Southwest Perfume

If you know anything about the Southwest, especially New Mexico, you know I’m talking chiles. Red or Green is the state’s motto. I have, as told before, started experimenting with red and green chile: powdered red…dried green. I was given some ground deep red chile by a friend from last year’s crop; she said that when this year’s bounty came in to throw that “old stuff” away. Later, I bought some ground red of a lighter color, but hotter taste, at the farmer’s market and a bag of dried green pods.

Now, though…now it’s chile harvest time. That means the perfume of roasting green chiles pervades the streets and squares of New Mexico towns anywhere within hailing distance of a chile patch, including Silver City. My first acquaintance with roasting green chiles was at the Silver City Co-op, a full roaster turning on the street corner, while boxes of fresh pods waited their turn to the flames. I had my choice – green mild or green hot. Since I’m wading into this gastronomic pool slowly, I opted for mild. Went inside and found a bag of about 2 ½ lbs for 79 cents/lb. I froze two small boxes and kept a third in the fridge. Figured I was good for awhile. And so I was. Until Nick went to Albuquerque for a couple of days and stopped in Hatch, NM on his way home. Hatch is the epicenter of chile – for the world, to hear them tell it. And harvest is the time the Hatch farmers shine. I would have loved to be with Nick as he went from store to roadside stand to truck tailgate. He brought home 3 types of ground chile: 2 different reds and, unusually, ground green chile. But most aromatically, he brought home ½ bag of freshly roasted green. In Hatch, a half bag is the smallest they will sell. A half bag weighs over 10 pounds!! From my office, I could smell the chile before the garage door was down behind the car. I could smell them before he got them out of the car. And boy, I could smell them the moment he opened the door from the garage to the house. We spent the next 3 hours laying out still-hot green chile pods on cookie sheets and putting them in the freezer. Well – I spent 3 hours doing that. Nick spent 3 hours stripping the roasted skins off and piling up a store to make soup the next day. And for every pod he stripped and put in the bowl, he stripped a pod and popped it in his mouth. I grew up around summer berry crops – one blackberry in the bowl and one in the mouth – till my mouth was stained. I would never have dreamed of eating chile pods the same way!

The perfume! I don’t know how to describe it. Definitely not bell peppers; intense; slightly burnt; very slightly sweet; like nothing I’ve smelled before. The house still smelled for a day afterwards; we even slept with green chile staining the air currents in the bedroom. Now that the smell of the roasted green chiles no longer lingers in the kitchen, I’ve noticed another perfume. More subtle, but pungent. Earthy; warm; spicy; makes me sneeze if I stand near over-long. The 3 bags of ground chile he brought still sit on the counter. I tracked the source to those bags. Aware now, I smell the earthiness and spice every time I go into the kitchen and find myself leaning over the bags to gather in more. Now I understand why Skee said to throw out the “old stuff.” By taste and by aroma, there is no comparison between last season’s and the new season’s harvests. But it’s rather hard to tell for sure. Last night I tried to do some taste testing to differentiate between this one and that, this year’s and last, and to start thinking how to use each. Just a touch of a damp finger tip transferring a slight dusting of red fire from bag to tongue. The first time, I got flavor with the fire. But you know the saying: “a slow burn.” After 3 such tips, I could only tell hot from hotter. I guess the distinctions and preferences will come on the basis of marriage to chicken, fish, vegetables etc.

I am also now the proud owner of 5 chile cookbooks. One is an old classic – one of those that you can tell the favorite recipes because the pages are stained. Two I picked up at the Albuquerque airport my last trip through. One a present for Nick’s birthday. And finally, the Hatch Chile Festival Official Cookbook, with the winning recipes for red and green for the last 5 years. Great reading and great ideas for my own experiments.

This is fun. Learning and trying – stretching my palette beyond its regional biases. And here’s what I find truly interesting, now that my lingo includes ‘red or green’: the DC region has a world-encompassing restaurant scene. Within a few blocks in Bethesda, there are 200 restaurants, representing foods from most regions and countries of the world. But except for one restaurant I remember at the corner of K and 19th Streets, NW which specialized in rattlesnake, I don’t know of one true Southwestern – not TexMex – but Mexican-Indian-Spanish-ranch-influenced eatery. So – Chicken grilled with green-chile chutney and lime, anyone?

20% Chance of Rain

A new weather term – or a new interpretation of a familiar weather term. I didn’t make this up – I think I heard it on NPR’s local affiliate. 20% chance does not mean that the entire area has a 20% chance of getting rainfall. Nope. That would be too normal for the likes of the Land of Enchantment :^] Remind me to explain the ‘approximate-ness’ of Silver City, a wonderful and accurate concept introduced by a friend and long-time resident here. What the weather term means is that 20% of the entire area will probably get rain. Let me say that a different way, in case the subtleties escape. A cloud here and a thunderhead there and a gray mass over there, all separated by brilliant blue clear sky, makes up 20% of the sky that bears rain. If all of that rain that starts up there actually hits the ground – and a good measure does not – then you have 20% of the (ground) area getting rained upon. So a 20% chance of rain! Makes sense, no?

We have been observing this phenomenon known as rain. This is supposed to be monsoon season. But it is, from what we can gather, very dry with much below-normal rains. At least in Silver City. Here’s where the 20% chance comes into play. Several days in the last couple of weeks, we have started the day with beautiful clear skies holding up a few puffy clouds. By late afternoon or early evening, about the time we walk Nutmeg, clouds virtually surround Silver City’s clear blue ceiling. It’s raining down in the desert, or it’s raining up over the Gila. You can see the cloud patches and bands with the rain falling. But not here. We did get a good night’s rain late last week. And yesterday, I think it was, we got up to heavy overcast – a very gray morning. I thought: today’s the day – we’re going to get some good rain today. Umm, no…it rained to the east and it rained to the south, and maybe a little in between, but no rain here. And by mid-afternoon – sunny, bright, warm, blue. There may be 20% rain, but we’re in the 80% that’s dry.

And that means, warm. Well, hot. For here, hot. Only during the day, but flat-sunlight-hot-to-the-touch hot – low to mid 90s. Well, ok, then, not hot by Tucson or Phoenix standards, or El Paso or central Texas hot, but still… I am having to learn to chase the sun around the house, but with a different intent than my whole life’s training which was: Open the window for breeze and the curtains or shade for sun – let the light pour in – hate a dark room – feels like a cave. That does not work here. After more than one argument with my more-desert-savvy husband and the experience of heat radiating off the window glass, I am learning. Chase the sun to lower the shades and close those windows. Open the ones – windows and shades – in the rooms the sun has just abandoned. Get used to caves because it’s only for a couple of hours. And not necessary on an overcast day. But we haven’t turned on the ac yet! Have had to suffer through a few 80° afternoons in the house, but not enough to justify the electricity or the chill in the air the rest of the time. We have ceiling fans in most of the rooms. That’s been all that we have needed during the day. Don’t forget to turn the fans off at night or we wake up over-cool when the outside temp drops below 60°. This isn’t even an efficient house. Wait until we build our ‘green’ house with passive solar and passive cooling.

I’ve gotten a number of notes back about my last discourse on armed men walking the neighborhood prepared to fend off potentially hostile canines. Where I don’t see the usefulness of a nine iron, sand wedge or whatever as a protection against a loose dog, others would consider it a psychological reassurance. One good and loyal friend sent me a story about a lion whisperer (ok, her term) she saw on a documentary. His job? Carry a big stick and make loud noises to impress an aggressive pride of lions – Big-Cat aversion therapy, I guess. Been known to work with bears. The cats were aggressing the tourists at a safari location in an African country. He was charged with changing their behavior. He was apparently so successful that he was able, eventually, to walk up and cut a chunk of meat from the pride’s recent kill without the lions challenging him. Fine if you like wildebeest pot roast complete with toothy tenderizing. Truth in advertising, even for lion whisperers – the dude, his big stick and big mouth were backed up by big guns – just in case aversion therapy failed. I definitely don’t think that’s what these golf-club guys are thinking. But thanks, Ivia – every story deserves a better one back.
We have an fully signed contract now on the piece of land we’re buying. It took a few days to get everyone inked together. Now we’ll apply for the financing and I expect we’re off and planning. Talked with the architect yesterday and he’ll make a site visit to start translating dreams to dirt. Here’s a picture of our official greeter. Ain’t he cute?