You might wonder what pork posole stew is doing on the same menu with Yankee pot roast, citrus chicken, and meatloaf. Of course, if you do wonder that, perhaps you haven’t noticed that our tagline is “New Adventures In Comfort Food”. If you ever have the good fortune to travel to the state of Jalisco in Mexico, you’ll find that this savory combination of pork, butter beans, hominy, chilies, and tomatillos is about as comfort food as it gets, south of the border.
It was our own travels to Jalisco that first introduced us to this Mexican classic…but it was the exigencies of the restaurant business that induced us to put pork posole stew on our menu. Like so many things in the restaurant world, inspiration grew out of the simple need to get the most out of a key product: in this case our kurobuta pork shoulder (thank you, Snake River Farms!). In our search for a menu item worthy of this product, we reminisced about the pork posole we’d had in Mexico – and as we so often do as cookbook junkies, we plunged into our culinary library.
Among the different recipes we looked came yet another inspiration: Diana Kennedy…the woman who a prominent London newspaper once referred to as “the Brit who saved Mexican food”. If that sounds like hyperbole, I think you can safely say that when it comes to the English-speaking world, Diana Kennedy has done for Mexican cuisine what Julia Child did for French cooking.
Kennedy first moved to Mexico in the Fifties to marry a New York Times Mexico correspondent, and she has since spent more than three decades tracking down traditional recipes from the farthest reaches of Mexico.
Now in her mid-eighties, according to a 2003 London Guardian story on Kennedy, “the best-selling author of eight Mexican cookbooks still drives her truck around the country 'auditioning' unusual recipes and recording the fascinating stories behind them. In America she is a household name among foodies and in Mexico she is revered - she has been awarded the coveted Order of the Eagle for her promotion of Mexican food. Virtually unknown in her native England, she achieved recognition last year when Prince Charles came for lunch at her eco-house in rural Michoacán to award her the MBE for services to Mexican-British relations.”
If you’d like to read the complete text of the story on Diana Kennedy, here is a link. We’d like to think that she’d be pleased with our take on pork posole stew, and her story reminds us that nothing bridges cultural divides like comfort food – no matter the origin of the recipe or the person who follows it. Diana Kennedy, we salute you, nuestra amiga!