Pandemic cooking: the dishes (part 2)

It's the first day of 2021, and COVID-19 is still a thing. Meaning that I have plenty of time to cook some more dishes!

Pozole

One thing my mom makes a few times a year is pozole. Much like a lot of stuff I've been cooking, it's a total comfort food. More importantly, it's a dish we often eat during the holidays. So for a sense of normalcy, I decided to cook some up for myself.

There is a bit of prep, but it was about 30 minutes of roasting vegetables, rehydrating peppers, chopping, and blending. After that, it was a matter of tossing in the above mix, some hominy, and some chicken breast, into a pressure cooker, and 35 minutes later, I had a bowl ready to eat. It isn't as good as my mom's, or most I've had back in LA, but it was pretty good, and totally comforting.

Carnitas

While I do love me some Carolina barbecue, it's not my favorite way of preparing pork. While it may lack the smokiness, the vinegar, peppers, and/or mustard flavors of pulled pork, the roasted, rendered fat all over carnitas is glorious. Much like the pozole, prep isn't too time consuming (about 30 minutes). I decided to slow cook it sous vide for 24 hours at 165 degrees (Fahrenheit). In all honestly, this may be unnecessary. I've heard many success stories with using a pressure cooker for half an hour to get similar results. But once the meat came out of the bag, and was placed in the broiler for about 7 minutes, it made it all worth it. It was quite fatty, a tad crunchy, not too salty, but full of flavor. I think I nailed the flavor of the carnitas I used to eat.

I managed to eat a dozen tacos in less than 24 hours, and that was WITH a lot of restraint. Yeah, this stuff is great.

I used this recipe to cook this up. I also made some salsa verde (very similar to this recipe) to top off these tacos.

Fish balls (and fish cake)

This one's cheating a bit, because I tend to buy premade ones from the local Asian market. Of the few dishes I made with the fish cakes, my favorite was probably the easiest: stick some fish cake balls in an air fryer for 10 minutes, followed by a coat of orange sauce and sesame seeds. I'm amazed at how well it worked, and it was good enough to keep me from making orange chicken for a while. I have a few dozen fish cakes in the freezer, and I'm looking forward to making something else pretty soon (maybe covered with some homemade General Tso's sauce).