Winter

Seriously folks what is with all the bad weather in the U.S.? When I'm tooling around on Facebook I feel like I've been living everyone's bad weather, including my own. So much snow everywhere. Let's hope Spring comes a little early this year. All these gloomy days means the slow cooker has been earning its keep. This Pulled Pork Chile Verde has been something I've been working on. But today it was perfect and that's why I'm sharing it with you.

My goals for this recipe were straightforward. I wanted a dish that makes enough food for several meals, reheats well, lower in calories and a version even picky eater kids would eat and love. All were accomplished!

In regards to meal times, my older son is easier to please than my younger one. Let's just say I have a real critic when it comes to what he wants to or will eat. But he loved this. I purposefully made it mild enough so the kids would enjoy it. You can do the same and add hot sauce to get the heat you prefer or use a spicier sauce to begin with.

If you listen to conventional wisdom, you might think roasting is the only way to go when it comes to cooking fingerling potatoes. Now, I am usually the poster-girl for roasting (potatoes or anything else), and I’d like not to be burned at the stake for potato heresy, but I think fingerling potatoes are usually better braised or simmered, or, yes, boiled—any method that involves a little liquid.

I hate to generalize, because there are, in fact, many different varieties of fingerling potatoes. Fingerlings themselves aren’t a variety, but more of a type of potato, defined by their size and shape—small, knobby, and elongated. Their flavor is usually rich and concentrated, but the color of their skin and flesh, as well as their starch content, can vary quite a bit from variety to variety. (Popular varieties include Russian Banana, Purple Peruvian, Ruby Crescent, and French Fingerling.)

The varying starch level is why some fingerlings lean towards being fluffy and dry (like a Russet potato), while others have creamy or waxy flesh (like a Red Bliss potato).  Unless you cook with the same variety a lot, it’s hard to always know exactly what you’re getting at the store (or the farmers’ market) or how it will behave in the dry heat of the oven. While I’ve had bad experiences with Russian Bananas over-drying when roasted, I’ve never had a fingerling that wasn’t perfectly delicious when cooked with a wet-heat method.  

We cannot let November pass without a pomegranate!

I love to cook and I love cookbooks, for they seem to hold sorcerer’s spells between their pages. I don’t use them when I cook, however. 

I may glance over the ingredients list or temperature/time chart, but the book closes when I begin preparation. Nothing I do gets done exactly the same way twice as I cook by feel and what is in my kitchen at the time.

I say this only to encourage you to treat the following recipes casually – more as an inspiration than as a contractual obligation.

You've seen it at the market. You've picked it up and wondered, What is this? An odd shaped acorn squash? Then you saw the sign: Kabocha squash, and thought, How the heck do you pronounce that?

What is Kabocha squash? A relative newcomer to the US squash scene, Kabocha squash (pronounced kuh-boh-cha) is a hard winter squash available from late fall to late spring. Its hard, dull, bumpy dark green shell is marked with pale celery green striations. It's rather heavy for its size (usually 2-3 pounds) and has a stumpy grayish colored stalk. Kabocha squash has a brilliant yellow-orange flesh, like a pumpkin's. Both the texture and flavor of Kabocha squash is similar to a sweet potato: the soft, moist, fluffy flesh is surprisingly sweet and slightly nutty.

Kabocha squash is a centuries-old variety of Japanese squash that in Japan is often referred to as a Japanese pumpkin. Apparently it was brought to Japan from Cambodia by the Spanish in the 1500s and is used in dishes ranging from soup to sushi.