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?