New Mexican Recipes (Santa Fe, Farmington, Bloomfield: transfer, buying, live in)

[Towanda]

greatdanes:

I made your green chile stew recipe last night. It was outstanding. THANKS!

I had to use canned green chilies, so when I can use fresh or frozen it will be even better.

[greatdanes]

I should probably stay close to the receipe pages, I don't seem to be doing real well on some of the other threads I've entered into.

[Towanda]

uh oh ..... have you been stirring the pot elsewhere? LOL!!

[Crackerjack]

Originally Posted by Cathy4017

My two favorite NM green varieties are NuMex 6-4 and Sandía.

For ground red, Chimayó and the aforementioned.

Which varieties do you like??

Cathy, I am not a chile cheechako, but am not a mastered chilehead either. I just have to have my daily chile-fix like most New Mexicans. I love the Sandias around a 3. I use them for many things. I love the good old Big Jims. Rio Grandes are nice. Anaheims too. I like piquin (an 8) for hotter flavors. Jalapeno and Serranos, usually somewhat hot like a 5/6, are good as you know. Cayennes are hot, so I use sparingly like habaneros, a 10 and the hottest rating there is! Thais are hot too. I think a 9. I use sparingly too. I love all peppers! I can't think of any one favorite as they all are! YUM!

You can roast them at home. I think the best is roasted the way they do in NM, but if you can't, put your oven on broil, place your peppers to be roasted out on a baking sheet and make sure you cut a small slit, to let the steam out, in each one or they can blow up! Put in the oven and broil until evenly roasted. I place mine in a tupperware sealed container and let them steam for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove and freeze in a plastic ziplock bag. You can easily remove the skins, if you wish, by thawing them and peeling it off.

My mom used to have a ristra of piquins on the front door for Christmas, like a wreath in other states, but made with piquins. Again, shows how different NM is to other places! I know you New Mexicans know this, but for Christmas, luminaries are popular. That is paper bags with candles in it. They make safer fake ones that look like the old method. You line them up along a wall or your sidewalks or drive. If you use the old way, you put a rock in each bag to prevent it from blowing off. You can punch little holes with designs in each bag and the light shows through the holes.

[Cathy4017]

Yep, I used to get 20-40 lbs every year from Hatch....and roasted them on a stovetop cast iron thingie.....took me forever, but they surely were good!! You only forget to poke a hole once, when one explodes...and seeds blow all over the place, LOL!!!

I leave the skin on for freezer storage. They last better that way...I found a package at the back of the freezer from 2001.....vacuum-sealed. They were a little mushy, but not bad!!!

It is a lot more convenient to have them roasted for you, which I will do next year, rather than doing it myself, but the downside to that is that they are too cooked. I like mine just barely charred enough to get the skin to slip off like a glove. The chile is fresher and more crisp that way.

I even like them sliced up raw in salads and stir-fried with chicken and onions...mmmmm.

The best ones are those you've grown yourself!!! I would go out to the garden, clip 3 NuMex 6-4s/Sandias.....roast them immediately....and have an omelet.

Now I'm getting hungry!!!! I love to experiment with different varieties every season. The Big Jims are neat except for one thing....the gene that regulates the heat was never fixed, so you never know whether or not you're going to get a mild one....or one that can knock your head off.

I love all chiles, too...and I just hope I can get a wild chiltepin bush started in New Mexico! I just picked my last batch here, and cut my bush back until next season.

The chile ristras (whether piquin, de árbol or some variety of New Mexican), are all neat!!

[Crackerjack]

Wow Cathy, you have a wild chiltepin bush? How neat! All the ones I have eaten from a chiltepin bush were super hot! Is that the case with yours? I love peppers in my omelets too! Yes, I notice that about Big Jims. You can get some hotter and some not. I don't like my chiles over roasted either. I like a gentle even roasting. I tried growing some chiles here in Phoenix, but it was so hot they just withered away. They love warm heat, but more like NM heat, not 120 degree heat.

[Cathy4017]

CJ:

Yep, I have one native chiltepin bush that I dug up at home.....I brought back 5, but only one survived. Those are the PICKIEST, most temperamental things I ever saw, LOL!!!! It took a year to get established, produced a little the second year...and now, the third year, I had a wonderful crop. The pods are drying now, and I'll have my yearly supply. They are hot, and are my favorite chile. There is a variety that grows natively in AZ, so you should be able to get them easily or grow one yourself, as long as you have it under something that acts as a "nurse" plant! Mine is under an overhang, against a south wall. I am taking seeds with me in hopes of getting a couple started in northern NM if I end up moving. They do very well in containers also....I had a couple that lasted 10 years....one in the ground and one in a 5-gallon bucket!

I hear you on the heat....and that's why I used row covers until the plants were well-established. It did get up to around 115 at times. It will be interesting to see what grows in northern NM......I plan on having a garden of some kind!

[Crackerjack]

Cathy, thanks for sharing! I would try again to grow them in a more sheltered area, but since I plan on moving in May of next year, I guess I will wait. I'd love to have a greenhouse and grow some though! Farmington gets hot in the summer, so you should be able to grow some, should you move there. It gets considerably hotter than the surrounding area and really in northern NM, Farmington in the queen of hot in summer, but not the hot hot of southern NM or Arizona.

[Cathy4017]

Farmington in the queen of hot in summer...

I wasn't really crazy about that, but I did track temps over the summer this year just for the heck of it. They do very definitely have a summer, but their record high is 95. They were often cooler than ABQ/LC/points south/WT....and very often stayed around 90 to the high 80s. Nights tended to cool off more than we do here, too, so that's a big plus.

That's better than 105-115 that we got here. Our record high is somewhere around 120.

Farmington also cools off in the fall a lot more than WT. They had their first freeze over a month before we did. The hot doesn't seem to last forever like it does in Texas.

Having said all that, I have a feeling I will most likely end up in Durango in a few years, though. When I make my trip up there, I may very well look there also. But I have a feeling that it's just really unaffordable right now.

[Crackerjack]

Cathy, yes, that is one great thing about the Four Corners. Even though the summers are hot in Farmington, the nights are great. The heat isn't anything like West Texas either. I know quite a few people who move in between Durango and Farmington, so they can go to either place pretty quick and have the best of both worlds. Places like Dutchman's Hill, Cedar Hill, or over near La Plata and Red Mesa. These are all tiny towns, but you can get to work in one city and easily go and shop, or whatever in the other. They are inexpensive places to live as well. Just one idea. My dad recently moved from Farmington to Durango and loves Durango. Farmington's homes are really rising to where there isn't a lot of difference between the two. Farmington's rent is a little cheaper though than Durango, but not by much.