White Chili with Hominy

The farmers' market pop-up launched on Saturday. Sofia and I loaded the van at 5 AM — boxes of conchas, empanadas, polvorones, and Sofia's pan de elote — and drove to the downtown market and set up our table between a honey vendor and a woman who sells handmade candles. Sofia had designed a banner: PANADERÍA ROSA — EL PASO'S BAKERY. She had business cards. She had an iPad with Square for credit cards. She is thirteen and she has more business infrastructure than most adults, and I would be concerned about her childhood except that this is her childhood — the bakery is her play, her sport, her art, her everything. Some kids play soccer. Sofia plays bakery.

We sold out by 11 AM. One hundred and twenty conchas, forty empanadas, thirty polvorones. Total revenue: four hundred and ten dollars. After cost of goods and the booth fee: two hundred and sixty in profit. From one Saturday morning. Sofia looked at the numbers and said, "We need to bring more next week." She is right. Supply met demand and demand won. We will bring more. We will always bring more. Rosa brought more. Bringing more is the family business model.

A woman at the market — Anglo, maybe fifty, from the west side of town — tasted a concha and said, "This is the best I've ever had. Where is your bakery?" I told her. She said, "I've never been to the Lower Valley." And the sentence sat between us — two women in the same city who have never crossed each other's invisible border, the border between the west side and the Lower Valley, which is not the same as the border between El Paso and Juírez but is related, is adjacent, is the domestic version of the same division. I said: "Come visit. I'll save you a concha." She said: "I will." I believe her. Bread crosses borders. Bread always crosses borders.

I made gorditas for dinner — the fried kind, stuffed with picadillo, the ones Rosa made on Saturdays. Gorditas after a market day felt right — market food, street food, the food of commerce and exchange, the food of women who sell and buy and feed the economy from tables and pushcarts and bakery counters. Rosa never sold at a market. Rosa sold from the window of the house in Anapra — neighbors coming to the door, buying conchas for a few pesos. The farmers' market is the same thing with better signage.

I had meant to make gorditas — the fried stuffed kind, Rosa’s Saturday recipe — but by the time we unloaded the van and counted the money and Sofia finally sat still for five minutes, I needed something that would cook itself while we talked. White chili with hominy was the answer: hominy being the same nixtamalized corn that lives at the heart of every gordita, every tamale, every masa-anything Rosa ever put in front of us, just wearing different clothes. The corn is always the same corn. It always knows its way home.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium white onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 cans (15 oz each) white beans (cannellini or Great Northern), drained and rinsed
1 can (15 oz) white or yellow hominy, drained and rinsed
2 cans (4 oz each) diced green chiles
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Salt and black pepper to taste
1/2 cup sour cream
Shredded Monterey Jack cheese, for serving
Fresh cilantro and lime wedges, for serving

Instructions

Sauté the aromatics. Heat olive oil in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook until softened, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
Brown the chicken. Add the cubed chicken to the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned on all sides, about 5–6 minutes. The chicken does not need to be fully cooked through at this stage.
Build the chili base. Stir in the cumin, oregano, chili powder, and cayenne. Pour in the chicken broth and add the diced green chiles. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low.
Add beans and hominy. Stir in the white beans and hominy. Simmer uncovered for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is cooked through and the broth has thickened slightly. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Finish with sour cream. Remove the pot from heat and stir in the sour cream until fully incorporated. This gives the chili its creamy, slightly tangy body. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Serve. Ladle into bowls and top with shredded Monterey Jack cheese, fresh cilantro, and a squeeze of lime. Warm tortillas on the side are never wrong.

Nutrition (per serving)

White Chili with Hominy — The Corn That Carries Everything