A Love Affair with New Mexican Green Chile (plus a recipe!)
15 Jan 2014
The first time I went to New Mexico, almost three years ago, I fell in love. With a boy. This boy, in fact.
Here he is eating a sandwich. Isn’t he cute? (Photo cred: Zoe Filloux)
But I also fell in love with the place. As we drove away away from Albuquerque on our way north to the mountains, I could feel myself falling hard—for the red desert rock, for the aridity, for new feeling of thin, high-altitude air filling my lungs. I was still an East Coast girl back then. A Midwest girl. An Ohio girl. The kind of girl who could not, for the life of her, fathom a landscape that was not filled with either trees or corn. And yet, here I was, driving through a canyon dotted with scraggly sage brush. I applied some chapstick. And then I applied some more. I could feel my lips and skin shriveling up from the utter lack of humidity. No humidity! What is this place? I wondered if maybe I was turning into a lizard. So I sat in the passenger seat of his car, trying to process a landscape that was so foreign to me it might as well have been Mars and slathering chapstick all over my face like a crazy person. After all, I had a feeling he might kiss me.
I only spent three days in New Mexico on that first trip, but in those three days I went swimming in the Rio Grande, walked across the Gorge Bridge, and yes, if you must ask, did a fair amount of kissing. But there was one more thing, one thing that changed everything: I ate green chile.
You say, I’ve had green chile before, it comes in cans, what’s the big deal?
But that’s where you’re wrong…that chopped green mush you buy in your grocery story is not. real. green. chile. You’ve been living a lie. Sorry. End of cuento.
Real green chile is roasted in huge steel-wire drums until the skin blackens and falls off leaving succulent, flavorful flesh. This flesh is green and orange and red and every hue in between. It is spicy but not too spicy and it tastes like sunshine and desert wind and piñon trees and basically everything that is good in the world. Watch a few seconds of this video to understand the roasting process:
In New Mexico, green chile goes in everything. Green chile tamales, green chile enchiladas, green chile chicken stew, green chile cornbread, green chile on apple pie (don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it). The state question is “red or green?” And I recommend green. Or Christmas, which is both red and green chile slathered all over your burritos or enchiladas. Why did it take me until age 20 to figure out that this is where I belong?
Once a New Mexican, always a New Mexican. (And I consider myself an honorary New Mexican.) In California, our freezer was filled with plastic tubs of frozen green chile that we had driven across three states wrapped up in a sleeping bag to keep them from unthawing. This is love. I flew home to Ohio with a plastic bag of frozen green chile wrapped up in bubble wrap. Even the TSA knew better than to mess with my green chile. At college in Vermont, my friend Molly, a Santa Fe native, would occasionally bring out long-hoarded cans of Hatch Green Chile (the only acceptable kind of canned green chile). We’d hide in the corner of the dining hall and spoon it on top of our cafeteria apple pie. This is love.
There is even a bible…just for green chile.
Here’s a recipe from the Green Chile Bible, just in case you ever get a hold of some real New Mexican Green Chiles and don’t know what to do them.
I’m glad I’ve so successfully brainwashed you! Here’s to a lifetime filled with green chile (and maybe some kissing too).
You successfully got me addicted to green chiles without even eating them. Congrats! :)
Mission accomplished!
Alas, the TSA-proof chiles you delivered to Ohio are long gone.
As they should be!
I love, LOVE, LOOOVE this post! You have a wonderful writing style and have me wishing I could find but one lousy green chile here in the wilds of New Hampshire. Alas, I leave knowing it will probably be green mush in a can for this girl. (I’d trade a crappy moose picture for one good green chile.) ;P
Thanks Erin! I dunno, mooses/meese are pretty cool, too.
Being an old-school Mediterranean native, I still associate green chiles with sardines – it was a provincial mix I grew up on (add olive oil and thick bread and the tableau is complete). We had green chiles galore while in Mexico, and they were amazing. Fun post, kudos!
I actually had sardines and green chile on a sandwich today, before I read this comment. But not for mediterranean reasons, more because that was all I could find in the pantry. Still, I feel like we were kinda on the same wavelength.
I just want to echo some earlier comments about your unique writing style. I have always been fond of reading this type of material and I love the way you keep the reader engaged – plus at the end folks get a bonus recipe which is always a great incentive to keep reading!!
Food is always the best incentive. For humans as well as dogs.
Syd, this post got me drooling! I have never tasted chopped green chili but am craving it now! Great post :)
Do it!!! It’s the best!!!
I have lived in NM for 9 years. I came from Idaho. I really didn’t like green or red chile for my first 5 years. After that, I absolutely love it! I can’t believe that it isn’t a staple in more than just New Mexico. I can’t imagine having a burrito without it now.
I can’t believe you swam in the Rio Grande. Must not have been near Albuquerque, it isn’t deep enough near ABQ.
There are great swimming holes in the Rio near Taos! And yes, burritos sans green chile…just not the same!!
Yum! I love chiles, I want to grow my own someday when I’m not lazy. I discovered Panamanian chiles here which I’m obsessed with and have found ways to sneak it in the majority of my cooking. it really gives the flavor a nice kick!
That sounds delicious!
El chile verde es muy adictivo!!! Aunque en lo personal yo prefiero el rojo! :D
En realidad los dos son buenisimos–me encanta el picante asi que estoy muriendo aca en Nuevo Zealand donde no hay NADA que pica, jaja.
Pingback: How to Eat Like A Kiwi: Eight Foods to Try in New ZealandNomadically Inclined
Those chile make me wanted to visit Mexico, thank you for sharing your wonderful experience and discovery.
Hehe. I think the Christmas option isn’t much of a sceert the linked article refers to it in the first couple of lines. But I would tend to agree you can’t go wrong with Christmas.