Gulf Coast Fare from Super Pollo in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget
Super Pollo Taquería in Salinas, California offers delicious Gulf Coast Texan and Mexican fare for everyday dinners and special events.
For my December birthday, I ordered a tonic winter meal made up of shrimp cocktail, chile verde con puerco, and Spanish rice.
Super Pollo stuffs a large beverage container with briny shrimp that swim in a sea of pico de gallo salsa topped off with slices of avocado for its shrimp cocktail.
Pico de gallo salsa is made with chopped red pepper, onions, tomates, and cilantro with the addition of spicy peppers and Tapatío hot sauce for Super Pollo’s shrimp cocktail. I wanted to eat the shrimp cocktail on a blustery day on a sailboat, but was happy at home with a Monterey Beer from Alvarado Street Brewery.
Chile verde con puerco is made by browning onions and pork and making a spicy green sauce, the chile verde, to go with the browned pork.
To make childe verde sauce, you roast Mexican tomatillo green peppers (minus the papery skin), jalapeño peppers and Anaheim or Poblano peppers. Once roasted, you place these items in a blender with a bunch of cilantro leaves, chopped yellow onions, and chicken stock and purée the sauce.
You warm the sauce and browned pork cubes together and then serve the chile verde with Spanish rice. Spanish rice is made with chicken stock and tomato juice and is so delicious you can practically make a meal of it alone.
This is a large and delicious meal. I add leftover chile verde to chicken noodle soup for a boost of Vitamin C. (I also add leftover salsa to chicken noodle soup for another meal for a Vitamin C and flavor boost as well.)
If you want a tonic Tex-Mex meal in winter, the shrimp cocktail and chile verde meal I ordered à la carte at Super Pollo is pretty hard to beat.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
