Colorado Hatch Green Chile

Colorado Hatch Green Chile

We moved to Colorado in 2005, newly married, fresh from college and from Iowa.  I had never heard of "Green Chile". I quickly become well aware of it and how tasty it was! Green chile was in every Mexican restaurant, dive diner, and breakfast join.  You could buy roasted green chiles around the city.  One of our first experiences hearing about the Colorado tradition of Green Chile was when our new friends told us they were busy that day because they were going to buy a bushel of green chiles, go home and bag and freeze them all.  This would supply them with enough green chiles to make Green Chile for every Bronco football game that year.

Every one has a different green chile recipe and I personally have several I use.  This one is quick, easy and happens to use quite a bit of fresh cilantro that I needed to use up in the fridge.  This is not the soup green chile variety, but more of a sauce.

Green chile ingredients. Well, most of them anyways. I'm new at this. Naughty Tom cat excluded

Pulse the green chiles, garlic cloves, onion, cilantro. Chop up the bacon and fry it. Add the pulsed ingredients to the fried bacon (grease and all). Cook the pulsed vegetables with the bacon until soft and fragrant.  Now you can add a little water or chicken broth. About a cup mixed with a tablespoon of cornstarch.

Be sure to add the corn starch to the COLD water or broth BEFORE adding it to the other hot ingredients in the pan. Otherwise you will have LUMPS. I'm not sure why, but it's science.

After it's cooked a bit, taste and and see what you think. Probably more salt? Yes. Before to use good stuff like Celtic Sea Salt . Or at least for goodness sakes Kosher salt. Add some pepper too. I don't care what kind. I noticed that besides salt, it definitely needed some TANG! Just a squeeze of a quarter of a JUICY lime was perfect.  

I'm proud of this yolk picture for sure.

Serve it with eggs, burritos, enchiladas. I hardly had anything in my fridge and I felt like I struck gold when I found a bag of frozen tator tots from Trader Joe's. 

Green chile tots. Served with cherry tomato-cilantro garnish (purely there for looks and to relieve my guilt)

Green Chile with Cilantro and Bacon

2 cups roasted, peeled and de-stemmed Green Chiles

2 cloves garlic

1 small onion

handful of cilantro stems and leaves

fresh lime juice 

4 slices bacon

1 tablespoon corn starch

1 cup water or chicken broth

Good salt and pepper

Roughly chop up the green chiles, garlic, onion, cilantro.  Toss in a food processor until desired chunkiness.  Slice the bacon to about 1/4 inch wide strips.  Fry the bacon in a medium sauce pan.  When bacon is to the desired crispiness, pour in the pulsed ingredients.  You can pour out the bacon grease if you really want to.  I definitely would if you're not using organic, nitrate free bacon.  Shake in a little salt and pepper.  Cook it all four about 5 or so minutes over medium heat.  Then, mix the corn starch with the cold water or broth.  Pour that into the chile mixture and let that bubble and simmer for 1 minute or more to cook off the corn starch taste and thicken.  Add the juice of about a quarter to a half of a lime. Taste it.  Add more salt and pepper. I like it on the salty side (sorry Mom) because then it makes such a good, balancing topper to non-salty items. 

Amazing eggs with fried sage

Baked eggs with yogurt and chile (and fried sage)

This recipe is a variety of textures and flavors.  The fresh, fried sage really makes the dish.  Also a must is a really high quality, organic egg, cooked to perfection.  This is a vegetarian dish that I served with a side of bacon. One more thing, with this dish you pour hot chile butter over the top. Wow. 

This recipe is from the amazing cookbook Plenty written by the amazing chef, Ottolenghi. The Plenty cookbook is a vegetarian cookbook written for vegetarians and omivores alike.  The recipe in this book are so good they don't even need meat. That's how good they are! Of course, I did eat some bacon with this dish, but that is understandable.  

I followed the recipe almost exactly, except that I added pilepechuma to the yogurt.  The pilepechuma recipe is in another cookbook Jeruselem, co-written by Ottolenghi.  

Baked eggs with yogurt and chile

Ottolenghi

Serves 2

3/4 lb (about 14 cups) arugula

2 tbsp olive oil

salt

3/4 cup Greek yogurt

1 garlic cove, crushed

4 tbsp unsalted butter

1/2 tsp kirmizi biber (I used sumac and red chile flakes)

6 sage leaves, shredded

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Place the arugula and oil in a large pan, add some salt and sauté on a medium heat for about 5 minutes, or until the arugula wilts adn most of the liquid has evaporated.

Transfer to a small ovenproof dish and make four deep indentations in the arugula. Carefully break an egg into each hollow, taking care not to break the yolk. Place in teh oven to cook for 10-15 minutes, or until the egg whites are set. (Alternatively, divide the arugula into small pans and cook two eggs in each.)

While the eggs are in the oven, mix the yogurt with the garlic and a pinch of salt.  {This is when I added about a tablespoon of the pilepechuma} Stire well and set aside; do not chill.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Add the Kirmizi biber {sumac and chile flakes} and a pinch of salt and fry for 1 to 2 minutes, or until the butter starts to foam adn turns a nice golden-red. Add tje sage ad cook for a few more seconds. Remove from the heat.

Once the eggs are cooked take them out of the oven. Spoon the yogurt over the center, and pour the hot chile butter over the yogurt and eggs. Serve immediately.