"Do Aheads" and Chile Verde

This week my "foraging" resulted in a couple of pork shoulder roasts and a lot of vegetables from my friends at S&S Produce.  My menu for the week looks like this:

Sunday: Chef's Choice
Monday: Chef's Choice
Tuesday:   Freezer to Crockpot Chile Verde with Pork
Wednesday: Chef's Choice
Thursday: Freezer To Crockpot Chicken Adobo
Friday: Baked Halibut
Saturday: Chef's Choice

My "Do Aheads" for this week are a batch of Salsa Verde ....

Ingredients:
6 pasilla chile peppers
3 cloves garlic
1 pound tomatillos (update: when I made a second batch of this I used more tomatillos; about 20 ... I think it came out better :)
2 onions, sliced
1/2 tsp each of ground coriander and cumin
1 pint chicken stock (homemade)
handful of cilantro
olive oil

I roasted the peppers, tomatillos and garlic under a broiler and then put the peppers in a paper bag to steam for a while.  This makes it easy to remove the skins ...

... and seeds ...

While the peppers where steaming I cooked the sliced onions in a little olive oil in a large Dutch oven until they softened up a bit.  I added the tomatillos, peppers, garlic, cumin, coriander, cilantro and chicken stock to the pot and let it simmer on low heat for about an hour.

I let the mixture cool and then transferred it in batches to a blender ...

... and pulsed on low to end up with a thick puree ....

... which I divided up into freezer containers (please don't try to can this one ... it doesn't have enough acid and adding vinegar or lemon juice ruins the flavor).

My next "Do Ahead" was cutting up a pork shoulder roast ...

... browning it in batches ...

...and packaging it up in serving size portions to be frozen.

Now just one more "Do Ahead" ... a compound butter for the Friday night halibut.

Ingredients:

1 cup Panko bread crumbs (One of the few processed foods I am still using.)
2 cups soft butter (I have switched to butter from pastured, grass fed cows)
A handful of parsley
4 cloves garlic
Lemon zest (oops ... camera shy : )

I love this inexpensive little gadget for getting the skins off of garlic cloves!  

The parsley and garlic cloves take a spin in my mini food processor ...

... and then into a bowl with the butter, panko a little lemon zest.  All was stirred together and formed into a log ...

... which was refrigerated until hard and then popped into a storage bag and then into the freezer ..

Ta Dah!  That's it for this week's prep work.

Coming up next: Freezer to Crockpot Chile Verde with Pork

Enjoy!