06.10.09
Green Chile: The State Condiment of New Mexico?
I call green chile New Mexico’s catsup. It’s on everything, largely because it’s good on everything and gives much of New Mexico’s cuisine its own brand of warm heat, not to mention its ability to stay on the tongue long after the food is consumed.
On the Scoville scale, the Richter scale of the pepper world, the typical New Mexico green chile is not as hot as a jalapeño, but hotter than, say, the pepperoncini you get in a a salad at the Olive Garden.
You’ll find green chile on cheeseburgers, eggs and bacon wrapped in a tortilla, pizza, and a recent Subway concoction called the Albuquerque Turkey. It also plays a major role in regional favorites like posole, a stew made with hominy-style corn kernels blown up to Stonehenge size, and stuffed sopaipillas. Sopaipillas are to bread what cappuccino froth is to milk. It’s mostly air. Fill the air pockets with ground beef, green chile and beans, and you have a stuffed sopaipilla.
Green chile is the un-ripe version of the red chiles that are bundled into the ristra, the unofficial symbol of New Mexico, which looks like a giant bunch of elongated grapes. Officially, chile and beans are the Official State Vegetables, and the Official State Question (look it up!) is “red or green?” (With New Mexico’s recent voting record, it could just as easily be “blue or red?”). New Mexico also has a State Bolo Tie and a State Guitar, so, why aren’t sopaipillas the State Bread and why isn’t the ristra a State Anything? Uh…Red or green?
Green chile has a down-to-earth flavor that complements most New Mexico cuisine, which is unapologetically home-style, once you get outside of Santa Fe, the City Different, where, many say, the Rich Pretentious go to live after finding themselves in Sedona. Green chile tastes like simple hot and pepper. Red, on the other hand, is like Arrogant Bastard ale. It stands on your tongue in muddy shoes and doesn’t care one whit whether you like it.
Green chile stew is a good way to introduce green chile. It’s just a typical all-American stew, but with green chile added. You’ll notice the green chile before you taste it. That burn, more than any roadside billboard, says, “Welcome to New Mexico!” It’s not a law that you have to like peppers to live in New Mexico, but outside of the Los Angeles suburb of Albuquerque, it’s certainly not a bad idea.
