Green Chili Weather

Another rainy day and what could be better than a steaming bowl of chili -- green chili. I went on line and, after a little searching, settled on Karen Baldwin's Classic Old-Fashioned New Mexico Green Chili recipe which I then proceeded to follow, as is my custom, more or less.

The main ingredient is, naturally, green chiles. Karen specifies New Mexico chiles, 'Big Jim' variety, but I had to settle for what I guess (they weren't labeled at my local store) are the milder Anaheims. I made up for the lack of heat by leaving in the seeds and ribs, as well as using more jalapenos.

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Roasting the chiles over a flame makes me feel like I'm on a cooking show. It's tedious, scraping off the blackened skin but the end product is worth it. And the tiny bits of charred skin that end up in the chili despite my best efforts just add to the look of authenticity.

It's a dish of not many ingredients -- pork, chiles, garlic, a little onion, a very little tomato, chicken broth, salt, pepper, and cumin. There are various opinions on how fatty the pork should be -- tenderloin with all fat removed or pork shoulder, that has a fair amount of fat. I used something called boneless country ribs and left some fat on for flavor.

It needs to cook slowly -- a crock pot would be good but I don't have one. So the stew simmered all afternoon in my big iron kettle till the cubes of pork dissolved with the other ingredients into a homogeneous mass and the whole house smelled wonderful!

We served it over rice, with sour cream and store-bought green salsa as toppers. Highly recommended -- though I suspect that the original recipe is optimistic in saying that it serves four generously.