New Mexico Carne Adovada

 This recipe comes from the book Tasting New Mexico: Recipes Celebrating One Hundred Years of Distinctive Home Cooking, by Cheryl Alters Jamison, Jamison Bill, and Bill Jamison

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3 pounds pork shoulder, trimmed of fat and cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes

8 ounces whole dried red New Mexico chilies, stemmed, seeded, and rinsed

2 cups chicken or beef stock or water

1 medium onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves

2 tsp vinegar, preferably sherry or cider

2 tsp crumbled dried mexican oregano or marjoram

1 tsp ground coriander, optional

1 tsp salt, or more to taste

Preheat oven to 300*F. Grease a large, covered baking dish. Place the pork in the baking dish. 

Prepare the sauce. Begin by placing the damp chilies in a layer on a baking sheet and toasting them in the oven for about 5 minutes, until they darken just a shade. Watch chilies carefully because they can scorch quickly. Remove them from the oven, but leave the oven on. Cool chilies briefly, then break each into 2 or 3 pieces, discarding the stems and most seeds. 

Dump approximately half of the chilies into a blender with 1 cup of stock/water. Puree until you have a smooth, thick liquid but can see tiny even pieces of chile pulp suspended in it. Pour the mixture into the baking dish. Repeat with the remaining pods and stock, adding the rest of the sauce ingredients to the blender. Add mixture to the baking dish and stir the sauce together with the pork. 

Cover the dish and bake at 300*F until the meat is quite tender and the sauce has cooked down, about three hours. If the sauce seems watery, return the dish to the oven uncovered and bake for an additional 15-30 minutes. 

Serve hot, garnished if you wish with sour cream, lettuce, and tomato. 

Basic No-Knead Sourdough Bread

 This recipe comes from the book Sourdough Cookbook for Beginners: A Step-by-Step Introduction to Make Your Own Fermented Breads by by Eric Rusch and Melissa Johnson 

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500 grams all-purpose or bread flour

350 grams water

70 grams active sourdough starter

10 grams salt (1 3/4 tsp)

Mix the flour, water, sourdough starter, and salt in a bowl with room for the dough to double in size. Cover the bowl, noting the level of the dough and the time. 

When the dough has almost doubled in size and the surface is puffy and bubbly, end the bulk fermentation. This will likely be about 8-12 hours from mixing.

Scrape the dough out of the bowl onto a well-floured surface and pre-shape it into a ball. 

Cover the dough with your inverted bowl and let it bench rest for 20 minutes. 

Flour the top of the dough and use your bench knife to flip it onto the floured side. Shape the dough into a batard or boule. (See book for shaping instructions.)

Let your shaped dough rest on its seam while you flour your proofing basket, then place the dough in the basket seam-side up. 

Cover the basket and let the dough rise for another 1-3 hours for the final proof. The dough will expand in the basket but not double in size. If you want to bake much later, you can do the final proof in the refrigerator for 10-12 hours and bake the dough directly from the cold. 

Before the end of the final proof, preheat your oven and baking vessel for 30 minutes at 500*. (See book for notes about heat limits of baking vessels.)

Flip your dough out of the basket onto a piece of parchment paper, and score the top. 

Transfer the parchment and dough to the baking vessel, cover, and return the vessel to the oven. 

Bake for 20 minutes and then lower the temperature to 450*. After another 10 minutes, take the lid off and after an additional 5-10 minutes, remove the bread from the oven. The internal temperature should be 205* or higher. 

Let the bread cool on a rack for about 2 hours before slicing.