquid and get it all mixed together. Once the pork cools, put the beans on a plate with the pork on top and impress people.
