Sunday marked a very special day for millions of people around the world; the celebration of Chocolate and Pork.
Giving up on religion in fourth grade after studying the children’s crusades, I have come to enjoy the High Holiday’s from a culinary respect. Although not as significant as Christmas or Thanksgiving, Easter is certainly nothing to Passover; not the Jewish holiday I’m talking pork.
Being fromCaliforniathe traditional Easter meal revolved around a delicious spiral sliced ham, drowning in a bourbon glaze. These days my favorite pork product is a slow cook pork butt. I usually slow roast the PB over a low and slow mesquite BBQ. It works best to do the indirect method and bath the pork in a dark beer, brown sugar and dry bbq rub. This is going to take a while, like all day, depending on size. If you’re going to all this trouble do two and freeze the other one. Once the pork is cooked you can make pulled pork sandwiches, tamales or in our case today enchiladas with mole sauce. The Aztec were famous for their mole and the secret is pumpkin seeds and chocolate. Ingredients are 5 ancho chilies, 3 dried New Mexico or guajillo chilies, stemmed and seeded ,2 dried chilies negros stemmed and seeded, 1/3 cup sesame seeds, plus 1 tablespoon for garnish, 3/4 teaspoon anise seeds, 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, 1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds, 2 cloves, 12 black peppercorns, One 1/2 -inch cinnamon stick, 5 tablespoons lard or vegetable shortening, 2 1/2 tablespoons raisins, 20 whole almonds, 1/3 cup raw pumpkin seeds,1 corn tortilla, quartered, 5 medium plum tomatoes, 5 garlic cloves, unpeeled, 1 small onion, quartered, 5 cups chicken stock or low-sodium broth , 3 1/4 ounces Mexican chocolate, coarsely chopped, Salt and freshly ground pepper, 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro. Soak the chilies, toast the seeds and spices, sauté together add the broth. From here you can pour sauce over enchiladas and bake or use as base for chicken mole or a pork mole stew.
The secret to both of these recipes is time, the longer the better. While your pork is smoking and your mole simmering it may be worth a look at our listings and decide if this is the time to make your move on some property in theSan Juan Islands. It appears that the market is heating up with 25 properties pending or contingent versus a norm of 12-14. 16 properties between 50K-500K, 5 properties between 500K-800K and 4 around 1mm. We are hearing good things from our office inSeattleabout multiple offers and properties getting full price offers the day they hit the market.
The ferry has been full this weekend, the flowers are starting to bloom and it looks like a good year for real estate in the San Juan Islands.
