Top Ten #49

1.  NC BBQ pilgrimage

2.  The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), dir. Cianfrance



3.  Kurt Vile, Wakin on a Pretty Daze (Matador)



4.  Turner country hams, bacon, and ham sandwiches, Fulks Run, VA + Wade's Mill cornmeal & grits, Raphine, VA

5.  The Central Park Five (2012), dir. Burns, Burns, and McMahon

6.  earthen oven building class, Yestermorrow Design/Build School, Waitsfield, VT



7.  real VA & NC peanuts

8.  Tabloid (2010), dir. Morris



9.  v/a, Delta Swamp Rock, vol. 2 (Soul Jazz)

10.  Asheville, NC + Black Mountain, NC

aj

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

7 is my lucky number

Yesterday, we received a message from Joanna at Nylon Diner informing us that we'd been tagged for a meme. I promptly made my way to Nylon Diner to find out what the details were and I found the following list of instructions:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I decided to go the "random" route, and though the rules don't specify, I kept things food-related. I also made a point of including a recipe. (You know how we do here at AEB.)

Here goes:

1. Many years ago now I spent about a month in Turkey, a trip that culminated in a 1-week stay in Istanbul. I found Istanbul completely enchanting, but the strangest, most fascinating night that I spent there culminated with dinner at a taverna on a bustling little street--not much more than an alleyway, really--known as the Nevizade Sokak. Back then the street was lined on both sides with restaurant after restaurant--all of them open to the elements on this particular night and all of them with seating spilling out onto the street, leaving only a very narrow passageway through which to walk by and pick your particular taverna. I guess we got there early in the evening, as things go along the Nevizade Sokak, because the scene was fairly quiet when we arrived, but as the evening rolled on things changed dramatically and pretty soon we were witness to the greatest floor show I've ever witnessed. You see, not only were the restaurants now full, filling the night air with the roar of true festivity, but the passageway cutting through the middle of the Nevizade Sokak had been transformed into an absolutely ungodly procession of vendors, hawkers, hustlers, confidence men, prostitutes, and, yes, tourists--utterly bewildered tourists.* They seemed to be selling just about everything--from iced almonds to bus tickets to shoeshines--but stranger still, the food vendors seemed to be operating in symbiosis with the restaurants. In other words, the restaurant management didn't appear to have any problems with their patrons ordering food from passing vendors, it seemed to be understood that you might want to round out your meal with a kebab from one passer-by, a piece of loukoum from another.

Anyway, towards the end of our meal I ordered a bottle of mineral water--not from a passing mineral water vendor but from our waiter--and the mineral water that was brought to me, quite by coincidence, was a bottle of Kinik brand mineral water. I kept the bottle cap and this is what it looks like today.

fig. a: Kinik sodasi

2. I once had a collection of t-shirts from restaurants that carried either the name "Anthony's" or "Tony's." Most of them came from the Mid-Atlantic, where I lived at the time and where there happened to be quite a number of "Anthony's" and "Tony's" restaurants, many of which sold t-shirts, for some reason. After a while my friends started helping me out with this quest, and occasionally I'd receive a t-shirt from well outside the Mid-Atlantic. This is the only t-shirt that remains from my namesake collection.**

fig. b: Tony's of Hialeah

3. Back in 1994, I was winding my way along Highway 61, en route from Memphis to New Orleans, when just outside of Vicksburg, MS I came across Margaret's Gro. & Mkt., the most fantastic piece of vernacular architecture I've ever encountered. Margaret's was still a grocery store underneath, and Margaret was still helming the operation, but her friend the Rev. H.D. Dennis had spent the better part of the last 10-15 years transforming her humble roadside store into The House of Prayer, using only salvaged materials. I got a full tour of The House of Prayer and its surrounding campus (including the 50-ft Tower of Prayer) from the Reverend himself.

fig. c: Margaret's Gro. & Mkt. and Bible Class, the Rev. H.D. Dennis, architect

Inside, the shelves at Margaret's were a little bare and the interior wasn't as elaborately festooned as the outside (the House of Prayer was still very much a work in progress), but that was more than made up for by the New Ark of the Covenant the Reverend had built (again, out of recycled materials) in full anticipation of the Second Coming.

4. I have a small collection of 1930s Chinese posters. Most of them have nothing to do with food or drink, but there are exceptions.

fig. d: Gande, Price & Co., Ltd.: Wines, Spirits & Cigars: nice punt!

5. In August 2005 Michelle and I spent a couple of weeks in the San Francisco Bay Area. One day, while rummaging through the loot at a 20th century collectibles store in the Mission District, we came upon a bag of vintage 1960s pins bearing all kinds of vintage Flower Power sentiments that had recently been unearthed in a local warehouse. I figured this was about as good a souvenir as I was likely to find in San Francisco, so I bought a few of these pins for myself and for friends, including "SAVE WATER SHOWER WITH A FRIEND" and "STAMP OUT REALITY," but my favorite one was this beauty.

fig. e: or else!

I'm especially fond of wearing it when I take Michelle out for lunch.

6. Recently I rediscovered my very first venture in food publishing. It appeared in Sunnyvale United Soccer Club Presents Our Favorite Recipes, eds. Wilcox, Ledford, Shaha, and McLaughlin, and today, a little worse for wear, it looks like this.

fig. f: chocolate mousse recipe

You gotta start somewhere, right? Anyway, I tried it again recently and it works. Thing is, there's an important ingredient missing. I'm sure it was part of the recipe I submitted to the printers (I swear!), but somehow it didn't make it into the published edition. If you can't read my Mom's handwritten annotation, it reads: "1 package of chocolate chips." You don't have to use chocolate chips, of course. Use 12 oz. of any good, dark chocolate. God knows how many people in Sunnyvale attempted to make this chocolate mousse according to the recipe as it appeared. I shudder to think.

Actually, the other thing that's missing is the source (or did the printers leave that out too?) Gourmet? Bon Appétit? Sunset? Nope. If memory serves, the recipe came from that other font of gastronomic expertise, National Geographic World.

7. My maternal grandfather, Freddy--the eldest of 15--was a chef who got his start as a lumberjack camp cook back when he was still a teenager. He eventually moved to Quebec City and there he began to work in the hotel business. He also met my grandmother, Amabilis, there. My grandmother wasn't a cook by trade, but she came from a line of cooks from Havre St-Pierre who'd worked on ships, and she did have a good mind for business. They met in the hotel trade and that's where they remained. They got married, started a family, and in the early '40s when a business opportunity presented itself in Edmundston, NB--then an important regional center at the junction of Quebec, New Brunswick, and Maine, and the so-called "Gateway to the Maritimes"--they relocated. My grandparents owned and operated the New Royal Hotel for roughly 30 years, during which time it was famous across the region for its banquets. This is what it looked like back in its 1960s glory days.

fig. g: New Royal Hotel, Edmundston, NB

One of my favorite photographs of my grandparents is this one, taken not long after they met in Quebec City.

fig. h: Bilis & Freddy

My grandfather is the one in the middle. Not sure who the woman on the right is, but the doll on the left is my grandmother.

My grandfather being a chef, he tended to do most of the cooking in their household. My grandmother didn't make the widest range of dishes, but what she made she made well. For reasons that I've never fully understood, she never used an oven. She made everything on the stovetop. Even her roasted chicken. It took her a while, but she was patient. My Mom swears it's the best chicken she's ever had.

Today, Epiphany, is my grandmother's birthday. She would have been 100.

And now, passing the torch:

1. My Favourite Things
2. Tiny Banquet Committee
3. You Can't Make Everything From Scratch...
4. Bits and Bytes From Elsewhere
5. Saint Sustenance
6. Word Things
7. The Good Stuff

aj

* This scene apparently originated in the nearby Çiçek Pasaji--the famed Flower Passage--which, by the 1960s, had become a vision worthy of Aragon's Le paysan de Paris.

** Truth be told, my favorite of these was a baby blue "Anthony's Chicken & Ribs" t-shirt that I wore for about a decade. For a while I also owned a matching "NO PARKING Anthony's Chicken & Ribs VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED" sign that someone, um, acquired on my behalf. I didn't keep the sign nearly as long as I kept the t-shirt.