Chipotle Lime Carnitas Salad

I want to start with the news from Friday because the news from Friday sets up everything else this week.

The plea hearing was Friday afternoon and Cody pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of simple possession. The original charge had been possession with intent to distribute, which is a felony in Oklahoma carrying up to seven years. Mrs. Patel, who has been Cody’s public defender since the night of the arrest, has been negotiating since the second week of September with the prosecutor’s office to get the charge knocked down. The prosecutor agreed to the lesser charge in exchange for the guilty plea and the youthful-offender designation, which lets the judge sentence Cody under a different framework than the adult one.

What I want to write down clearly is that the plea is not the sentencing. I am still figuring out the difference, but the difference matters, and I have been learning the legal language a piece at a time over the last three weeks the way I would learn the language of any other kitchen I had not been in before. The plea is when the defendant tells the judge whether they did the thing they were charged with. The sentencing is when the judge decides what happens next. The two events can be the same day, or they can be months apart. In our case, they are months apart. The plea was Friday October seventh. The sentencing is set for Friday January sixth, almost exactly three months from now.

In between, there is something called a presentence investigation. A probation officer assigned by the court is going to spend the next twelve weeks looking at Cody’s life. The officer is going to interview Cody. Interview Mama. Interview Mr. Garcia at the auto-body shop. Talk to Cody’s teachers from middle school, possibly to one of his old high school teachers. Look at Cody’s school records. Look at his employment history. Look at any pattern of substance use. Talk to him about what happened. Write all of it up into a report. Submit the report to the judge in late December.

The judge will use the report to decide what to do at sentencing. The two main options are a deferred sentence — two years of supervised probation, weekly check-ins, forty hours of community service, and a clean record at the end if Cody stays out of trouble — or a county jail sentence in the youthful-offender facility, which Mrs. Patel said could run anywhere from twelve to twenty-four months.

Mrs. Patel called Mama at the Dollar General store at three-fifteen on Friday afternoon. Mama had to step into the back office to take the call. The store manager, a man named Mr. Pinkston who has worked with Mama for nine years and who is, by Mama’s account, a kind man underneath the kind of crusty exterior assistant managers always have, knew the call was coming and shooed the other employees away from the office while Mama was on the phone.

I want to write down what Mrs. Patel said. Mama told me later that night at the kitchen table. The exact words: Shelly, the plea was accepted. Now we work for the deferred. The next ninety days matter more than anything else.

Mama did not come home until seven Friday night because she finished her shift the way Mama always finishes her shift no matter what is happening. Cody was at the kitchen table when she walked in. He had been waiting at the kitchen table since his auto-body shift ended at two-thirty. He had not eaten. He had not opened the book. He had just sat at the table.

Mama walked in. She did not say anything for a second. She set her purse on the counter. She put her hands on the back of a kitchen chair. And she said, he took the plea, baby. January six. We have to be perfect until then.

Cody put both his hands flat on the kitchen table and closed his eyes and stayed that way for about ten seconds without moving. He did not cry. He did not say anything. He just kept his hands on the table and his eyes closed and he breathed. Mama and I did not say anything either. We let him have those ten seconds. After ten seconds he opened his eyes and he said, very quietly, I’ll do whatever they need me to do, Mama. And Mama said, I know you will.

So that is the news. The plea is in. The countdown has started. The next ninety days, Mrs. Patel said, matter more than anything else. We have to be perfect until January sixth. And the way you become perfect for ninety days, in a household like ours, is a day at a time, a meal at a time, a shift at a time, a small Sunday dinner at a time, with the kind of quiet steadiness that does not draw attention to itself but that adds up, in writing, in a probation officer’s report, to the kind of person a judge looks at and decides to give a chance.

And then there is the dinner. I want to tell you about the dinner because the dinner is what I do when something has tipped — not all the way right, not yet, but in the right direction — and I do not know what else to do with my hands.

I went to Walmart on Saturday morning at eight-thirty before my Sonic shift, and I bought a pork shoulder on the markdown rack. 2.8 pounds, $6.86, marked down from $11.99. I had been holding off on the carnitas recipe for two weeks because the plea hearing was looming and I did not want to make any kind of celebration dinner before there was anything at all to celebrate. The plea came through Friday. The plea is not a celebration. The plea is a step. But the step is in the right direction, and I have decided that even a step in the right direction is enough of a thing to cook for.

The recipe is a Cafe Delites chipotle-lime carnitas salad I had been carrying around in my notebook since August. The math: pork shoulder $6.86, spring mix $1.99 at Aldi, black beans eighty-nine cents, corn fifty-nine cents, half a head of red cabbage ninety cents, plain Greek yogurt $1.49, two limes ninety-eight cents, jar of chipotles in adobo $1.49 (used about a third), garlic and cumin and salt and pepper and oil from the kitchen. Total: $13.50 for a dinner that fed three people for two dinners and a leftovers lunch. The most expensive single meal I have cooked all year, by a couple of dollars over the Mississippi pot roast, but the cost-per-serving worked out to $1.50 with the leftovers, and I wrote it down with a small star next to it because some weeks the math is not the math.

The technique runs slow-cooker-then-skillet. Saturday morning I rubbed the pork shoulder with two minced chipotles in adobo, four cloves of minced garlic, a tablespoon of ground cumin, the zest and juice of one lime, a teaspoon of salt, and a teaspoon of black pepper. I let it sit on the counter while I drank my coffee, then put it in the slow cooker with a half cup of water at nine-thirty. I left it on low for eight hours. I went to my Sonic shift. The pork cooked itself.

I came home at five-thirty. The kitchen smelled like the inside of a Mexican restaurant. I shredded the pork in the slow cooker with two forks and let it sit in the cooking liquid for fifteen minutes to soak up the sauce. While the pork was soaking, I shredded the cabbage on a cutting board, drained the beans and the corn, and whisked the Greek yogurt with the zest and juice of the second lime, two more minced chipotles, salt, and pepper to make the chipotle-lime crema. I crisped a portion of the pork in the cast iron skillet with a tablespoon of oil over medium-high heat for two minutes per side, until the bottom of the strands had gone brown and crackly. The crisping is the trick. The crisping is what turns slow-cooked pork into carnitas.

I assembled three salads in three big bowls. Spring mix on the bottom. Shredded red cabbage. A scoop of black beans. A scoop of corn. A pile of crispy carnitas on top. A drizzle of the chipotle-lime crema across the whole thing. The colors were green and red and brown with the cream stripe of the crema across the top.

The three of us ate at the kitchen table at six. Mama said, baby, this is something else. Cody ate the whole bowl in about eight minutes, which is the fastest I have ever seen him eat a salad in my life, and then he looked across the table at me and he said, with a kind of weight in his voice I am not used to, this is the best meal you have ever made, Kay.

I want to write that down because it was the first sentence Cody has said about my cooking that did not start with this is real good. The sentence had a shape to it. The sentence said something specific. The sentence was the kind of sentence a person says when they have started paying attention to what is in front of them again, instead of just receiving it as fuel. Cody is starting to taste food again. That is a small thing and a big thing at the same time.

The leftovers carried us through Monday and Tuesday. The chipotle-lime crema went on everything. I am keeping the rest of the jar of chipotles in the freezer in a small Tupperware, in two-pepper portions wrapped in plastic, because chipotles in adobo are the cheapest single flavor upgrade I have found this year and I do not want to run out.

The countdown is Day Three of Ninety as I write this. The sentencing is Friday January sixth. Mama is at her shift. Cody is at the auto-body shop. The plea is in. The wallet has $61 in it. The savings envelope is empty. The mornings have started arriving cool. We are working for the deferred. We are starting at the beginning of a long ninety days. The carnitas was a step. The next eighty-seven days are the rest of the steps.

The recipe is below, the way Cafe Delites wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the crisping — do not skip the cast-iron-skillet step at the end. Slow-cooked pork is good; slow-cooked pork crisped in a hot dry pan is carnitas. The chipotle-lime crema goes on everything for the rest of the week. Keep the leftover chipotles in adobo in the freezer in two-pepper portions. They are the cheapest upgrade in this notebook.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 8 hrs (slow cooker) | Total Time: 8 hrs 15 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 lbs pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into 3-inch chunks
2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, minced (about 2 tbsp)
1 tsp adobo sauce (from the can)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
Juice of 2 limes, divided
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 tbsp olive oil or neutral oil
6 cups romaine lettuce or mixed greens, chopped
1 cup canned black beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup frozen or canned corn, thawed or drained
1/2 cup salsa verde (jarred is fine)
1/4 cup sour cream or plain Greek yogurt
1 lime, cut into wedges, for serving
Fresh cilantro, for topping (optional)

Instructions

Season the pork. In a small bowl, mix together the minced chipotle peppers, adobo sauce, garlic, cumin, smoked paprika, oregano, salt, and pepper. Rub the mixture all over the pork shoulder chunks.
Sear (optional but recommended). Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Sear the pork pieces 2—3 minutes per side until browned. This step adds depth but can be skipped if you’re short on time.
Slow cook. Place the pork in a slow cooker. Pour in the chicken broth and the juice of 1 lime. Cover and cook on LOW for 7—8 hours, or on HIGH for 4—5 hours, until the pork is tender and pulls apart easily.
Shred the carnitas. Remove the pork from the slow cooker and shred with two forks. Return the shredded meat to the pot and toss it in the cooking juices. Squeeze the remaining lime juice over the top and stir to combine.
Make the chipotle lime dressing. Whisk together the salsa verde, sour cream (or Greek yogurt), and a squeeze of lime juice until smooth. Thin with a splash of water if needed. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Assemble the salads. Divide the greens among bowls. Top each with a generous portion of shredded carnitas, black beans, and corn.
Dress and serve. Drizzle the chipotle lime dressing over each bowl. Finish with fresh cilantro if using and serve with a lime wedge on the side.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chipotle Lime Carnitas Salad — The Saturday Dinner at the Start of the Ninety Days