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?

It Was A Quiet Week in

Silver City. No, really! No pictures, even. After weekends of Blues Festival, Rodeo, trip to Tucson, this was a quiet week. Allowing me to collect a few small observations to tag in my memory. Downtown Silver City on Saturday, after a meditation service, we did what people enjoy doing in small towns…

• We went into Dianne’s for freshly-baked bread – whole wheat molasses flaxseed, in this instance. I usually get either the cinnamon raisin or cranberry walnut for breakfast toast, but this week the cinnamon raisin didn’t come out well and the cranberry walnut doesn’t come out at all until Sunday. Nick got a slice of house pizza – 1 ½ inches thick, bready “crust,” piled with vegetables – at 10:30 am.
  
• We walked down to Javalina for coffee, but decided against sitting in the sun in the Adirondack chairs on the sidewalk in favor of walking back up to the Farmer’s Market before they closed.
  
• Nick stopped back up at the car for something, while I went on to the market. This market doesn’t have fruits and vegetables – not yet, anyway – but there was a couple from Hatch, NM. Hatch is the self-proclaimed Chile Capital of the World. Rightly so, and a wonderful little town; we drove through there down from Albuquerque coming to Silver a couple of years ago. Do you have any idea how many types of chile peppers there are?
  
• I bought ground MILD red chile pepper and a bag of dried green chile peppers. You need to know that the state motto is: “Red or Green?” Added those to my container of hot red chile (ground) given me by Skee and my locally-grown ground Chipotle purchased at the hippie store (the Food Coop). I hope to learn to cook appropriately with these colors-flavors-heats. Am already experimenting a little with hot chile and chipotle on grilled chicken wings. Pretty good! Better than, well maybe not, but differently-good than my famous grilled wings back in MD. Now curious about whether there’s such a thing as Southwestern Spaghetti Sauce.
  
• Also bought, from the same Hatch couple, a bag of paper-shell pecans. Pecans is one (bad English, I know, but logical in this case) of the big cash crops of NM. These are smaller than the pecans, also paper-shell, grown by my grandfather and sent in large boxes to my mom when I was growing up. I think I bought them in-shell as much in recollection as anything. Funny, though, that I always just hated having to shell them as a kid; never could get those nuts out in whole halves.
  
• Nick joined me, and as we walked down the row of vendors, we were greeted by an acquaintance we met at several WILL courses (Western Institute of Lifelong Learning). As I’ve observed before, there is a core of people that attend different courses through WILL, and you see them time and again. But it was nice to be hailed by a new friend. We chatted for some little time, and then went along our way.
  
• We went into a “mall” of antique and collectible vendors that we’ve not visited before, and wandered around a bit. Neither Nick nor I are inveterate shoppers, but we do like to peruse, occasionally, the unusual and unexpected. And we found a coffee table that Nick liked a lot and I liked ok; it was hand-carved in Mexico, appeared to have some age, made of oak, I think, and was interesting in its details. It was priced reasonably, and since we can always use an occasional table here or in a new house, we bought it.
  
• Heading back to our car, to go ‘round and pick up the table, we were hailed again by a couple we’ve met and of whom we have become fond. Fortuitously so. Saturday happened to be Nick’s birthday AND the birthday of another friend mutual to us and the couple just encountered. We had planned to get the birthday babies together later at Isaac’s and had left messages for this couple to join us. And here they were, with a ready answer and a free evening.
  
• After a little time at home to walk and feed Nutmeg, blow the dust off things a bit – a lick-and-a-promise, as my mother used to say -- and position the new table, we went back down to town and settled into Isaac’s front window seating. Eventually, all six of us were there, and the toasts (beer or soda) were raised in health, birthday cards were passed, and wishes well-wished. Because I had been carrying around my bag of green AND red chiles, our friends took advantage to give Nick a recipe book of New Mexico cooking.
  
  I have to tell you that, on the heels of Saturday, I feel as though we are becoming part of a community. Feels good.
  
  And the icing? I had to deal with some computer problems today, so took the day off. I chose today in part because I was invited by another new friend (but connected to the co-birthday-celebrant) to lunch “with the girls” so that I could begin to meet and extend my connections in the community. What a pleasure to sit and be part of a circle of companionship.
  
  Wishing you fair Saturdays and warm friendships, ss