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This recipe was posted on the Facebook page of popular PBS TV chef and cookbook author Lidia Bastianich.  You can find the recipe here:  Chicken in Beer.  The looks like a great autumn dish.  And it’s not too heavy in fat and calories, so you won’t need to seek out the best studio for exercise and weight loss austin, or wherever you live, has to offer.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I plan to make it sometime this week.  As a craft brew lover, the hardest part for me is trying to decide which beer to use.

I am sort of leaning towards using a pumpkin ale, perhaps the Pumpkinhead seasonal ale that Shipyard puts out.  I have four bottles of it at the moment, and we can still get more, at least for now.

Pumpkin would go well with the other ingredients, I think.  We have the cinnamon and cloves thing going on here.  And I’ve seen many a pumpkin ravioli served with a sage-butter sauce.  And pumpkin and apple flavors go well together, too.

I might try using a hard cider, simply because Woodchuck makes a wonderful one with Granny Smith apples, and I’m always looking for an excuse to buy some!

We shall see.  After I make it, I’ll let you know how it turned out!

So I’m in Portland, Maine right now, at the Inn at St. John. We’re here for the Maine Brewers Festival, which takes place tomorrow. Right now, we’re just chilling out, and resting up for the festivities tomorrow. We were too tired to go out to eat, so we went to the Pizza Villa joint across the street from the hotel, and got some pizza to take back to our room. Mike is asleep now, and I’ve been watching TV and playing around on my netbook. Free WiFi rocks!

We don’t have cable TV at home, so I mostly just get to see the Food Network when we’re staying in hotels. After Mike got to watch his Friday night PBS news shows, I flipped over to the Food Network to see what was on.

Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives was on. I’m telling you, if host Guy Fieri always eats the kind of stuff he eats on that show, he’s gonna make some cardiologist very rich someday! Tonight he went to these places that served ginormous burgers…I could almost feel my arteries hardening just looking at them! You could almost gain weight by just looking at this food, as well…made me want to search the web for the best weight loss pills out there!

Then some other show came from, I forget what it was called, as I wasn’t paying much attention.  My ears perked up when I heard somone talk about cooking and eating bugs.  I looked at the TV, and sure enough, they were showing someone cooking what looked like breaded, deep-fried crickets or grasshoppers.  EEEEEUUUUUWWW!

Now, I realize that some cultures eat bugs regularly, and once, in a bookstore, I saw a bug cookbook written by some guy who taught bug cuisine as a college course.  But I think I’ll pass…I get squicked out when my cats catch flies and spiders and then eat them.  I appreciate them doing this, but that doesn’t mean I have to look at them while they are doing it.

I changed the channel super fast, before it got any more disgusting.  I was just glasd I’d long since finished eating when that show came on!

Since I had to go to some trouble to get the tomatillos for a dish I’ll be making this week, I thought you’d like to have the recipe. It comes from a book called Mexico: One Plate At A Time, by Rick Bayless.

As I said in the other blog post, tomatillos can be a bit difficult to find. If you don’t live in a neighborhood with a good-sized Hispanic population, try to find a store in a neighborhood that does.

Lard is traditional in Mexican cooking, and certainly will add a lot of extra flavor to the lean pork loin roast. I prefer to just use canola oil, though, it works well.

When handling hot chile peppers, be careful…use safety products such as rubber gloves to protect your hands, or just be careful not to rub your eyes without thoroughly washing your hands first.

I’ve never been able to find the epazote called for in this recipe. However, cilantro is reasonably easy to find. But the thing about cilantro is that people either love it or hate it. People who don’t like it say that it tastes like soap. If you really don’t like cilantro, and can’t find epazote, feel free to just use regular flat-leaf parsley.

Now, onto the recipe!

* 1 1/2 tablespoons rich-tasting lard or olive or vegetable oil
* 1 2-pound boneless pork roast, untied if in 2 pieces
* 1 pound tomatillos, husked and rinsed
* Fresh hot green chiles to taste (roughly 3 serranos or 1 jalapeno) stemmed
* 1 medium white onion, sliced
* 3 large cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
* 1 or 2 large sprigs epazote, plus a little for garnish or 1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
* Salt
* 10 small (about 1-1/4 pounds) red-skin potatoes, scrubbed and quartered

Browning the pork: In a medium (4 to 5 quart) Dutch oven or other heavy pan with a tight fitting lid, heat the lard or oil over medium heat. When quite hot lay in the pork loin (if there is more than 1 piece, don’t crowd them or they’ll stew rather than brown). Brown well on one side, about 5 minutes, turn over and brown the other side. Remove the pot from the heat and transfer the pork to a plate. Set aside the Dutch oven or pan to use for the sauce making.

The sauce: Roast the tomatillos and chiles on a baking sheet 4 inches below a very hot broiler until darkly roasted, even blackened in spots, about 5 minutes. Flip them over and roast the other side – 4 to 5 minutes more will give you splotchy-black and blistered tomatillos and chiles that are soft and cooked through. Cool and transfer everything to a food processor or blender, being careful to scrape up all the delicious juice that has run out onto the baking sheet. Process until smoothly pureed.

Set the pork browning pan over medium heat. when hot, add the onion and cook, stirring regularly, until golden, about 7 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook a minute longer. Raise the heat to medium-high and, when really sizzling, add the tomatillo puree all at once.. Stir until noticeably darker and very thick, 3 to 4 minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups water and the epazote or cilantro. Taste and season with salt, usually about 1 teaspoon. Stir everything thoroughly.

Braising the pork: Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Nestle the browned pork into the warm sauce, cover the pot and set in the oven. Cook 30 minutes.

While the meat is cooking, simmer the potatoes in heavily salted water to cover until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain well and set aside.

When the pork has cooked 30 minutes nestle the cooked potatoes into the sauce around the meat, re-cover and cook another 10 minutes, until the pork registers 145 degrees on an instant-read thermometer. The meat will feel rather firm to the touch, and cutting into the center will reveal only the slightest hint of pink.

Serving the dish: With a pair of tongs and a spatula, transfer the pork to a cutting board. Let it rest for 3 or 4 minutes while you finish the sauce: Spoon off any fat on the top of the sauce, taste the sauce and season with additional salt if you think necessary. Spoon the sauce and potatoes onto a warm deep serving platter.

Cut the pork into 1/4 inch slices and arrange them over the sauce. Decorate the platter with the epazote or cilantro sprigs, and you’re ready for a great meal! Serves 6.

Enjoy!