Vegan Menudo with Snow Fungus

Instructions

Okay so let's make some delicious vegan Menudo
Place your dried snow mushrooms in a large bowl or container filled with room temperature water to allow them to hydrate. Once the mushrooms are hydrated they will plump up 2-3 times their dry size in10 minutes.
While your mushrooms are hydrating go ahead and toast your chiles (toast in batches if you need to) using a comal or a pot over medium heat 15-20 seconds per side, be careful not to burn them or chiles will become bitter. Remove your chiles from the pan and with a little oil saute on medium high heat your tomato, onion, and garlic to get some color... some char is okay.

In a medium sauce pot add your toasted chiles, tomato, garlic and onion and poor just enough water to cover and bring to a boil then reduce heat to simmer for 15 minutes. After 15 min remove from heat and let everything just hangout on the stove till it cools down.

In a large deep 8qt pot on medium heat add olive oil, diced onions and saute just till translucent. Now add the water, bullion, seasonings, epizote, salt and bring to a boil. In the meantime cut up your mushrooms, cut as much of the yellow stem part off as you can it's a little tuff. I roughly cut 1 inch squares and then once it's all cut I randomly run my knife copping through it a couple times.
Drain and rinse your hominy, reserve ½ of hominy to blend with your chiles later. Now add your chopped snow mushrooms, garlic paste, and hominy to the boiling water reduce heat to medium low with the lid on and simmer for 1hr, no need to keep an eye on it just let it do it's thing occasionally stirring it.

So now that 1hr has passed it's time to blend your chiles that have been cooling down. Add all your chiles, onion, tomato, ½ cup of hominy to the blender along with 2 cups of the cooking liquid and blend on medium speed for 40 seconds. Through a fine sieve you're going to pour your blended chiles and strain all the skins make sure you're using a spatula to help press the chiles through. Add your strained chile to your menudo and cook for an additional 40 min.

Remove pot of menudo from the heat taste and adjust the seasoning to your taste. You may want a little more salt or it may be perfect as it is.

Serve this menudo in a bowl topped with diced onions, cilantro, maybe even some radish and diced jalapeno.
Enjoy with a side of toasted bolillo, tortilla or tostada...