sA while ago in my personal history, I fell in with a rowdy bunch of New Mexicans, who plied me with a Christmas Eve dinner laced with green chile, home made salsa, and my first encounter with (homegrown, no less) purple potatoes. A few months later, I moved to New Mexico. To this day, I do not know the truth about the matter. As much as I love my New Mexican friends (who are some of the most genuine and incredible people I have ever encountered), as much beauty as the ever-changing high desert landscape provides, and as much spiritual and cultural ephemera I soaked into my pale Midwestern skin in that place, I am still convinced that the primary element that kept me there for two years was the food.
First amongst the food is green chile. Oh, there’s also posole, and the multitudes of enchiladas; there’s sopaipillas and chiles rellenos and roasted lamb and root vegetables on the farm and gigantic peaches from the San Luis valley (which is actually souther colorado, but close enough), but who cares? Green chile is more important than anything.
It is a special substance, my friends. It is roasted in parking lots of grocery stores this time of year and so everywhere the air is saturated with the scent, which smells to me like an earthy concentration of dried fallen leaves. It is a heady, permeating incense.
New Mexicans (or those just pretending to be) buy the roasted peppers buy the bushel. A bushel is pretty much a garbage bag full of the deflated, black-flecked red and green skinned, hot as hades vegetable matter. Roasted green chiles don’t come peeled or seeded, and it is according to your particular family tradition whether or not you freeze them with the peels and seeds. Some claim that it makes them bitter to leave the peels on, some claim that it takes away from the heat to remove them. Some are simply too lazy or lacking the masochism required to de-peel and seed and entire bushel of green chiles at once (and after having once volunteered for such duty and as a result suffering from burning cuticles for weeks afterwards, I can sympathize. Oh, there is also the danger of the dreaded GREEN CHILE EYE). From there, the chiles are sorted into freezer bags and stashed away for the winter, to eat and to be used as currency (Seriously. Many a deal is brokered on a quantity of green chile.)
The heat and flavor and provenance of your particular green chile increases or decreases its value, depending on with whom you’re dealing. For instance, my (then) boyfriend and I invested in a bushel of too-hot chile. (When I say that it was too hot, I mean to say that it was too hot for him, a native New Mexican, which means it was really, really hot.) Fortunately, we discovered someone with a tongue of asbestos, and were able to trade amicably.
When the fresh stuff is not available or when you’re found that you’ve greedily consumed your entire stash and no one else is willing to share, there is an alternative. Chopped green chile comes in a little tub (which can be handily reused as storage ware), it is available in any freezer section in most New Mexican or southern Coloradoan grocery store, and it is produced by a company called, fittingly, Bueno (also available through the Albuquerque Tortilla Company). This handy stuff is available in a variety of flavors, but Bueno Autumn Roast is considered the best. It’s good to have on hand, as a welcome addition to ANY RECIPE you may have. Spaghetti sauce, chocolate chip cookies, stir fry? All of the above, you will find, can be enhanced by the addition of green chile.
That’s all well and good, but if you’re in Michigan, you probably can’t get green chile in any variety but a wee little tin can of absolutely bitter, awful stuff that looks like something jettisoned from someone’s nasal cavity, available in the “ethnic aisle” of the grocery store. Don’t bother. (I also once went to Eastern Market in search of chiles and found them, but being that they were grown in Michigan they absolutely lacked heat. Plus, you have to roast them yourself, which isn’t hard, but I haven’t been to Eastern Market lately so that’s not an option.)
Hence, on a crisp fall evening when I found myself lusting for green chile stew and without a hope of finding such, I invented something of which I am very proud: Mock Green Chile Stew.
At my family’s behest, I’m going to attempt to record the recipe, though it was rather free form.
First, it requires that you have on hand a leftover half of a 2-lb roasted pork loin (you might have made this the night before.) I find that green chile accompanies pork the best, but if you don’t have pork, beef is nice, and so is lamb (I think lamb is the most traditional — though keep in mind the greasiness factor). The glory of the leftover roast is that it saves time and, once stewed, it’s only going to get more tender.
Then, you make your regular stew base of sweated vegetables. I had some wee bitty green bell peppers and onions on hand, plus five cloves of garlic, chopped of course (which made me reminiscent of the incredible garlic my friends grow on their farm, so full of oil it’s nearly translucent).
Then, I added some red chile, which is of course available at your local grocery no matter where you are. Mine happened to be from New Mexico (I was in the habit of sending the free packets of dried red chile I got from the bank — yes, the bank gives out red chile — to my mother, and she still has some). I probably put two teaspons in and turned up the heat, let it sweat for another minute or so before I added the pork.
I let the pork hang out in that mixture for awhile to absorb flavor. I wanted a few tomatoes and more heat, however, and went scrounging in the fridge. What did I unearth but half a jar of Green Mountain Gringo salsa? I maintain, afterwards, that only this brand will do. It is my favorite store-bought salsa. I eat it straight out of the jar with a spoon (I find that the high ratio of vinegar to fresh vegetables makes it slightly reminiscent of chow-chow or sweet pepper relish.)
In went the salsa, and about five to seven more minutes of cooking (now at about medium temps, till liquids are cooked down). Then it was nothing more than a few cups of broth and about three yukon gold potatoes cut up, and about twenty minutes of boiling and twenty more of simmering.
That was that. Somewhere a magical alchemy had occured, not unlike that of Ritz Crackers in Mock Apple Pie, that made this stew close enough to the real thing that those eating it doubted my assertion that it in fact contained no green chile at all.
Which is nice, but if I had my way I’d be here.
