Three Poblanos, A Pound of Tomatillos, and a Jalapeño Walk into a Pork Chile Verde

Plus: Jessie Sheehan Brings Flourless Chocolate Cake, Mussels on Toast, and Raspberry Ricotta Cake.

Hey everyone,

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve noticed that my culinary wheelhouse skews pretty French/Italian. I put lots of butter on my roast chicken, I make pasta almost every other night, and my pantry is full of polenta, Arborio rice, olive oil, and Balsamic vinegar.

So it’s a happy change of pace today as I tell you about Saturday night’s dinner, where I traveled to Mexico (via my kitchen) to make Kay Chun’s Pork Chile Verde from NYT Cooking (here’s a Gift Link to the recipe).

I watch enough Pati Jinich to know that the first step to any good Mexican recipe is to get everything good and charred. I did all of that under my broiler… let’s go to the tape:

amateurgourmet

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Once you do that, it’s just a question of blending everything up:

Such a vivid color.

Then you cut two pounds of pork shoulder into one-inch cubes (the original recipe calls for 1 1/2 pounds, but a NYT commenter recommended two pounds and I’m glad I did that), brown them really well, add an onion, add the sauce and 2 cups of water and into the oven it goes for 1 1/2 hours.

The results were spicy and complex and made even better by a good hit of lime juice. I’m so glad I ventured away from my comfort zone.

I wasn’t just cooking this for anyone; Jessie Sheehan, one of my favorite bakers, and her husband Matt were our VIP dinner guests.

Even better? Jessie brought dessert:

That’s her flourless chocolate cake from her excellent book Snackable Bakes.

The recipe’s on her website, so here you go.

Jessie also brought crème fraîche which she generously dolloped on. That tangy, creamy note took everything to another level.

Yesterday we went to see SINNERS in the theater — it was so good and totally lives up to the hype! — and when we got home, we were both too pooped to go out to dinner and too cheap to order in. That’s when I noticed the tinned mussels on my shelf.

I sliced some bread, toasted it really well, rubbed it with garlic, then spooned the mussels and their oil all over it. Served it up with a spinach salad with grapefruit and watermelon radishes (that came with my CSA):

Pretty resourceful, don’t ya think?

Finally, on Friday night we had dinner at Jenny Rosenstrach’s house (how have I befriended all of my favorite food writers?) where she served up an incredible salad with grated beets and, totally up my alley, a springtime pasta with pea pesto and ricotta.

My contribution?

I brought dessert! (I guess it was a pay-it-forward situation; I brought a cake to Jenny’s, Jessie brought a cake to me). The recipe: The Village Bakery’s Raspberry Ricotta Cake, scored from my time living next to The Village Bakery in L.A.

It’s a really lovely recipe: butter, sugar, ricotta, sour cream, plus cornmeal in with the flour. I added some lemon zest for pizazz. You layer in two layers of raspberries and it comes out smelling like heaven.

Jenny sprinkled some powdered sugar and raspberries on top before serving it up.

How’s that for a weekend of good eating?

In some happy book news, The London Evening Standard named Food Person one of “The Best Summer Reads 2025.”

You better pre-order so you have your summer book ready!

Now for some links:

• You Need to Make a Babka (Eater);

• Keith McNally’s memoir reviewed in the Times… most shocking part? He had a sexual affair with Alan Bennet! (NYT Gift Link);

• Roy Choi’s Grub Street Diet (Grub Street).

That’s all for today, folks….

I’ll see you back here on Thursday!

Your pal,

Adam