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New Mexican Food

I figured I would create a thread for New Mexican food. Please share your delicious New Mexican dishes and recipes here.

I'll start this off with a classic southern NM dish. Chile con carne.

You don't need many ingredients, but good roasted hatch green chile is a requirement. I used about 20 roasted big jims for this. De seed the chiles, remove the stems, then roughly chop them. Cube up your beef, rough chop an onion, and a couple of cloves of garlic. Throw all that goodness in a crock pot for about 5 hours on low, and serve once tender with some refried beans and a tortilla. I also like to serve a fried egg with it, but it's not necessary. Simple and delicious!
 

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Looks good - what is the type of shredded cheese? ... quesadilla cheese? ... I think we've posited that "quesadilla cheese" is monterey here in the past ...
 
Looks like a delicious plate of food.
 
Not to sound like a numpty but what exactly is New Mexico food?.... is it the same as tex-mex?
 
Very different than tex-mex. Almost all dishes in NM use New Mexico green or red chile. New Mexicans are very particular about their chiles, and most dishes are very spicy by most peoples standards. New Mexico was conquered by the Spaniards in the 16th century, so there is an extremely long history of the mix of european and indigenous dishes in the state. Corn or flour tortillas are used for many dishes, as well as beans. It is hard for me to describe the differences between New Mexican food, and northern mexican, or tex-mex. Maybe as more recipes are posted on here, you will see the differences between tex-mex, Mexican, and New Mexican foods are. The most important part of cooking these dishes is having the right ingredients. Subbing jalapeños or standard anaheim peppers for Hatch NM chiles will never taste the way it is supposed to. There is a local NM restaurant chain where I live in NOVA, and they do a decent job of replicating NM dishes, the only problem is that they don't use Hatch NM green chile. Any New Mexican I have ever spoken to that has eaten there has been like "what the hell is this, where is the spice and flavor?".
 
Awesome!
 
Tinnie said:
Looks like a delicious plate of food.
 
Not to sound like a numpty but what exactly is New Mexico food?.... is it the same as tex-mex?
 
TGCM explained it in detail, but just to clarify "New Mexico" is a US state and New Mexican food is of that state. Not "New" Mexican food, like New American.
 
And the hatch chile to New Mexican food is like the holy trinity to Cajun.
 
Tinnie said:
Not to sound like a numpty but what exactly is New Mexico food?
Not to sound like an idiot but what exactly is a numpty. ;) :lol:
 
[SIZE=medium]I think of Green Chile Stew as the quintessential New Mexico dish. Last year I grew Big Jim chiles so I could make it. Like so many great dishes, there are all sorts of variations, and I looked over several recipes to come up with something I would like. That said, the following recipe is based on the one in The Pink Adobe Cookbook.[/SIZE]
 
[SIZE=medium]1+ tablespoon olive oil[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]1 pound boneless pork, cut into 1-inch cubes (I used country style ribs: could be cubed a little smaller than 1 inch)
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 fresh jalapeno seeded and chopped
1/8 cup flour
1 cup chopped fresh tomatoes (2 small tomatoes)
3/4 cup chicken stock
salt
black pepper (I used a few grinds of the pepper mill)
1/4 teaspoon sugar
3/4 lb potatoes, cubed (4 small potatoes)
2 red sinahuisa chiles, deseeded and minced (serrano would work as well)
1 cup roasted, peeled, deseeded and chopped fresh green chilies (about 1/2 lb or approx 8 Big Jim chiles)

Procedure
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]Heat oil in large skillet[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]Add pork and brown[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]Add onion and garlic and stir with meat[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]Add jalapeno[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]Add flour and stir 1–2 minutes[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]Transfer meat mixture to crock pot[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]Add tomatoes to deglaze skillet (use the chicken stock if needed for deglazing or add it to the crock pot)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]Add salt, pepper, sugar, potatoes, and sinahuisa chiles[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]Cook 2 hours then add green chiles. Cook additional 3 hours.[/SIZE]
 
Yeah buddy!!! Green chile stew is definitely one of those essential NM dishes. That recipe looks legit. I would mop all of that stew up with a nice warm tortilla.

CypressHill,

Sí, lo podés buscar por google, sin embargo tenga en mente que hay un monton de recetas tituladas "chilli con carne", o "Chili con carne". El chile con carne verdadero que vos querés es la versión de Nuevo Mexico.
 
The Hot Pepper said:
Awesome!
 
 
TGCM explained it in detail, but just to clarify "New Mexico" is a US state and New Mexican food is of that state. Not "New" Mexican food, like New American.
 
And the hatch chile to New Mexican food is like the holy trinity to Cajun.
 

Not to sound like an idiot but what exactly is a numpty. ;) :lol:
 
:rofl:
 
Trust me i consider myself fortunate not to have made the dictionary yet...
 
simpsons-Definicion-de-Homer-07.jpg

 
But yes thank you that did clear that did clear that up for me. Ive not heard of NM food before...just reading its a combination of Spanish/Mexican/Native American..... does Native American food find its way into much American cuisine?? 
 
In preparation for being snowed in for 3 days, due to the blizzard, I decided to make my favorite snowed in food.

Menudo!

Menudo is served at almost every local restaurant on the weekends in New Mexico. It is a super simple dish to make as far as ingredients, but the most important ingredient is good New Mexican red chile. Fresh, frozen, or dried red NM chiles will all work for this dish.

The only ingredients you need is honeycomb tripe, pigs feet, hominy, garlic, and NM red chiles.

Scrub the tripe with salt and lime juice, then soak it in water for about an hour. Rinse the tripe, then boil it for 10 minutes with the pig feet. Strain and rinse the tripe and pigs feet, then put them back in the pot to begin boiling again. Throw in 3 cloves of crushed garlic. Boil for 3-3.5 hours.

Rehydrate your dry chile pods, spoon some of the pigs feet and tripe broth in a blender and put in the rehydrated chiles. Liquify, then put into a pot and begin to simmer the red chile sauce.

Once the tripe is nice and tender, pour the red chile sauce into the pot with the tripe and pigs feet. Simmer for 30 minutes.

Rinse your hominy very well to get rid of all of the starchiness. This is important, so that the broth stays nice and red, and keeps that nice consistency of not too thick.

Pur the hominy into the pot with the red chile sauce, hominy, and pigs feet. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve it with tortillas or bread, and garnish of onions, dried oregano, and chile powder.

Delicious!
 

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Thegreenchilemonster said:
The only ingredients you need is honeycomb tripe, pigs feet, hominy, garlic, and NM red chiles.
 
 
I often can't source pig's feet here, and I've never seen honeycomb tripe ...
 
I might have to check out the Hispanic markets for that ....
 
Interesting ...
 
That one's pretty unhealthy ... I might be too fat to even investigate whether I like that one ...
 
Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas

This is an iconic dish and recipe that is cooked all throughout New Mexico. It's easy to make, with simple ingredients. Make sure to use quality roasted and peeled Hatch NM green chiles.

Ingredients are a roasted chicken, onions, corn tortillas, green chiles, shredded cheese, cream of mushroom, and cream of chicken.

Drain the fat and juices from the roasted chicken into a pan, chop up the onions, and sautee them in the chicken fat. Debone and shred all of the chicken meat. Dice up the green chile into small pieces. The amount of chiles that you want to use depends on how hot they are, and how hot you like your food. I would use a minimum of 5-10 whole chiles for this dish.

Once the onions are nice and caramelized, add the cans of cream of mushroom and cream of chicken into the same pan with the onions. Add the green chile into the same pan, and put it on low heat, simmering it slowly, until it becomes a solid creamy enchilada sauce. If you want your enchilada sauce a little more runny, you can add some milk to it.

Shred up 3 tortillas into tiny pieces, and add a layer of them in the bottom of a pyrex dish, so the whole bottom is covered. Cover this layer of tortillas with shredded chicken, evenly dispersed. Cover the shredded chicken with half the enchilada sauce, then evenly spread the sauce, so that every area is coated. Shred up 3 more tortillas, and begin another layer, then cover that layer with chicken, then cover that with the remaining sauce. Top the enchiladas with shredded cheese. Throw it in the oven on 350 degrees for about 20-25 minutes, or until you see brown cheese bubbles begin to form.

Serve it with pinto beans.
 

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Yes, some people boil and shred the chicken, then make chicken stock. The chicken stock is then either mixed with heavy cream, or cream of mushroom soup, then green chiles are added to make the enchilada sauce.

I much prefer using roast chicken, because I get all that delicious chicken juice and fat that I can cook into the sauce.

There are a lot of great recipes for this dish in NM, the one I posted is the one I grew up eating, and the recipe that is most similar to what many New Mexicans I have known use.
 
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