The Green Chile Variations, pt. 2, rev. ed.

 fig. a:  garden-fresh chiles

So, like I was saying...

There was this initiation in the majesty and the mystery of New Mexico-style green chile that occurred sometime in the 1990s in Albuquerque and environs.  This initiation turned into something of an obsession--a Green Chile Madness--albeit one that lay mostly dormant for years afterwards.  Then there was a period of rediscovery that began a few years ago, and that resulted in the rekindling of this obsession.  Things reached a fevered pitch sometime this past summer, not long after a fateful encounter with a green chile pork burrito in Billings, Montana, of all places.  When it comes to green chile pork--the genuine article--you learn to not ask too many questions.  You learn to just accept, and appreciate.

By the time the height of summer hit, we were roasting green chiles over open flames at every occasion.  We made a lot of green chile stew, and, in an homage to both Billings and Albuquerque, we filled quite a number of burritos with that stew.  But we also made a whole lot of chunky green chile sauce that we used for a wide variety of purposes:  from dressing scrambled and fried eggs in the morning, to smothering a pile of nacho chips, to adorning our AEB green chile cheeseburger.  Michelle cried real tears of joy the first time we made these.  She cried real tears of grief about eight seconds later when she'd made her first AEB green chile cheeseburger vanish into thin air.  Luckily for her, we had the means to make more, and that's exactly what we did.

 fig. b:  come to mama!

AEB Green Chile Cheeseburger 

1 lb freshly ground beef chuck
AEB green chile sauce*
cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese
smoky bacon
beefsteak tomato slices (in season)
ripe avocado slices
lettuce (optional)
mayonnaise (optional) 

Divide the meat into three portions.  Form into patties making sure that you've salted and peppered the meat sufficiently and that you don't overwork the meat.   

Fry in a pan (preferably with your leftover bacon drippings) to desired doneness, making sure to grace with sliced cheese for the last minute of cooking time.  Place patties on buns and dress with the remaining ingredients.  You might think that topping the burgers with guacamole would be even tastier than topping them with avocado slices, but, in our humble opinion, you'd be wrong:  the guacamole just competes with the green chile sauce, and the green chile sauce is already bursting with flavour. Sometimes less is more.

Place the top half of each bun on top.  Try your damnedest to hold that burger together as you take a chomp.  This may very well be the messiest burger you've ever eaten.  It will likely also be the very best. 

Makes three 1/3-pound Green Chile Cheeseburgers.  Serves 1-3.

These burgers are unreal, but don't forget about those eggs and those nachos.  Actually, you'll want to put that green chile sauce on just about everything when you have a batch around.  That's when you'll know the Green Chile Madness has set in.

END OF PART TWO

aj

* I haven't had the chance to turn the AEB green chile sauce into an actual recipe, but I can give you some pointers.

You'll need the following:

onion
vegetable oil or lard
garlic
cumin seeds
roasted green chiles
tomatillos (optional)
chicken broth
masa harina (optional)
salt and pepper

And basically, you'll have to do the following.  Sauté your onions until they are nice and soft.  Add your chopped garlic and some toasted and ground cumin seeds.  Add your roasted green chiles, some tomatillos, if you're using them, and your chicken broth.  Be judicious with your use of chicken broth.  You don't want to add too much, but the idea here is to add enough that you can cook your sauce down, uncovered, reducing it into a thing of beauty.  This shouldn't take all that long.  No more than about half an hour, if you've added the right proportion of broth.  Add a sprinkle of masa harina towards the end of this process if you'd like to thicken your sauce further and give it a bit of depth.  The goal here is to create a fairly thick, chunky sauce that will actually be appropriate for dressing a burger.  It ought to taste like heaven, too.

You'll notice that the ingredients and the method here are essentially just a variation on the Green Chile Stew recipe from Part One.

Others opt for a simpler approach to the green chile cheeseburger.  At the end of their Saveur piece on chile-hunting across New Mexico, Jane and Michael Stern included a recipe for a prototype that they picked up from a chef in Santa Fe.  There, instead of creating an actual green chile sauce, they spiced up the burger patties, then topped them with roasted New Mexico chiles that had been roughly chopped.

Either way, you can hardly go wrong.  In fact, you can only go right.

The Green Chile Variations, pt. 1

 fig. a:  garden-fresh chiles

If I'm totally honest, it all started sometime in the early '90s (!?!), when I took a road trip from Washington, D.C. to the Southwest and back.  Albuquerque was a primary destination, and I spent about a week in New Mexico with good friends, checking out the town, exploring the region, and sampling the local specialties.  That was when I first experienced Green Chile Madness.  Green chile sauces and stews were everywhere, and they were generally very good, and sometimes even phenomenal.  I was particularly enamoured of those green chile salsas and sauces and the way they adorned everything from nachos, to cheese fries, to egg dishes, home fries, and cheeseburgers, taking everything they touched to a higher level.  I quite literally couldn't get enough.

I've thought about New Mexico a lot ever since, and told many a soul about Green Chile Madness, but I've never been back.  And while I'm usually pretty adept at figuring out the recipes for prized dishes and replicating them in my home kitchen, for some reason, when it came to Chile Verde, I let it slip into what Calvin Trillin calls the Register of Frustration and Deprivation, a catalogue of favourite dishes that "rarely seem to be served outside their territory of origin."

About two years ago, however, I set about ushering Green Chile back into my life.  It started with a recipe for Green Chile Stew that appeared in David Tanis' A Platter of Figs And Other Recipes.  Tanis lived in New Mexico for a spell, so he knows his stuff, and he describes Green Chile Madness thusly:

In northern New Mexico, green chile stew is legendary.  Everybody makes it, everybody eats it, and everybody loves it, even if everybody makes a different version--with or without potatoes, or tomatoes, or cumin, or tomatillos, or cilantro, but never without a healthy amount of green chile.

Evidently he caught the bug bad--he claims to have traveled "with a handful of fresh chiles in [his] pocket" ever since, as a form of "culinary insurance" (for perking up bland dishes in chile-deprived regions of the world).

These days, you can find green chile stews and sauces across New Mexico at any time of year--it was April when I experienced my Green Chile Revelation.  But the chile harvest, as Tanis explains, is in the fall.  It's at this time of year that you find, people buying big bags of them, then lining up "to have them roasted by entrepreneurial chile roasters who set up in supermarket parking lots or at roadside stands."  It's the grilling of the green chiles that really makes the difference--it's that smokiness and that caramelization that you get from roasting them over an open fire that takes things to a higher level.

Anyway, Tanis' Green Chile Stew was probably the very first thing I made out of A Platter of Figs--I had very high hopes and I wasn't disappointed.

 fig. b:  green chile stew 1

Green Chile Stew 

5 pounds well-marbled boneless pork butt, cut into 2-inch cubes
salt and pepper
2 tbsp vegetable oil or lard
2 large onions, finely diced
4 to 6 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and finely ground
1/2 cup chopped tomatoes, fresh or canned
6 large carrots, peeled and chunked
1 cup chopped roasted green chiles*
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
8 cups water or chicken broth
3 lbs russet potatoes, peeled and cut into large dice
chopped cilantro
hot corn or flour tortillas 

Season the pork with salt and pepper.  Heat the oil or lard in a large Dutch oven or other heavy-bottomed pot.  Add the meat, in several batches, without crowding, and brown it lightly.  Transfer to a platter or tray. 

Add the onions to the pot and brown them.  Add the garlic, cumin, tomatoes, carrots, and green chiles, then sprinkle the flour over and stir.  Salt the mixture, then return the browned meat to the pot and stir well.  Cover with the water or broth and bring to a boil. 

Cover the pot, turn the heat to low, and simmer gently for an hour. 

Taste the broth and adjust it, adding salt or more green chile as necessary.  The broth should be well seasoned and fairly spicy.  Add the potatoes and continue cooking for 30 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft and the meat is quite tender.  Skim any fat from the surface of the broth. 

Let the stew rest for an hour or more.  Refrigerate overnight if desired (this allows the flavours to meld even more). 

To serve, reheat the stew and ladle into warmed bowls.  Sprinkle with chopped cilantro and accompany with hot tortillas. 

Serves 8 to 10. 

* Tanis notes that it takes about 12 large fresh chiles to produce 1 cup of chopped roasted chiles.  It's preferable to grill them over an open fire, but you can also blacken them under the broiler or directly over a gas burner, in a pinch.

Now, this makes for an excellent stew, and, like I said, I wasn't disappointed in the least.  But as Tanis mentioned above, one of the things about Green Chile Madness is that "everybody makes a different version."  Over the last couple of years, I've continued to follow the guidelines of Tanis' recipe, but I've come up with my own take on Green Chile Stew.

• For one thing, we're hard pressed to find New Mexico green chiles here in the Montreal region, so I've had to improvise with the chiles.  I tend to use a mix of green chiles, one that includes everything from Poblanos, Anaheims, and Padróns, to Serranos, Jalapeños, and Cubanelles.  The larger, milder ones (the Poblanos, Anaheims, and Cubanelles) I grill over an open fire.  The hotter ones I sauté with the onions, after they've been browned
• I've taken to replacing the tomatoes with tomatillos, especially around this time of year, when you can actually find lovely, local tomatillos here in Montreal (try the Birri Brothers stand at Jean-Talon Market).  I also use quite a bit more than half a cup.  The tomatillos give the stew tartness, additional sweetness, and a wonderful mouthfeel.
• I always use chicken broth and not water.
• I've taken to omitting the potatoes, which I find distract from the green chiles.
• And I always replace the all-purpose flour with masa harina, which adds to the warmth of the dish.

Tanis prefers his Green Chile Stew "in a bowl, with warm, thick corn tortillas on the side," but it's also pretty great with good tortilla chips (see below), and it's great in a burrito.

 fig. c:  green chile stew 2

END OF PART ONE

aj