New Mexico Red Chili

So growing up my Mom had two famous Chili Recipes. What I called Red Chili and Green Chili. Red Chili was usually too hot for me, but as I grew older I liked it more and more. Well, the other day I got my Mom's old cookbook, the one she recorded all her recipes in. She actually kept most of it in her head, but I opened the golden book and found her red chili recipe. Now she taught me how to cook this once long ago, so I remember parts of it. The recipe is... well... let's say inexact. I will quote a part of it: "Add salt to taste, garlic or other spices."

That's it. Just... "other spices..."

But I remember how she did it and so I'm forging ahead. And I'm going to give you the play by play here tonight. The first thing I did was take the New Mexico Chili Pods, already dried and in their package from Smith's, and put two packages in a big bowl of hot water. My Mom says soak them for three hours.

Meanwhile I cut up 2.5 pounds of pork chops (no bones) and put them into a pot and filled it with water. Then, just because I'm me, I added some Basil, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, and Paprika. Oh... and a salt and pepper. We'll see where this gets me! Right now I'm going to boil that and then let it simmer for an hour or so!

Still with me? Of course you are. You didn't just wait 2 hours between typing the above paragraph and starting this one. So we had soaked the chilis, and now we pulled the tops off and seeded them in the sink. Then we put them in the blender with some of the juice that we cooked the pork in (which has been simmering for 2 hours) and we blended. By WE, I mean me and Riley.

Then we dumped it all (with the pork) back into the pot, where it is simmering right now. Not sure when it will be done. It could cook all day for all I know. Of course it's 8:37 at night and we are hungry, so we'll let it cook 30 minutes and then see what is what. Will it need salt? More Cumin? Will it bee too hot (in which case the recipe says to add tomato paste to cool it down)? All those answers are 30 minutes away for me, but only on the next paragraph for you!

So it was too hot. We added some Tomato sauce and now it's still cooking. The pork is really tender, and it taste good, but... it's not exactly like my Mom does. Not sure if it will eventually turn into it, or not. But it's good. We'll see how it turns out when it's all done. For now, we are going to sleep and letting it simmer.

Jason