Green Chile Bounty
September 06, 2007
The labor day holiday, while an excellent homage to the common man, is also the peak of the green chile roasting season. For those obsessed with the recent seasonal food craze, there is no other season more perfect than late August and early September - during this delicate 4-6 week period, the green chile harvest begins and quickly ends in the smoke of open pit grill fires or cylindrical roasters throughout the southwest.
Green chile is consumed by the bushel in my family, and I couldn’t wait to get mine this year with my mom. For my boyfriend, this was the first time he’d ever had to prepare green chile for freezing, and some explanation was required, which I give you here.
First, what are green chiles? Why they are the most deliciously edible member of the nightshade family of course! Oddly, many of the new world’s foods that are a part of the staple diet in Mexican homes is from the nightshade family: potatoes, chiles, and the famous tomato (of which Europeans were very suspicious knowing that the nightshade is also lethal in some strains). What makes chile so special is the capsicum - a chemical that encapsulates the seeds and forms pockets on the inside of the chile giving the fruit its intense or not-so-intense heat. Chiles come in many shapes, sizes, colors, and levels of sweet (i.e. a bell pepper), to practically lethal (i.e. habanero). The chile consumed by so many Mexicans of the southwest (and I iterate here "of the southwest"), is largely the variety known as Anaheim (which includes sub-varieties like Big Jim, and Pueblo Short).
Diversion: Now, my brother-in-law is from Mexico, but he sure doesn’t eat GREEN chile - that is because for some strange anthropological reason I don’t know, the Mexicanos and Indios of the southwest liked to work twice as hard as their southern counterparts and harvest chiles twice a year as opposed to once a year. Yes, you heard it here first, the red chile you eat in chile con carne, or some other noxious combination peddled in some awful Tex-Mex aisle of the grocery store is really just ripened green chile that has been dried and usually ground up. As you know from my other posts on how to make red chile for enchiladas, I usually re-hydrate whole dried red chiles from a ristra to make red chile. However, in New Mexico and southern Colorado, the folks really like their ground chile molido - the powder variety. I can never give you my recipe for red chile made from the powder though or else my mother would kill me. Sorry.
Okay, enough about red chile, back to green. So basically, the theory is that very dry and tough arid climates are good homes for growing chile. It is a hardy plant that will yield fruit in the most sun beaten conditions - ergo, New Mexico. All that "Hatch" chile talk is really just chile grown in the region of Hatch, New Mexico. It is famous for chile because it had good marketing tactics - but also because the dry and intense heat of that town contributes to the Hatch grown chile’s thick skin and good range of milds to scorching hot. Now, the New Mexico harvest occurs about 1 to 2 weeks prior to the southern Colorado harvest. This is why you can buy into mid-September if you are in Colorado.
Every year, my family ventures south for a big chile roasting shindig. We eat chile throughout the year that has been properly bagged in ziplocks and frozen until eaten. Sometimes, if my Mom and I feel really adventurous, we can our chiles in little glass jars with garlic, tomatoes and onions. It is a lot of work and requires some crazy canning skills like you’ve never seen before - it’s like Texas Ranch House got together with Fifties House on PBS and put Mexicans in it instead of Gabachos.
So here you are - in line with a bunch of other hungry folks, Gabachos and Mexicans alike, waiting for your turn in the roasting line. My mom told me that when she was a girl, there was a big shift in the green chile vendor market - someone got the bright idea of using a metal cylindrical cage to roast the chile in over a natural gas burner. This method permits you to roast a whole bushel at once, in about 20-30 minutes. This practice has remained the standard ever since. So, you order your bushels and varieties (usually labeled simply as Mild, Medium, Hot, Extra Hot, and Ejola!), have it roasted; it gets placed into a large plastic garbage bag and placed in a cardboard box, and you take it home. You carefully open the bag after about 30 minutes (to let the steam settle and not burn your face off), and then you start bagging the chiles in quart size ziplock baggies for freezing all winter long. You also eat about 30 tortillas filled with the peeled chiles, along with some ajo picado and onion, with salt, and try not to rub your eyes. MMMMMMM.
Now I realize you’ve read this far hoping that I will give you a recipe. So I will - a simple one that I will call plainly and perhaps misguidedly a "relish."
You will need:
- 8 to 10 roasted and peeled green chiles
- 4 cloves of crushed and minced garlic
- ½ minced white onion
- kosher salt
- flour tortillas
Step One: Chop up those chiles as fine as you can. I recommend that if the chiles are frozen, thoroughly thaw them first, then peel, de-seed, chop the stem off, and then proceed to chop away in front of the tele.
Step Two: Throw your garlic into the mix and continue chopping. Add the onions, chop chop.
Salt to taste. Eat this on a tortilla and its like you were at the chile harvest all over again. Perfect for eating on top of anything - chips, hotdogs, birthday cake, etc.), and guaranteed to make you cry.
Labels: chili, green chile, harvest, New Mexico, roast, traditional
