This week I have a guest blogger! My wife always contributes by going to each of the previous 10 restaurants with me, and she wants to share her experience from D’Gonzalez Carnicería at 796 E 14th St. Give her recipe below a try! It was delicious!
Hi there, Michael asked me to write up this next place because I’m the cook in the family. He cleans up, and is very good at it even though I love to make a mess!
D’Gonzalez Carneceria is the kind of store I love to have in my neighborhood. We stopped by on a Saturday and everyone had the same question: “Do you have carnitas left?” On the weekend they have carnitas, chicharrones, and tamales for sale, along with a bunch of different cuts of meat and their own sausages. I’ve come in a couple of times to get meat, and they’re always really helpful in suggesting what cut I should get and how much I need for how many people are coming over. This time, for lunch we got a bunch of carnitas and their sweet tamales. I also got two pounds of their pork chorizo and a big bag of beans to make some soup for dinner for our out of town guest. They also have chicken chorizo, which I haven’t seen elsewhere. We eyed the chicharrones, but decided two kinds of pork was enough for one day! They had pork belly and skin, both were puffy and bubbling and smelled really, really good. Another customer tried to convince us it’s healthier than chips, no carbs, right?
At home, we assembled the carnitas tacos with corn tortillas, sour cream, avocado, and La Victoria Red Taco Sauce. I grew up with La Victoria Mild my whole life, but when I finally moved out and did my own grocery shopping I discovered it comes in HOT! Yes! The carnitas was perfectly cooked and fell apart into tasty bits at a touch. It was very mildly flavored and not too salty, next time I would do some more seasoning and fry it up a bit at home.
The sweet tamales were tasty and interesting. I liked the bits of real corn in them, kind of like a really dense corn pudding.
The chorizo was great to cook with. I got the single, long kind which was easy to cut up or squeeze out. The sausage was spicy but not too hot, there were a lot of other flavors that came through. It wasn’t too salty or greasy either, there wasn’t a big red pool of fat as it rendered down. The chorizo was perfect for frying up with scrambled eggs and tortillas for breakfast, and it made my whole house smell like Sunday brunch at my uncle’s. Also great for soup!
Here’s my recipe for Chorizo Bean Soup:
Start by soaking a big bag of beans in hot water. Probably two pounds will do it, let them soak for an hour or two. Take about a pound and a half of chorizo and brown it in a deep pan (I like to use my ancient dutch oven I got in reward for years of pet sitting as a kid). Either squeeze it out, or cut it into slices if you like it chunkier. Take out half of the browned sausage and add in chopped garlic and rosemary, diced onions, one little can of tomato paste, and some cumin. Let that get all cooked down for a few minutes, then add in the beans and enough white wine and water to come up to the top of the pan. Nothing fancy, break out the Franzia!
Scrape up all the tasty brown bits off the bottom of the pan, cover, and let it simmer until the beans are done. Depending on the size of the beans this can be anything from an hour to three hours. You can just put the whole thing in a 300 degree oven if that’s easier.
When it’s done it will be a deep, evil red like this! You can even see the chorizoey goodness! Chop up some leafy greens, I used chard because that’s what’s growing right now, but something like kale or mustard greens would be good too. Stir it in and let the greens cook down a little bit.
Put the reserved sausage back in and eat with bread. Know what else would be good sprinkled on top? Chopped up pork belly chicharrones…maybe next time!
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Distance traveled:
D’Gonzalez Carneceria: 1.6 miles roundtrip
Total travelled so far: 16.1 miles