Green Chile Stew with One Western Version...

Do you eat to belong? Eat to know? I've given serious thought to finding the best Green Chile Stew receipe as I eat my way around the area sampling this dish.  I've tried before to find the best Clam Chowder and the Best Texas Chili and the Best Gumbo at previous junctures in my life.  I read through the Green Chile Bible, Edible Santa Fe, tasted the fare here and there and found Cafe Pasqual's Green Chile and Pork Stew recipe in this month's Santa Fean magazine to be the one recipe I want to work with at home.  The recipe is in the cookbook, Cooking with Cafe Pasqual's: Recipes from Santa Fe's Renowned Corner Cafe by Katharine Kagel.  Cafe Pasqual's is one of my favorite haunts.  My husband might want to play with other recipes.  For now, we're cookin'. Later we'll share with you what we come up with.  Loving eating, swallowing a new place and life bite by bite.

update: I've now tried a bunch of versions, including a good Buffalo Green Chile Stew courtesy of LaMont's Wild West Buffalo, who raise the beeves.  Continue on the flip for my recipe for Buffalo Green Chile Stew.  I'll post my recipe for The Best Chile Stew and put a link here once it is perfected (wink).

Buffalo Green Chile Stew

If you can't use buffalo, you can use lean pork or chicken or even beef.

2 pounds cubed Buffalo meat
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced fine
6 to 8 green New Mexican chiles, roasted, peeled, stems removed, chopped
2 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
1 large potato, peeled and diced
2 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
4 cups water and if needed, 1 cup water to replenish
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano, Mexican if possible

Place the buffalo in a skillet and brown it in the olive oil, then remove the meat and place it in a kettle or stock pot. Saute the celery, 1/2 the garlic and the onions in the skillet, adding more oil if necessary, and sauté until they are browned. Add the rest of the garlic and cook for an additional minute or so.
Remove them from the skillet and add to the buffalo.
Pour a little of the water into the skillet, bring to a boil, and deglaze.
Pour the liquid over the pork.
Add all the remaining ingredients, and simmer for 1 to 2 hours or until the meat is very tender and is starting to fall apart.

*LaMont's Wild West Buffalo out of Bosque  Farms, NM.  You could try to buy beeve meat from Ted Turner's operations but I don't have the contacts for ya there.

Enjoy a taste of the West, Northern New Mexico style!

Comments

[janet]

My family says I make the best. You can find it here.
http://inwestclifferecipes.blogspot.com/2007/04/green-chilie.html

[allison]

I believe there are two categories of people: those who eat to live and those who live to eat. I am in the second group. Food is not just nourishment for the body, but also the soul. The smells that evoke fond memories trigger more than just sensory reactions, they are physiological. Freshly baked bread or a pot of homemade stew/soup simmering on the stove - does life get any better than that? (add some hot fresh tortillas - Que bueno!)

[Kay Dennison]

I'm sort of a cross between both. When I decide to eat, it had better be good! Are you going to post a recipe for this here? It sounds good! I love Mexican food -- the REAL stuff!

[Old Horsetail Snake]

Green chiles are almost the best, second, I guess, only to Pequin.

[MotherPie]

Janet, thank you so much. I will try it. Yes, I will post my recipe but not until I'm sure I have a good one worth sharing.

[Eva]

My husband is the one trying new recipes in my family. He loves Cooks Illustrated and makes just about everything in it. I like to bake and last night made some Herbed Bubble Bread. YUM.