Tinga Alejandro- casi tinga, pero no

Tinga is a Mexican dish, I think northern or central, which I somehow managed to almost miss in nearly twenty years of living in Arizona. It's a kind of shredded, slow cooked chicken or beef with peppers and chilis and some other ingrediants. I had it the first time prepared by a friend of mine's grandparents, who are Mexican, down south of Tucson. It is fantastic stuff. So I tried to make it.

My tinga was made from ingredients that I tried to remember in a grocery store, based on my memory of a crock pot variation of the recipe in a comment thread of a recipe I found online. So its pretty far removed from the tinga I remember. I ended up using chorizo and pork neck bone meat, instead of beef or chicken, and poblano peppers instead of chipotle. And I probably messed up the ratios too somewhere along the way.

  Tinga Alejandro is made with two cans of green chilis, one roasted, a half of a poblano pepper, a half of a yellow onion diced and sauteed with two cloves of garlic, and two tomatoes, charred on the stove and then smashed. Plus the 2 pounds of bone meat and the pound or so of chorizo.

I let it all cook for about 12 hours. The end result was really quite soupy, much more soupy or stew-y than I remember. I slapped it on some corn torillas and a dollop of sour cream, and it was so runny it ate through the torilla and most of the meat fell out onto my plate. It was still pretty good. Really really rich flavor. I put away my plate and got out a bowl, and threw some tortilla chips instead and ladled out some more of Tinga Alejandro. Pretty good, actually. Not quite as spicy as I wanted it. Up the chilis next time maybe. I think I was supposed to have some adobo sauce and chipotle pepper somewhere in there too. Next time.

Anyway, the main lesson here was: don't use pork neck bones. It makes a delicious and rich meat that falls off the bone, but then you've got to pick the bones out. I spent about fifteen minutes with a fork fishing out bones and bone fragments. Pulled out a few dozen, some about the size of a fingernail.

After dinner, after I pulled out the meat trying to separate it as muhc from the liquid as possible, I poured the liquid into my bowl and ate it as a soup. Unbelievably rich. It probably has about half of the rendered fat from the chroizo and pork. Quite tasty.