Natasha Godard’s recipe for huevos rancheros, as enjoyed at our first meal!

The One Hundred Meals project is an effort by two food activists to foster civil, constructive conversations with all sides of agriculture by sitting down to meals with people – building community at America’s table.

Her recipe features local, pastured pork, and home-dried chiles topped with fresh eggs from Ellen’s city hens!

“It’s a combination of recipes:

The red chile sauce (and carne adovada) came from my friend Heather’s blog: Casita Gatita

Ingredients:

• 5 pounds [local, organic, free range? ~ ed] pork–trimmed (cheap cuts are best)
• ¾ pounds red chile pods (or 1 cup red chile powder)
• 1 whole [organic, local?] onion–yellow or white
• 8 cloves garlic
• 4 cups water or chicken stock
• 2 teaspoons oregano, dried
• 2 teaspoons cumin, ground
• 3 teaspoons salt
• ½ teaspoons cinnamon, ground
• 2 tablespoons vinegar–cider or white
• Cheese, sour cream, tortillas, eggs to garnish

Destructions:

(If using powdered red chile skip this step.)

Combine Chilies, water or stock, onion, garlic and spices in a large stockpot and simmer for 20 minutes covered. While simmering stock, finish trimming and cube pork into 3/4″ to 1″ cubes. Puree simmered stock and solids in a blender or food processor in small batches, straining the whole mess if it looks lumpy or if there are large pieces of chile left after pureeing.

Note: This is a basic red chile sauce that you can find all over New Mexico (when they ask you ,”Red or green?” they mean red or green chile). It doesn’t really take long to make and it lasts forever in the freezer and for at least a week in the fridge if not longer.

Add cubed pork and vinegar to the red chile puree. If you have extra time, let the meat marinade for up to 36 hours in the refrigerator. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place pork and chile mix into an oven safe container with a lid (or aluminum foil to cover tightly). Bake for at least an hour or until you can’t stand the tasty fumes coming from your oven.

Crock Pot Option: Place pork and chile mixture on high for about 3 hours or on low for 6-8 hours and cook until meat is tender (low is better) Serve with shredded cheese, tortillas, sour cream, and (in the New Mexican tradition) over-medium or over-easy eggs on top. This dish freezes well and reheats like a charm. It is great with rice and refried beans as well.

This recipe makes way more sauce than you need for one recipe of carne adovada. I’ve made two so far (one with meat I cut off a two pound fresh hock, and the one we had with you (One Hundred Meals), which was about three pounds boneless, skinless shoulder – however, I cut off the enormous fat cap before proceeding to cut the meat into large chunks). I will probably get one more recipe for two out of this batch.

I used chile powder to make the sauce, and white pork stock rather than chicken stock. For you guys (One Hundred Meals)… I realized it’d be good to cook the carne adovada in the crock pot on low, then shred it and return to the pot until we were ready to eat.

The beans were basic refried black beans, I followed the recipe here: Homesick Texan.

She says that you can do black beans with epazote, but I didn’t have any on hand, so I didn’t.

Heat the corn tortillas in a dry cast iron skillet, layer with bean, carne adovada and cheese, and top with a fried egg! Simple and easy.”

Editor: Lynn Hasselberger

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