Shortcut Chili Verde with Pork

Now that it actually feels like Fall in Los Angeles, it's time for some nice and easy crock pot recipes.  I love/hate my crock pot.  My mom NEVER used one.  I didn't even know what they existed until I was in college and living in my first apartment.  My roommate had one and the first time she pulled it out, I stood there mouth agape while she described the concept of slow cooking.  Mind.  Blown.

I love my crock pot because it's so super convenient to throw a bunch of stuff in there, plug it in, walk away for 10 to 12 HOURS and come home to a wonderful, hot meal.  I mean what kind of cooking sorcery is this?!

I hate my crock pot because I'm always convinced my house is going to burn down while I'm gone.  For the record, it's never happened, but it doesn't stop me from having anxiety about it none the less.  I mean what kind of cooking sorcery is this?!

If you can get over the fear of your crock pot malfunctioning and burning down your house, I find that crock pots are a wonderful way to cook stews and even bake potatoes!  Yes!  Potatoes!!!  (insert sorcery quote here.)  This is a quick and easy recipe for chili verde.  This isn't a chili that has beans in it.  This is a spicy green chili stew with pork (and beef if you want).  This is also a short cut version.  The real Chili Verde recipe involves roasting jalapeno chiles, garlic, and tomatillos.  It's wonderful over rice or even just as a burrito filling.

You will need:
1 28 oz can of La Palma Green Enchilada sauce
1 medium onion
3 to 4 small potatoes
1to 2 pound(s) of pork shoulder or butt
crushed garlic
seasoning salt
pepper
oregano

I'm going to show you the "throw it all in the crock pot" method.  IF you have time, giving your pork and onions a quick saute just to brown the meat will help with making this even more delicious.  I recommend doing it.  If you don't have time,  NO worries.  You can just throw it all in and the magic will still happen.  

Normally, you usually find just pork in Chili Verde.  But I realized I only had half a pound of pork butt in my freezer so I used another half pound of stew beef to make a pound.  You can throw the meat into your crock pot frozen, but I had defrosted my beef and pork ahead of time.  Feel free to use more meat if you like this meatier.  I've used up to 3 pounds of pork in this recipe and it was fine.

I like to layer my meat on the bottom of my crock pot.  

I like to use 3 to 4 small to medium potatoes.  I never met a potato I didn't like....

 

You can chop your potatoes into bite sized pieces or a bit larger if that's how you like them.  Since we're using a crock pot, no matter what size you choose they will cook perfectly.

 Layer them on top of your meat in your crockpot.

 

I chop my onion into small pieces and throw them into my crock pot too.

At this point, you can use salt or seasoning salt to season.

 

I also add a good amount of course ground pepper. 

 

Then I add a heaping tablespoon of fresh, chopped garlic.  You can also use garlic powder.  As much or as little as you'd like. 

 

 Las Palmas makes a wonderful green chile enchilada sauce.  This sauce ranges from mild to hot.  I use the hot.  It's pretty hot so when in doubt, use the mild or medium.  This is the larger 28 ounce sized can. 

  

I open and pour the entire can into the crock pot. MMMMM.

 

I threw in a healthy handful of oregano just for kicks.

Give it a little stir just to show it you care, and that's it!

 

Put the lid on, turn it on.  My crockpot has different settings.  I used the low for 10 hours setting.  It all works though so set according to how much time you have.

 

I can home to this cooking sorcery....I wish you could smellllll it.

 

I blopped in about 2 heaping tablespoons of sour cream to make it a little creamy.

 

Then it looked like this and it's ready for eating.

 

I like to serve it over hot rice with some cheese and cilantro.  

 

You can also just eat it in a bowl with tortillas or tortilla chips.  Remember, feel free to add more meat if you want it meatier.  Experiment with different veggies too if you want.  Enjoy!

Hot and Cheeeeesy Spinach Dip

Who doesn't love a nice, warm, cheesy spinach dip?  Great for parties and technically can count as a vegetable because there's spinach in it!  Just kidding.  It doesn't count as a vegetable but it should!  This recipe reminds me of the time I used to be in catering at UCLA and we used to feed the football players.  They wouldn't eat vegetables so we would put cheese sauce over them and it worked!   There's no need to bribe anybody to eat this dip.  It's a crowd favorite.

Here's what you need:

Any kind of cheese

12 oz. bag frozen spinach (don't use canned)

garlic

medium onion

8 oz cream cheese

milk

dash of tabasco sauce

dash of worcestershire sauce

Ready, set, GO!

I use frozen spinach.  You can use fresh, but you would need to steam it and strain it if you use fresh.  That's just an extra step that delays me from eating this dip as fast as I can get it made so I stick with frozen.  Plus, with frozen, what you see is what you get.  You'd be surprised how much fresh spinach it takes to make the amount you'll need for this recipe.  This is a 12 oz bag of frozen spinach.

It looks like this:

I pour the spinach out into a strainer and just let it defrost in my sink.  If you're in a rush, you can heat it in the microwave or rinse it with cool water.  I'm not in any rush so I  just let it hang out in my sink while it defrosts.

Meanwhile, I take a medium sized onion and dice into small pieces.  If you cut them too large, they kind of stand out in your dip.  You can use as much onion as you want.  I like onion, not everyone does so I used half of a medium onion for this recipe.

Over medium heat in a heavy saucepan, I added about a tablespoon of olive oil.

                               

   

Add your chopped onions and sauté.

You don't really want to brown your onions here, but if that happens, that's okay too. 

I like to cook them until they are soft and translucent.

Then I add a heaping tablespoon of fresh, chopped garlic.  Mmmmmm.  Garlic.

At this point, I lower the heat to medium low.  I don't want to burn my garlic.  

Nothing tastes worse than burnt garlic.  Yuck!

Hey!  Remember our friend spinach?  I think we're ready for him.  

This is how it looks all nicely defrosted.

Give it a nice squeeze to get as much of the water out of it as you can.  

Then plop it in with the onion and garlic.

After a quick stir up, it looks like this.

I turn the heat back up to medium and add about half a cup of milk.  I always start with a little bit.  If you need more, you can add more.  But if you start off with too much then your dip will end up watery.

At this point, I add just a bit of seasoning salt.  I usually add black pepper here too.  But the cheese I happen to be using today is a white cheddar with black pepper so I didn't add any pepper today.

Now it's time to add your cream cheese.  

I just plop the entire brick into the saucepan.  

After just a few minutes, the cream cheese melts down and it looks like this.  I have a hard time at this point not eating this as is.  It tastes like creamed spinach.  You can turn it back down to medium low.  Be careful that it doesn't splatter on you.  It's HOT.

The beauty of this dish is that you can literally use any kind of cheese you want or have on hand.  I've used mozzarella, Parmesean, Romano, or any combo of cheese works too! You can't go wrong!  I happened to have some of this kind of cheese on hand:

I got it on sale and it lived in my freezer for a little bit.  The reason why I like to freeze some cheeses is that after it defrosts, it cuts into these nice crumbles like this:

Add as much or as little cheese as you'd like.  I used 2/3 of this 8 oz block.  But don't feel any guilt if you add more than that.  This is all about what makes you happy.

In fact, in lieu of salt, I opted to put in a bit of parmesan cheese, see?

If you wanted to add artichokes, now would be the time to do so.  

Just open and drain a can of artichokes, give them a rough chop and add now.

We're almost done!  I add a healthy dash of Worcestershire sauce

and a dash or two or three of tabasco hot sauce.

Why are we adding tabasco and Worcestershire?  Because this dish is so creamy, we want to add a little bit of acid into it. You don't have to add this, but it really brings this dip together.  Believe me, you won't taste the tabasco in this with all the cheese and creamy going on.

I happened to have some chopped scallions in my freezer (did you know you can chop and freeze green onions and use them when needed while cooking?  You can!) so I added a little bit.

You can eat right away, but I like to let it cool, refrigerate and re-heat up the next day.  You can just reheat it easily in the microwave.  Letting it sit over night gives the dip a bit of time to marinate and get all yummy.  Enjoy with tortilla chips, pita chips, ritz crackers, veggie sticks or spoon directly in your mouth.  Just kidding (but not really).   This dip is a win-win!

Quick Shrimp, Snow Peas and Asparagus

You know what I love?  Chinese take out.  You know who doesn't like Chinese take out?  The Indian guy I live with. So instead of dragging him out and making him watch me eat Chinese food,  I learned how to just make this dish at home.  And after a long day at work, QUICK is the name of the game.   This dish that took me 10 minutes give or take a few.  It's a quick shrimp stir fry.  After you make this, you'll see how easy it is to make and you might never get Chinese take out again!  Just kidding.  But seriously, this recipe makes double the amount you get at any reputable Chinese take out for half the price you'd pay at a restaurant.

You will need:
raw shrimp (I use frozen)
snow peas (cleaned)
asparagus
1 can of sliced water chestnuts
white wine or rice wine
soy sauce
crushed garlic
ginger
corn starch
oil
water or chicken stock

This dish cooks quickly so you'll want to have everything prepped and on deck. Like this:

I used about half this 12 oz bag of frozen shrimp.  This was a smaller sized shrimp, you can go as small or large as you want.  This bag was on sale for 5 bucks.  Works for me.  If you want more shrimp, then use the whole bag.  I wanted to save some for some kimchi shrimp pancakes that I'm making later this week so I didn't use the whole bag.  The beauty of this dish is that you can use a much or as little of the ingredients as you want.  Tonight, I was craving more veggies so I went easy on the shrimp.  You don't have to use snow peas or asparagus.  You can use onion, bell pepper and even mushrooms.  Any combo works great.

I didn't remember to defrost it so I just added it into bowl with enough water to cover it and let it sit while I prepped my veggies.  You can add a little bit of salt to the water if you want.  You don't have to, but I do.  If your shrimp is already defrosted, just put it into a bowl and set aside.

I used half a pound of snow peas.  I like to prep them by peeling off the stem and the spine.  See that brown tip, it's hard to eat so I just pinch it off and pull down the straight side of the snow pea.

You end up with this:

It takes me a few minutes to do the entire batch. You don't have to do this, but it makes eating easier.  Throw away your stems and spines.

Give your snow peas a nice rinse and set aside.

You don't have to use any other veggie besides snow peas, but I do.  It's completely up to you.

I like to also use asparagus.  I used about half this bag so about a pound of asparagus works.  Use more or less depending on how much veggie you want in this stir fry.

I wash my asparagus spears and cut about 1 and a half inches off the bottom.  I chop into one inch pieces.  If you had time, you could cut these pieces on an angle, but tonight I'm more interested in cooking quickly so I can eat!  Straight pieces it is then.

Remember your bowl of shrimp?  If you had it sitting in water, drain off the water.  Into the bowl of shrimp, add about 3/4 a cup of white wine.  If you have rice wine, that works but if you don't, regular white wine works too.  

I added about 3 tablespoons of soy sauce to my shrimp and wine.

Then a heaping tablespoon of corn starch.

Mix it all up and set aside.

If you have a wok, heat to medium high.  I didn't feel like dragging mine out so I used a large non-stick frying pan.  It works well too.  I added about 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

When the oil is nice and heated and swirls around easily in the pan, I add my chopped asparagus.  Basically, you want to add the veggies that take the longest to cook first.  So had I used bell peppers of large chopped onion, I would have added them in first.

A lot of recipes will have you add the garlic and ginger in first, and you can.  It's really not going to ruin the dish.  I just know that sometimes, I tend to burn the garlic if it goes into the hot pan so I'll drop the temp of the pan by adding some veggies in first.  Not rocket science. 

Stir fry your asparagus for a minute or so, then add 1 heaping tablespoon of fresh chopped garlic.

I didn't have any fresh ginger, but I had this chopped ginger paste on hand so I squeezed in about 1/2 of a tablespoon.  If using fresh, I would have added 1-2 teaspoons of finely minced ginger.  

Fresh = More flavor, so use less when using fresh.

After a quick saute, I added my shrimp, wine, soy and corn starch mix.

I also add my can of sliced water chestnuts now.

If the sauce thicken too much, you can add a few tablespoons of chicken stock or water.  I like to add the snow peas last, because I like them to crunchy and crisp.  Snow peas tend to cook quickly so I add them at the end so they spend the least amount of time in the stir fry.

I also like to add in a tablespoon of chili sauce, but this is optional.  When your shrimp is pink, you're done!  

That's it.  You're done.  Eat with rice or with noodles.  Serves four people.

Super easy to make and satisfying with it's ginger, garlic deliciousness.