Chilli without the chilli

 Purists should probably look away now - I made a tinga poblana without any chillis at all. It comes to something when you're doing a recipe off a menu called "A Thousand Chillis" (Diana Henry, How to Eat a Peach, thank you), the first instruction in a recipe is to take your chipotles, and you just skip straight over that into the bits you want. But if like me you can't manage hot food at all, I recommend this approach for a spiced pork stew of inauthentic goodness. 

I said last night I'd made chilli for six, but on sober reflection it's more like three, so long as I don't overdo the rice, coriander, avocado, feta and sour cream additives. (I didn't do the sour cream.) It's a ribsticker, anyway. 

Start by roasting plum tomatoes, sliced, with a bit of oil, salt and sugar. 45 mins minimum, till they start browning and caramelising. If you're using no chipotles, this is half the flavour of your sauce...

Next with the browning: first, meat from a couple of chorizos, in my case those chorizo-flavoured raw sausages rather than the real thing, which is where the size of the dish started to rise... Second, pork shoulder (I am v bad at browning stuff but this recipe has lots of things you can faff with while browning, and I did manage to do this properly.) Tip each lot of meat into a casserole.

Chop an onion and brown that off in the chorizo and pork oil remnants until it's brown and luscious. Add a bit of garlic, ground cumin, thyme, oregano, warm, stir and tip that lot on top of the casserole. Add stock to cover the meat, bring to the boil, part cover, and cook long and slow. 90 minutes or so. 

 

Remember the tomatoes? Get them out of the oven, chop them, and add them to the mix about halfway in. You definitely want this with rice, so the coolth of turning the oven off will be compensated by the boiling water soon enough.

It's an excellent plateful. Very suitable for September, when the world is grey, chill and on a downward slope. Probably delicious with the chipotles, but, eh. Works without. 

Good luck, everyone. May your experimental cookery always come out decently.