Early Winter 2021: Chile

edible NEW MEXICO

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THE STORY OF LOCAL FOOD, SEASON BY SEASON

Chile MEMBER OF EDIBLE COMMUNITIES

ISSUE 76 · EARLY WINTER NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2021

photos: doug merriam

FARM INSPIRED CUISINE

505 CERRILLOS, SANTA FE AT THE LUNA CENTER

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Early Winter DEPARTMENTS 2

GRIST FOR THE MILL

By Willy Carleton and Briana Olson

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CONTRIBUTORS

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LOCAL HEROES

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Spotlight Awards and Farm to Table

FORAGING Don’t Diss the Dandelion by Ellen Zachos

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SHOP LOCAL GIFT GUIDE

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EDIBLE PROVISIONS Snacks

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EDIBLE TRADITIONS ¡Chile por Vida! by Lynn Cline

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FACES OF FOOD Toasting Chile by Ungelbah Dávila-Shivers

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NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2021

52 EIGHT AROUND THE STATE Green Chile Cheeseburgers

74 EAT & DRINK LOCAL GUIDE 80 EDIBLE COMMUNITIES

ON THE COVER

edible NEW MEXICO

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THE STORY OF LOCAL FOOD, SEASON BY SEASON

We Are What We Eat: It’s Time to Make Food Decisions with the Climate Crisis in Mind by Twilight Greenaway. Brought to you by Edible Communities in partnership with Civil Eats

88 LAST BITE

D.H. Lescombes Winery & Bistro

FEATURES 58 COOKING WITH CHILES, FROM CUICATLÁN TO CHIMAYÓ Endangered Chiles, Endemic Flavors, and Making Mole in New Mexico by Willy Carleton

Chile MEMBER OF EDIBLE COMMUNITIES

ISSUE 76 · EARLY WINTER NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2021

Chile ristra from Mago's Farm in Hatch. Photo by Stephanie Cameron.

68 CHILE IS HOME

by Denise Chávez

BACK OF THE HOUSE “All Good Things” by Candolin Cook EDIBLENM.COM

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GRIST FOR THE MILL

Chile “When we think of New Mexico foods, naturally the chile comes first.” These words, penned in 1949 by Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert, still hold true today. Chile is what gives so much New Mexican food its sense of warmth and comfort, its subtle flavor and its fiery soul, its color and its meaning.

Nowhere in this issue is this more evident than in Denise Chávez’s simple and powerful declaration that “chile is home.” In her words, we are reminded of the legacy of chile in southern New Mexico, a place often associated with large-scale chile fields with harvests destined for export but a place that has also had, and continues to have, a rich and vibrant local chile culture rooted in a proud history of chile production, processing, and innovation. In her story, the legacy of land loss is never far, and the fruits of that land, bearing memories of that legacy, are always close, always home.

From southern New Mexico to the northern reaches of the state, we further explore the role of chile in our local restaurants, cuisines, and culture. Ungelbah Dávila-Shivers gives us a glimpse of the art of toasting chile in an horno at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center; Candolin Cook dives into the chile-forward, Zacatecas-inspired flavors of Santa Fe’s Zacatlán; and Lynn Cline takes a seat at the table at the beloved Teofilo’s in Los Lunas to learn a little about what makes their chile so good.

We also look to an endangered chile pepper in southern Mexico, one that simply means the “old chile” in Nahuatl, to better understand what makes a good Oaxacan mole but also to gain insight about our own endemic chiles here. “Mexican chile peppers do not have the same taste as New Mexican peppers,” Cabeza de Baca Gilbert also wrote in 1949, “but many people enjoy their savor and may even enjoy the change.” We offer the story of chilhuacle for this reason, but also because the loss of agro-biodiversity elsewhere on the continent is our story too.

Finally, we share the story of José García, who sadly passed away from COVID-19 last December. A beloved father and grandfather who proudly and passionately dedicated much of his working life to planting, cultivating, and harvesting chile in southern New Mexico, he was an instrumental part of bringing chile to our tables.

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edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

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CONTRIBUTORS STEPHANIE CAMERON Stephanie Cameron was raised in Albuquerque and earned a degree in fine arts at the University of New Mexico. Cameron is the art director, head photographer, recipe tester, marketing guru, publisher, and owner of edible New Mexico and The Bite.

CANDOLIN COOK Candolin Cook is a PhD candidate in history at the University of New Mexico, freelance writer, editor, and former co-editor of edible New Mexico. She lives in Albuquerque, where her husband owns Vida Verde Farm, and believes in supporting local agriculture and food businesses whenever possible.

WILLY CARLETON Willy Carleton is a co-editor of edible New Mexico and The Bite. He is the author of Fruit, Fiber, and Fire: A History of Modern Agriculture in New Mexico, which explores the cultural and environmental history of apples, cotton, and chiles in our region.

DENISE CHÁVEZ Denise Chávez is a fronteriza writer, bookseller, and activist from Las Cruces. She is the founder of Libros Para El Viaje / Books for the Journey, an ongoing refugee, migrant, and asylum-seeker book-donation initiative, and the owner of Casa Camino Real Bookstore in Las Cruces. She is the author of The King and Queen of Comezón; A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food and Culture; Loving Pedro Infante; Face of An Angel; and The Last of the Menu Girls, among other works. She and her husband, Daniel Zolinsky, are working on a long-term project, Museo de La Gente / Museum of the People, an archival resource center celebrating the Borderland in art, culture, literature, food, and music, in the Mesquite Historic District on the Camino Real. Chávez is the winner of the American Book Award and the New Mexico Governor’s Award in Literature. Recently, she received the BIPOC Bookseller Award in Activism, given by Duende District and The Word to a national bookseller who goes above and beyond to advocate for Black and Brown booksellers and literary representation in their stores and communities.

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LYNN CLINE Lynn Cline is the award-winning author of The Maverick Cookbook: Iconic Recipes and Tales From New Mexico. She's written for Bon Appétit, the New York Times, New Mexico Magazine, and many other publications. She also hosts Cline’s Corner, a weekly talk show on public radio’s KSFR 101.1 FM. UNGELBAH DÁVILA-SHIVERS Ungelbah Dávila-Shivers lives in Valencia County with her husband, Larry, and daughter Tachi’Bah. She owns Silver Moon Studio in Bosque Farms.

SHAHID MUSTAFA Shahid Mustafa owns and runs Taylor Hood Farms, practicing regenerative organic agriculture on more than three acres in El Paso, Texas, and offering a CSA with home delivery.

Through his nonprofit organization DYGUP/ Sustain (DYGUP stands for Developing Youth from the Ground Up), he has worked with the science department at Las Cruces High School to implement an environmental literacy curriculum and establish a one-acre plot where students receive credit for helping with all stages of vegetable production. With plans to become a certified organic farm and train a new generation of farmers, he hopes his efforts will be an inspiration for farmers to adopt the regenerative organic practice.

BRIANA OLSON Briana Olson is a writer and the co-editor of edible New Mexico and The Bite. She was the lead editor for the 2019 and 2021 editions of The New Farmer’s Almanac, and also works with Agrarian Trust, a nonprofit supporting land access for next generation farmers.

ELLEN ZACHOS Ellen Zachos lives in Santa Fe and is the author of eight books, including the recently released The Forager's Pantry. She is the co-host of the Plantrama podcast (plantrama.com), and writes about wild foods at backyardforager.com. Zachos offers several online foraging courses at backyardforager.thinkific.com.

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LOCAL HEROES An edible Local Hero is an exceptional individual, business, or organization making a positive impact on New Mexico's food systems. These honorees nurture our communities through food, service, and socially and environmentally sustainable business practices. Edible New Mexico readers nominate their favorite local chefs, growers, artisans, advocates, and other food professionals in two dozen categories—including this year's new Innovator and Spotlight Awards. In this issue of edible, we feature interviews with the winner of the Innovator Award for food justice and the winners of three Spotlight Awards, created to honor individuals whose work to support local food systems has often gone unrecognized. Please join us in thanking these Local Heroes for their outstanding, essential, and often unseen contributions to New Mexico’s local food movement.

Gabe Romero SPOTLIGHT AWARD: BACK OF HOUSE An Interview with Gabe Romero, House Butcher at Campo a.k.a.: peeler of garlic; chopper of onions; maker of soups, sauces, and smiles; fan of flavor and feeding people; the Meat Guy

Gabe Romero at Campo. Photo by Stephanie Cameron.

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edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

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Gabe Romero making sausage for Campo at Los Poblanos Historic Inn & Organic Farm. Photos by Stephanie Cameron.

Your title is house butcher—a position that is enjoying a small renaissance but is also considered something of a dying art.

What led you to the butcher’s table?

I was led to the butcher’s table by a love of flavor, a desire for knowledge and technique, and an amazing mentor.

What is a crucial part of your job that people probably don’t know about?

The amount of work and coordination that it takes to present a wholesome plate of food to a guest. There are many connections made and steps taken to make food from the earth into food for your mouth—from the earth to the farmer to the processor to the delivery to the prep kitchen to the cook to the line to the pass to the runner to the table to the enjoyment of cuisine. There are many hooves and hands that go into your enjoyment. Be thankful.

You’ve been known to sing odes to onions. What other vegetables do you hold in high esteem?

Being lucky enough to work with small-scale organic farmers, the vegetables I hold in highest esteem are the oddities. Not the uniform presorted grocery standards, but the strange freaks of nature and anthropomorphs that carry the humor of imperfection. A two-pronged carrot with a ding-dong, for example, or a tomato that looks like a duck or a perfect Beyoncé booty. From the fairylike, teeny, tiny baby turnips and radishes to the good ole mammoth-phallic cucumbers, eggplants, or squash, I like the veggies that make cooks laugh.

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edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

You also make soups and sauces. Do you have a favorite?

Regarding soup—when it is cold outside, I want something rich and warming. Onion soup in the French style is a favorite. The technique is encompassing, and the flavor is divine. When it is hot outside, I want something zesty and refreshing, so a bright heirloom gazpacho is in order.

Is it true that you’ve worked in the past doing acting and comedy?

How does your calling as a comedian intersect with your work in the kitchen?

I feel that both cuisine and comedy are inherently theatrical, and that food and humor are two of the most powerful ingredients for human joy. The successful execution of both relies on instinct, improvisation, and timing. A good joke and a good sauce will both produce a guttural response, be it a laugh out loud or a genuine MMMMMMMMMMMM . . .

Why do you think you won this award?

It was my destiny.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with edible readers?

Thanks to all the homies that put in the work to make it happen. #Respect #Tradition #Discipline Keep it charp!

a

Gallery Ethnica · 933 Baca St, Santa Fe · 505-557-6654 · galleryethnica.com

LOCAL HEROES

José García SPOTLIGHT AWARD: FARMWORKER

By Shahid Mustafa

Memories from José García’s family.

Photos courtesy of the García family.

José García was born in Mexico and was raised in a family where they grew their own food. When he was seventeen, he migrated to the United States and worked first in the fields at Deerman Farms, a cotton and pecan farm in La Mesa. He helped plant the pecan trees.

Then he went to the Cervantes chile farm in Vado, where he prepared the soil and planted the seeds. He dedicated his life to Cervantes for more than forty years. He prepared the soil, planted the seeds, and harvested green chile.

His daughter Corina recalls, “As a child, I remember my dad planting chile and cotton, anything with preparing the soil—from beginning to end. He loved what he did. I don’t ever remember my dad talking about doing anything but farming. That was his passion, 10

edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

working in the fields.” Over time, when Cervantes developed their new chile plant, José also became a semitruck driver of their chile sauce. The owners of the company loved him. He did everything for them.

García came to the United States because he wanted a better life for his wife, Genoveva, and something better for his kids. He was inspired, and he wanted more. Although he never became fluent in English, and he didn’t have a formal education in agriculture, he always seemed to figure things out. Corina believes that if he had been born here, “he would have been an engineer or something. He would fix everything.” The language barrier was perhaps why he never farmed his own land, but it was always clear that he treasured what Ahmed Obo, founder and chef-owner of Jambo Cafe.

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he did. Agriculture was his art. He didn’t need to read a manual; he fixed things by figuring things out. He designed and built the house his family lived in. Anything that needed to be fixed, he did it—even automotive mechanics, he did it. Nothing was impossible. He never gave up. He was motivated by the challenge. He was an amazing man.

“As we got older,” Corina says, “I used to question him about his pay and benefits, but he didn’t care about that. He just loved what he did. José would wake up before sunrise and go to work to get an early start, not returning home until sunset. He was dedicated. If he started something, he had to finish it. He even worked on weekends during harvest season.”

García’s story mirrors that of many migrants and farmworkers. He was an integral part of the food chain; his work was essential, but people don’t necessarily see farmworkers and the result of their hard labor. Their wages don’t reflect the value that they bring to the community, but their effort, commitment, and dedication impact their families and the greater society in ways that are often unrecognized.

They influence the people around them, and demonstrate that obstacles can be overcome through resilience.

On an agricultural laborer’s salary, José and Genoveva raised a household of nine children, becoming proud and loving grandparents of twenty-eight grandchildren. As Corina says, “I know my dad worked hard, and he gave all his life for us. I’m not ashamed to say that we grew up on a farm. We had what we needed. We didn’t know

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that we were poor, but we could see the difference between our family and others. He has very successful children who became professionals in the medical, education, and industrial fields. He left his family well taken care of.” She values all the hard work that her father did, and says it served as motivation for his kids to strive for more in life. In Corina’s words, “He was a role model for all of us. We believed that if he could do it, we can do it.”

José García passed away on December 15, 2020, after a more-than-month-long battle with COVID-19. His daughter Carolina, a nurse, was able to be with him during his hospitalization.

As is the case with many dedicated essential workers, García’s legacy will continue to be honored by his family, but we all owe an immense amount of gratitude and appreciation to those who have sacrificed so much so that we may continue to survive and enjoy the benefits of their labor.

LOCAL HEROES

michael trent SPOTLIGHT AWARD: FRONT OF HOUSE Words from Michael Trent, Server at Arable Photo by Stephanie Cameron

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Elizabeth and Jonathan Bibiano on the Vegos food truck.

I am incredibly grateful to be receiving this award. I was happy when I found out I had been chosen, but the full gravity of the honor did not really hit me until the awards ceremony in August.

I acknowledge that servers play an important role in any restaurant, but I honestly believe every position is equally important. A restaurant is like a finely tuned machine running at full speed. If you take out one tiny gear, the entire thing comes to a halt unless

h

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everyone can chip in to carry the extra weight. Still, I am just a server doing my job and it was an honor to be recognized next to other local heroes performing such incredible achievements.

August was a big month for me, as I celebrated five years of sobriety.

If you had told me five years ago that I would be receiving this award, I would have laughed at the thought. This, to me, is nothing short of a miracle.

j

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There was so much uncertainty at the beginning of the pandemic.

Like everyone else, we at Arable hoped for the best and feared the worst. I was not expecting the amazing community bonds that ended up forming—I am thankful to all the people who have made us part of their weekly routine during the past eighteen months. The generosity, kindness, and patience they have shown has made these months some of the best times I have ever had at work. One of my favorite experiences is having the opportunity to serve someone for their first meal at Arable; being able to share our locally sourced food and be a part of bringing them into our community is a gift. Many people have moved to Eldorado during the pandemic, and I feel that we have been a sort of welcoming committee to them. Serving them incredible food every week has opened the door to new friendships, and some have even joined the team at Arable when they learned how short staffed we were.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the excellent leadership from Dave Readyhough and Renée Fox. The kindness they show their staff trickles down. There is no separation between frontof-house staff and kitchen staff. We are all friends and do not hesitate to jump in and help each other out. It is not uncommon to see servers helping with the dishes or to see the sous-chef bringing out food.

This atmosphere is then carried into the guests’ experience, as we are genuinely happy to have you there so we can share this with you.

In many ways, the fundamental principles of being a server have not changed: quality food and hospitality have stayed our main focus.

Whether we are spending a few hours with a guest in the restaurant, or having a quick phone call to place a to-go order, I believe we are still passing on a valuable experience. One of the biggest challenges has been keeping up with the demand. I have such a hard time turning someone away for a to-go order or a dine-in experience, but sadly we just lack the kitchen staff to keep producing the typical high volume of quality food. Most days, Dave and Renée are there all day working hard to prep for a few hours of dinner service. There is just a limit to how much a small kitchen staff can produce in any given time.

Working closely with Dave and Renée has given me a new appreciation for food and diet. I am always amazed by Renée’s endless inspiration to create a new special every day. This fosters an environment of constant learning, as every day I go back into the kitchen to ask her questions about the different aspects of each dish. Dave and I spend much of our time discussing nutrition and food’s effects on the body.

Dave has inspired me to become a runner and get in better shape, while Renée cooks me a delicious meal each night. My quality of life has greatly improved over the years working with them, and I can't wait to see what the future brings.

farm to table INNOVATOR: FOOD JUSTICE An Interview with Pam Roy, Executive Director and Cofounder Photos by Seth Roffman

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Schwebach Farm tour participants learn about the business of farming and how they can integrate local produce into their Head Start, K-12, and senior center food and nutrition programs. Photos © Seth Roffman.

Since 1996, the nonprofit Farm to Table has worked to strengthen the economic livelihoods of farmers by building connections to local markets, and by facilitating sales of fresh local produce to institutions and restaurants. They bring healthy foods and experiential learning to schools through farm-to-school programs and have worked with communities on food policy, striving for equity in New Mexico’s food system. The organization has also worked collectively at the state and federal levels to advocate for effective food policy in New Mexico.

Farm to Table’s mission is to build a local, healthy, equitable, and sustainable food system.

What influenced Farm to Table’s shift from its original focus on farmers market development twenty years ago?

Farm to Table was initiated because we saw a real need for three priorities: to build partnerships that would expand business opportunities for farmers and ranchers in New Mexico and the Southwest; to start farm-to-school initiatives in New Mexico and be part of a burgeoning initiative across the country; and to fulfill an unmet need for organized advocacy and policy work by starting the New Mexico Food & Agriculture Policy Council.

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Talk about the value of community self-determination and how that applies to agriculture.

New Mexico’s communities have a deep context around food and agriculture traditions. Much of our work has focused on local food and agriculture initiatives that help communities build their own capacity. The more we can emphasize the importance of our traditional foodways, and the more people begin to value local food as individuals, the more we can create opportunities to advocate for and invest in the types of “systems” we need in order to strengthen local economic and social fabrics—thus strengthening community self-determination.

One of your great accomplishments has been connecting farmers with school cafeterias to provide New Mexican students with locally sourced lunches. Can you share a little about this program?

Part of our mission is to focus on the well-being of people and communities. We saw a real need to tie the health and well-being of communities, like schools, with beautiful, locally grown fruits and vegetables while developing a new market opportunity for New

Schwebach Farm tour participants working on the land. Photos © Seth Roffman.

Mexico farmers. We also realized that it would take changing federal rules so that schools could purchase from local farmers. We focused on school nutrition, as more than three hundred thousand students participate in school meal programs. So, if we’re going to change systems and behavior, schools are a natural ally. As we look at twenty years of work, we are ecstatic to now have two-thirds of New Mexico schools purchasing New Mexico–grown food, and now senior centers can, too. It takes patience, perseverance, and the will to take on new programs at the local, state, and tribal levels. Now five state agencies are committed to this initiative—education, agriculture, aging, early childhood education, and health. There are more than seventy farmers, food hubs, and co-ops involved. There are school gardens in many communities around the state, tying what we eat to how we learn.

And so many people care and help to advocate for these programs.

You’ve been awarded a Local Hero Award, and one of your partners/collaborators, Micah Roseberry, received edible’s Olla Award.

You also issue your own annual local food and farm-to-school awards. Is there an individual or organization whose work has been inspiring you over the course of the pandemic?

Micah and her colleagues in Taos and northern New Mexico are a perfect example of community self-determination, leadership, and passion. They have vision and collective wisdom to take the tools at hand and find new resources to build out their local food system.

We have amazing organizations, communities, and individuals around the state who are game changers, as well as many who came before us. Just to name a few—La Semilla Food Center in Anthony, Tesuque Pueblo Farm and Emigdio Ballon, Dorothy Bitsilly of Red 20

edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

Willow Farm and Gloria Begay of the Diné Food Sovereignty Alliance on the Navajo Nation, the Zuni Youth Enrichment Program, Quivira Coalition’s New Agrarian Program, and the New Mexico Acequia Association!

What are your goals for the 2022 legislative session? How can readers engage and support local food in New Mexico?

This is the year that everything is coming together. Our goal is to see a multiyear New Mexico food, hunger, and farm plan passed by the legislature and then funded! Many people have been working collectively to strengthen the ties between food, hunger, and farming in New Mexico. The pandemic put an even greater emphasis on the need to strengthen and expand New Mexico’s own food system. These things combined are resulting in a large-scale, multiagency legislative initiative that we hope will result in a comprehensive plan to expand food and agriculture initiatives in New Mexico. Additionally, we think there will be comprehensive strategies to support soil, water, and conservation programs, which are also very important to advocate for and will ultimately strengthen our local food system.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with edible readers?

We are so grateful for edible and those who pick up the magazine to learn and engage in food in New Mexico. We need and welcome everyone’s voices at the table, in the halls of the legislature, on farms, and in schools and senior centers, to ask for local food. Our purchasing power is a great way to advocate for and collectively strengthen our local food system. farmtotablenm.org

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FORAGING

Don’t Diss the Dandelion Words and Photos by Ellen Zachos

The dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) may be the most easily recognized weed in the United States, and it grows almost everywhere. Fortunately, most New Mexicans don’t get all sentimental about perfect lawns, which means we can appreciate the culinary virtues of the dandelion.

the dried dandelion pieces until they are the color of your preferred coffee roast. If you’re a French roast fan, roast those dandelion roots until they’re very dark brown. If you prefer Colombian roast, aim for a medium brown.

This is a perennial plant, native to Eurasia. Brought to the United States by colonists as a medicinal herb, it adapted quickly to its new territory and followed Europeans as they moved west across the North American continent. While the dandelion has several tasty edible parts, at this time of year foragers focus on the roots.

To make a cup of hot dandelion beverage, grind some of your roasted roots in a coffee bean grinder and combine eight ounces of boiling water with one tablespoon of roasted, powdered dandelion root. Let this steep for five minutes, then strain, and enjoy with lemon or milk.

Dandelion roots can be cooked as a vegetable; the flavor is mild, somewhat reminiscent of a potato. To enjoy the roots, wash them, boil them for two to three minutes, and then dunk them in cold water to loosen the skins. They should slip off easily, after which you may continue to cook the roots according to your recipe. Older dandelion roots may have a woody core, but you can easily remove the cooked flesh from the core with the tines of a fork.

More often, dandelion roots are used to make a caffeine-free coffee substitute. To do this, clean your dandelion roots, chop them into pieces about a half-inch long, and dry them. You can do this either in a dehydrator, or outdoors between two screens, which allows for both good air circulation and protection from hungry animals. Roast 22

edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

But wait—there’s more! Powdered, roasted dandelion roots can also be used to flavor milkshakes, ice cream, and custards, and here’s where it gets really delicious. Roasted dandelion root ice cream may look like coffee ice cream, but its flavor is richer and more complex. Top with some red chile hot fudge sauce, and you’ve taken foraged flavor to a whole new level.

As the growing season ends, plants store nutrition in their root systems; this is what supports new growth in spring. So the best time to harvest most root crops is in early spring or late fall, when the plants aren’t drawing on that stored nutrition and the roots are full of flavor.

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FORAGING

Roasted Dandelion Root Ice Cream Yield: 3 cups 1/2 cup dried dandelion root, chopped 1 cup heavy cream 1/2 cup whole milk Pinch of salt 2 egg yolks 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/3 cup sugar Red chile hot fudge sauce (optional . . . but is it?)

Preheat oven to 250°F. Roast your prepared dandelion roots until they turn your preferred shade of brown, then grind the roasted roots in a coffee bean or spice grinder. Roasting may take anywhere from 1 to 3 hours, depending on the size of your dandelion root chunks and how dark you want the roast. One-half cup of chopped, roasted dandelion roots should yield about 1/4 cup of powder.

Heat the cream, milk, salt, and sugar in a saucepan, whisking to dissolve the sugar. When the sugar is fully dissolved, add dandelion powder and stir to combine. Bring the liquid to a simmer, then remove from heat, cover the pan, and let the mixture steep for 30 minutes.

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Strain the cream and discard the solids. Be sure to press the solids against the strainer to extract as much liquid as possible. The yield should be just over 1 cup of infused cream.

Reheat the cream to the simmering point, and while it’s heating, whisk the egg yolks together. Slowly add about 1/3 of the warm cream to the eggs, whisking constantly. This allows you to integrate the two liquids without cooking the egg. When the liquids are smoothly incorporated, add them back into the rest of the cream. Cook over medium-low heat until the liquid has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. I often have a hard time with this, because eggbased ice-cream batters seem to coat the spoon from the very beginning. To be sure, I use a candy thermometer, and when it reaches 170°F, I take the cream off the stove.

Strain the cream, add vanilla, and allow the mixture to cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Churn the chilled cream in your ice-cream maker, and if you’d like to make this a truly New Mexican dessert, top it off with some of the aforementioned red chile hot fudge sauce from The Shed!

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DOLINA GIFT BOXES

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GIFT IDEAS

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edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

VINTAGE HAND-CARVED ACACIA WOOD ANGELS

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TRADITIONAL ACETO BALSAMICO OF MONTICELLO

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SANTA FE OLIVE OIL & BALSAMIC CO. We blend our finest extra-virgin olive oil and balsamics with New Mexico red & green chile!

Choose from this set, or create your own custom sampling presented in a gift box or bag. $45 Santa Fe Olive Oil & Balsamic Co. 116 Don Gaspar Avenue, Santa Fe santafeoliveoil.com

HEIDI’S ORGANIC JAM

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edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

GIVE THE GIFT OF FOOD

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GIFT IDEAS

EDIBLE RISTRAS FROM HATCH

One- to four-foot available. $15 per foot Tin-Nee-Ann Trading Co. 923 Cerrillos, Santa Fe, 505-988-1630 tin-nee-ann-trading-co.myshopify.com

PECANS FOR THE HOLIDAYS

The holidays call for fresh and sweet organic pecans for festive dishes and everyday meals.

Organic halves and pieces are available in 5-pound and 25-pound packages.

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edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

SPIRITED GIFTS

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EDIBLE TRADITIONS

¡Chile por Vida!

TEOFILO’S RESTAURANTE SERVES A FEAST OF NEW MEXICAN FLAVORS

By Lynn Cline · Photos by Stacey M. Adams

Joell Himeur with her parents, Pete and Hortencia Torres, at Teofilo's Restaurante.

Walk through the front door of Teofilo’s Restaurante and you feel as if you’ve stepped inside a warm and welcoming home. In a way, you have. This handsome historic house, built in 1913 for the town doctor and his wife, has been home to the most popular New Mexican restaurant in Los Lunas for more than three decades.

now fifty-two, and I’ve seen kids literally grow up here. . . . We’ve had bridal showers, weddings, and baptisms here. We’ve celebrated so many amazing events, including our own celebrations—the baptisms of our children, my parents’ anniversary, birthdays. We always seem to come together at Teofilo’s to celebrate anything that’s happening in the family.”

What draws diners back again and again? It’s a rare combination of delicious New Mexican food, inviting dining rooms and a patio steeped in old New Mexico charm, and the treasured Torres family, longtime restaurateurs who created this vibrant gathering place for the community.

Whether diners come to celebrate milestones or simply to savor mouthwatering cuisine, they bring a craving for New Mexico chile.

Teofilo’s serves it up in spades, starting with a complimentary bowl of bright red, smoky salsa. After that, it’s a hard choice among many tempting dishes, including the signature chiles rellenos—New Mexico green chile rolled in panko breadcrumbs and generously stuffed with cheese—and enchiladas topped with carne adovada and T’s famous red chile sauce. There’s a reason “Chile por vida” (Chile for life) is this restaurant’s longtime motto.

“We have customers who have been eating here for thirty-five years,” says co-owner Joell Himeur, whose parents—Pete and Hortencia— opened Teofilo’s in 1985. “I started working here at eighteen. I’m 38

edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

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Left: Teofilo's dining room. Middle: Carne adovada. Right: Skirt-steak fajitas.

“I frequently visit Teofilo’s because of the chile,” says Dubra Karnes Padilla, who lives in Albuquerque. “And also because of the family.

I’ve been a customer since they opened. I always get their spinach enchiladas with extra, extra, extra red. Teofilo’s has been a place where we’ve had parties, where I’ve met friends. It’s a lovely place to go. Their cooking is an art and it’s got love and life in it.”

The Torres family’s reverence for chile dates back to 1949, when Pete and Eligia Torres opened the legendary Pete’s Cafe in nearby Belen. Eligia’s family recipes (some more than a century old), including her mother’s chile recipe, helped put Pete’s Cafe on the culinary map. Eligia famously oversaw the preparation and taste-tested each fresh batch every day.

Pete “Teofilo” Torres Jr. grew up working various jobs in his parents’ Belen cafe. His wife, Hortencia, shared his passion for the restaurant business, and when the couple decided to open their own eatery, the historic house on Main Street in Los Lunas was the perfect fit.

Teofilo’s quickly became known for serving the same type of authentic, tasty New Mexican food found at Pete’s Cafe. “These are recipes that all came from Eligia,” says Himeur. “We haven’t changed much.

Our recipes are pretty simple. We don’t put a lot of spices or other ingredients in our chiles. We let the pure flavor shine through.”

Although Pete and Eligia have passed away, the family’s restaurant legacy flourishes at Teofilo’s through community, camaraderie, and a commitment to traditional cuisine made with New Mexico chiles and other local ingredients. “My sister, Johnnah, and my parents and I are all the chile testers,” Himeur says. “We’re very picky, especially with the red chile, which we make from scratch. We buy the red chile from Grajeda Farms, the beans from Morrow Farms, and the green chile from Sabroso Foods. My dad makes a couple of trips down south to Hatch each year with a huge trailer that he loads up with chile.”

To make the coveted red chile sauce, the pods are soaked overnight.

“In the morning, we blend them down and put them through a sieve 40

edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

for twenty to thirty minutes,” Himeur says, to remove any trace of skin or seeds. “We are really proud that our red chile sauce is always smooth and consistent, and you never get that grit in it.”

The red chile sauce stars in many of Teofilo’s dishes, including the popular carne adovada. “People love our carne adovada,” Himeur says. “We bring in pork cushion and we cut it ourselves, and we marinate it and bake it in our red chile. . . . The pork and the red chile are a great mixture.”

Los Lunas native Vickie Otero has a longtime favorite dish featuring Teofilo’s red chile. “I’ve always loved their stuffed sopapillas,” she says.

“I’ve been going there since I was in high school, and I’m seventytwo now.” Otero’s daughter once worked at Teofilo’s as a server, yet another example of the enduring connections between community and restaurant.

Teofilo’s founders, Pete and Hortencia, have essentially stepped away from the day-to-day operations, leaving Himeur and her sister, Johnnah Torres, to run the restaurant while longtime chef Raul Chavez helms the kitchen. Otherwise, not much has changed over the years. Southwest and contemporary art, selected by Hortencia, graces the walls, along with photos of the building’s original occupants, Dr. William Frederick Wittwer and his wife, Anna Nowlin. The first physician in Los Lunas, Wittwer lived in the house and met with patients in his home office. “One of the restaurant’s front rooms is where he saw patients,” Himeur says, “and up to ten or fifteen years ago, people would come into the restaurant and say, ‘When I was little, my mom used to bring me here to see Dr. Wittwer.’”

Many diners today could make a similar statement, marveling that when they were little, their parents brought them to the same restaurant where they now bring their kids and grandkids, to enjoy food that is firmly rooted in our region’s history.

144 Vallejos Lane, Los Lunas, teofilos.com

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FACES OF FOOD

Toasting Chile WITH ADOBE AND WOOD Words and photos by Ungelbah Dávila-Shivers

It’s only 85 degrees out, but with Executive Chef Ray Naranjo’s piñon fire radiating heat from the adobe horno at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, it feels more like 100. The hotter the sun bakes the adobe, the faster the green chile inside will roast, he says. Wood smoke billows from the black mouth of the horno. Soon there is another smell, the telltale scent of New Mexico in late summer.

Picked the day before at Big Jim Farms, the roasting chiles fill the air with their hot, hit-the-back-of-your-throat aroma that instantly conjures a lifetime of autumn memories.

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edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

While Chef Ben Shendo fills the air with laughter and story, an important ingredient to any meal, Chef Naranjo conducts his task with a long metal pole—pushing back the fire, scraping up some coals, turning the pan just right so that every chile blisters perfectly, flipping them all once before pulling them out at the perfect moment. Both chefs are at home in the sun and smoke of the day, cooking the way their mothers and aunties and grandmothers have cooked for generations.

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Emily Okamoto

This photo and below left Douglas Merriam

Garduño’s Hotel Albuquerque

Tablao Flamenco Dinner Shows Fridays & Saturdays at Hotel Albuquerque

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S AW M I L L D I S T R I C T Sawmill District is Albuquerque’s most vibrant & sophisticated area. Come experience the latest food & cocktail trends. Over 35 exceptional restaurants, eateries, boutique shops, e-bike tours, entertainment venues, an artisan market, and museums & galleries await your exploration. The Sawmill District celebrates Albuquerque’s past, present, and future.

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BACK OF HOUSE

“ALL GOOD THINGS” CHEF EDUARDO RODRIGUEZ’S JOURNEY TO ZACATLÁN

By Candolin Cook · Photos by Stephanie Cameron

Whole fried red snapper filet with saffron risotto, calabacitas, and Veracruz salsa.

If patience is a virtue, Chef Eduardo Rodriguez must be a very virtuous man. Though his culinary odyssey began in the mid-1990s, it took Rodriguez twenty-five years of hard work in two of Santa Fe’s most prestigious restaurants, a relentless dedication to perfecting his craft, and a global pandemic to finally make his dream of owning his own restaurant come true. Fortunately, Zacatlán Restaurant, which opened in July 2020, was worth the wait.

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edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

Rodriguez hails from Zacatecas, Mexico, where he grew up watching and assisting his mother and grandmother in the kitchen. “I was always asking what they needed, gathering dry branches for the [oven].” As the last brother of six still living at home, he was thrilled to get the opportunity as a teenager to visit two of his older brothers, José and Juan, who were cooking in Santa Fe. Rodriguez recalls the moment on that trip when he first became enamored with the idea

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Left: Eduardo Rodriguez of Zacatlán. Right: Hibiscus Poached Pear Salad with red chile piñon garapiñado and gotes catalanes.

of becoming a chef: “I was at Coyote Cafe. Everyone was laughing, drinking, [I remember] the smells and the energy. [Then] I saw Mark Kiffin walk in wearing a white chef ’s coat with his name on it. I said to my brother, ‘I want that.’” When he returned to Santa Fe right after graduating from high school a few months later, Rodriguez’s brothers got him his first job washing dishes at Coyote, then at Geronimo, where he went on to receive a first-class culinary education cooking under the late, great Eric DiStefano.

After thirteen years at Geronimo, Rodriguez was ready for a new challenge. Coincidentally, so was DiStefano. In 2007, the senior chef bought into Coyote Cafe and invited his protégé to join him as the new chef de cuisine. Another thirteen years passed, with Rodriguez eventually becoming one of the city’s most respected executive chefs.

But, while he was given a lot of room to design and run Coyote’s food program, especially after DiStefano’s tragic passing in 2016, he still longed for a place of his own.

As he had done in his mother’s kitchen, Rodriguez endeared himself to DiStefano by always asking what he needed and by having the work ethic and talent to do whatever was asked. He went from washing dishes to prepping the fish to making fresh pasta to cooking on the line. Then, during one fortuitous Indian Market weekend, Rodriguez was asked to run the entire kitchen while DiStefano and others headed out of town for a James Beard event. When the executive chef returned, he pulled Rodriguez aside, saying they needed to discuss his performance. “I was so nervous!” Rodiguez admits. DiStefano let him know that not only had he heard Rodriguez had run his kitchen flawlessly, but that he would now be the restaurant’s sous-chef. “Eric was an amazing mentor,” says Rodriguez. “He taught me that every dish needed to be perfection, every single time.”

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Coyote, like many restaurants, closed temporarily, and Rodriguez found himself sitting at home and watching too much TV. Restless, he began to put his long-gestating plan of opening his own restaurant into motion. He always knew he wanted a space that was intimate, so when he got a call that a small, casita-like adobe building on Aztec Street had become available, he jumped at the chance. With Coyote Cafe owner Quinn Stephenson’s support, and his family’s invaluable help, he remodeled the space and began crafting the brunch and dinner menus for Zacatlán.

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edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

What Rodriguez ended up with is a cozy, fine-dining restaurant that manages to feel both elegant and unpretentious. A handful of tasteful tables with white tablecloths fill the main dining room, which boasts an adobe fireplace that lends itself to an overall romantic atmosphere.

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Zacatlán is the Nahuatl translation for “land with an abundance of grass.”

Left: Burrata Salad with heirloom tomatoes, pesto, and chicharrón prosciutto. Right: Bread Pudding Brioche Tamal with saffron-and-corn ice cream.

A small, semi-enclosed side patio is even more homey, with turquoise decor touches and a collection of Mexican ceramic figurines and baskets. “We started from zero with this place. There was no kitchen, no air conditioning. . . . Because of the pandemia, it took a long time to get permits, and staffing has been hard. We are always adjusting and getting better,” the chef-owner says.

Zacatlán’s Southwest- and Mexican-inspired cuisine is the culmination of Rodriguez’s upbringing, mentorships, travels, and decades-long experience cooking in the City Different. Standout dishes include the Mole Negro Chilaquiles, Lamb Shank Barbacoa, and the warm and gooey Bread Pudding Brioche Tamal with saffron-and-corn ice cream.

The Whole Fried Red Snapper is a true showstopper, with two lightly fried filets resting atop the fish’s deep-fried skeleton in a stunning presentation. Another signature dish is the cochinita pibil, which features a large, slow-cooked pork shank saturated in mole coloradito. Rodriguez says he learned how to make his moles from his mother and from early mornings wandering around the streets of Oaxaca on vacation.

“I [sought] out the best mole makers. One woman said I could learn from her if I came to her house at 3 am and spent six hours [learning her process]. But she would only teach me 80 percent of the recipe’s 50

edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

ingredients. The rest [I was told] I could figure out by smelling the air around the neighborhood, so I walked around sniffing and seeing what herbs people were growing on their patios.”

With stellar options for brunch, dinner, and dessert in place, Rodriguez knew he needed equally interesting wine pairings. Again he looked to his home country for inspiration. “People don’t realize Mexico has a wonderful [wine country] in Baja. I love introducing Mexican wines to my customers, and I only choose the best for them.”

Shortly after Zacatlán opened, USA Today selected it as one of America’s top ten best new restaurants, and Condé Nast Traveler called it “one of the hottest tickets in town.” Even with the state’s fluctuating restrictions on indoor dining since the pandemic began, the restaurant has developed a dedicated local fan base, which Rodriguez hopes will only expand once more customers feel comfortable going out to eat. “I want to see a line of people outside,” he says. Though the road was long and is full of (ongoing) obstacles, it’s clear Rodriguez is proud he finally has a place that uniquely represents his own vision and cuisine. “I had to follow my dreams,” he says.

317 Aztec, Santa Fe, 505-780-5174, zacatlanrestaurant.com

730 St Michaels Dr, Santa Fe, loyalhoundpub.com

614 Trinity Drive, Los Alamos • 505-662-8877 pajaritobrewpubandgrill.com

EIGHT AROUND THE STATE

Green Chile Cheeseburgers Eight of New Mexico’s finest chefs competed in the eighth annual Green Chile Cheeseburger Smackdown (GCCS) on September 11, 2021. Three innovative iterations on the classic green chile cheeseburger took top honors: Street Food Institute in Albuquerque won the Judges’ Award to become the Reigning Chomp; Luminaria at Inn and Spa Loretto in Santa Fe won the People’s Choice Award; and The Skillet in Las Vegas was the top pick in the Secret Judges' round, awarded by eight volunteer judges who ate, incognito, at each restaurant in the five weeks leading up to the event. As always, competition was open to any willing New Mexico restaurant. Each winning chef took home a $500 prize, and the Reigning Chomp was awarded a DISC-IT grill. DISC-IT also made the trophies for this year’s Smackdown.

Edible thanks all of our supporters, attendees, volunteers, partners, and producers, including Simply Social Media, Santa Fe Brewing Co., Rio Grande Credit Union, Bueno Foods, La Montañita Food Co-op, Bountiful Cow Cheese Company, Santa Fe Spirits, Sweet Grass Co-op, Red Barn Ranch, Trilogy Beef Community, Dr. Field Goods Butcher Shop, 2K Cattle Company, DISC-IT, and countless others who helped make this event a success. We are particularly grateful to all the restaurants and chefs for their efforts in showcasing the iconic green chile cheeseburger. Without them, we wouldn’t have a reason to celebrate. See you again on September 10, 2022, at this chile-licious event.

Tickets go on sale in July, but don’t wait to secure them— we will sell out! ediblesmackdown.com

LUMINARIA AT INN AND SPA LORETTO STREET FOOD INSTITUTE Judges' Choice—Reigning Chomp People's Choice The Burger: Angus beef patty, Hatch green chile, chile-candied bacon, cilantro-lime aioli, and avocado, served on a brioche bun

The Burger: 2K Cattle Company beef / bacon patty, green-chile-and-garlic secret sauce, Lemitar green chile, and crispy bacon, served on a brioche bun

Find: 211 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, hotelloretto.com/eat_drink/luminaria-restaurant-patio

Find: Food truck locations on Facebook facebook.com/streetfoodinstitute

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edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

304 N. Bullard St. Silver City, NM

serving dinner Friday, Saturday, Sunday Reservations Recommended www.EatDrinkRevel.com

Fresh and sweet organic pecans, from our southern new mexico orchards to your kitchen Order online at delvallepecans.com

craft beer organic wine artisan cocktails

575.524.1867

& Tasting Room Edible Local Hero 2020 Present this ad for a 2 for 1 Tasting!

Mile Marker 15 Highway 68 Velarde NM 505-852-2820 blackmesawinery.com

issue two · october 2021

issue three · november

2021

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Tacos

issue one · september 2021

The Bite · TheBiteNM.com

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The Bite · TheBiteNM.com

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The Bite · TheBiteNM.com

1

THE SKILLET Secret Judges' Choice

The Burger: Red Barn Ranch beef, Marble Double White beer cheese, and Bueno green chile, served on a green chile bun from Charlie's Bakery and Cafe Find: 619 Twelfth Street, Las Vegas, giant-skillet.com

FORK & FIG

The Burger: Beef patty, Young Guns green chile, smoked heirloom tomato, bacon, egg, sharp fromage blanc, and black garlic aioli, served on a brioche bun Find: 6904 Menaul NE, Albuquerque, forkfig.com

HIGH POINT GRILL

PAJARITO BREWPUB & GRILL

Find: 9780 Coors NW, Albuquerque, highpointgrill.com

Find: 614 Trinity Dr, Los Alamos, pajaritobrewpubandgrill.com

The Burger: Chimayó red chile–crusted Akaushi Wagyu, extra-hot Young Guns green chile, and Tucumcari green chile cheddar, served on a brioche bun

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edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

The Burger: Sweet Grass Co-op beef stuffed with Tucumcari green chile cheddar, Young Guns green chile, and pickles from Barrio Brinery, served on a brioche bun

WI NE B I ST RO

Autumn Menu Favorites Are Back!

DINNER Fri & Sat 5-9pm Sun, Mon & Thurs 5-8pm Closed Tues & Wed $6 wines by the glass before 6pm 304 Johnson St, Santa Fe 505-989-1166 terracottawinebistro.com

TUERTA

TURTLE MOUNTAIN BREWING CO.

Find: 317 Central NW, Albuquerque, tuertanm.com

Find: 905 Thirty-Sixth Place SE, Rio Rancho, turtlemountainbrewing.com

The Burger: Trilogy Beef patty, Lemitar green chile, cheddar, house pickles, and smoky sauce, served on a brioche bun from Los Ranchos Bakery

The Burger: Angus beef patty, crispy fried green chile, Chimayó red chile bacon jam, and smoked gouda, served on a brioche bun from Pastian's Bakery

From left to right: Turtle Mountain Brewing crew, Tuerta crew, and High Point Grill crew at the 2021 Green Chile Cheeseburger Smackdown.

Photos by Simply Social Media.

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edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

Salt and Board

pig + fig cafe

Now serving you at two locations: Sawmill Market at 1909 Bellamah NW and 8114 Edith NE 505-433-4076 • eldorachocolate.com

DITCH THE STORE

AND OPEN YOUR DOOR

11 Sherwood Blvd.

White Rock, NM 87547 (505) 672-2742

Monday - Saturday 7am - 7pm Closed Sundays

www.pigandfigcafe.com

Charcuterie & Wine Bar

Local Grocery Delivery Throughout New Mexico

Shop Online at:

www.SkarsgardFarms.com

115 Harvard SE Albuquerque 505-219-2001 saltandboard.com

Cooking with Chiles, from Cuicatlán to Chimayó ENDANGERED CHILES, ENDEMIC FLAVORS, AND MAKING MOLE IN NEW MEXICO

By Willy Carleton

Chilhuacle negro chiles. Photo by Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock.

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Years ago, when I first asked myself whether I could make a good mole in New Mexico, I would have never known how far down a meandering path this question would take me. The short answer to the question is yes, but it all depends on the chiles. The longer answer, based on several years of growing chiles, traveling to their origin sites and studying their history in archives, and talking to chefs and farmers in Mexico and New Mexico, is a little more complicated.

“Each chile has its own story of where they come from, and how they are prepared,” Miguel Villalpando of Nomada Goods in Santa Fe told me one afternoon not too long ago. “And I fell in love with that.” Nomada Goods imports rare, endemic chiles from Mexico—chiles historically cultivated only in specific regions. One of these chiles, the chilhuacle negro, has traditionally provided the unique, complex flavor of some of Mexico’s most famous dishes, such as the mole negro, but has in recent decades become extremely expensive and hard to find. Only a few farmers still grow it in and near a town called San Juan Bautista Cuicatlán (often called Cuicatlán for short) in the Cañada region of Oaxaca, where it originates. Chefs, researchers, and food lovers in Mexico and elsewhere are worried that this emblematic chile is in danger of extinction in its home region.

For this reason, Villalpando, along with Nomada chef Fernando Ruiz and operating partner Arthur Martinson, have been working to import the special pepper, which means “old chile” in Nahuatl. For many, the chilhuacle negro is an essential ingredient to some of the most culturally important dishes of Oaxaca. “It’s really rare, it’s really old,” he tells me. “It’s just one of those chiles.”

It has been difficult to secure the chilhuacle negro, he explains, due to a host of reasons that include pandemic-related travel difficulties, growers’ long-standing wariness of outside buyers, and issues with exporting across the border. It’s been a year and a half since Nomada has been able to sell chilhuacles through their website, and it might not be until early 2022 that their customers can hope to order them again. I am sorry to hear it because, selfishly, I want to buy some of the chiles.

“O

But I am sorry, too, because I worry about the chile itself, and the handful of producers in and around Cuicatlán who still grow it.

My research interests have taken me to Cuicatlán, where I have met a couple of the farmers who grow them, seen the valley where they grew, and heard some of the stories of that chile from local chefs and cooks. Through learning a bit of the history of this chile, I have also learned about some of the most exquisite moles of Oaxaca and have gained a deeper appreciation of how cultural treasures, no matter how deeply rooted, do not simply exist—they must be tended.

“It smells like an old man’s closet,” a fellow traveler once told me, just after sticking her nose deep into a ripped-open chilhuacle negro.

Strangely, I knew exactly what she meant. Musky, with notes of pipe tobacco and bitter chocolate, it smelled ancient, a note deep in the nose that I imagine resonates equally across time, well beyond the whims of what may be in or out of fashion. As difficult as the smell is to define, the taste is perhaps even more so. “Muy natural, muy peculiar,” is how Rosario Mendoza of Tlamanalli in Teotitlán del Valle described it to me one afternoon in her restaurant. Her sister, Abigail Mendoza, famous for her role on Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, once described the chilhuacle negro simply as “sacred.”

“El chilhuacle negro tiene un picor agradable,” explained Georgina Cruz of Hierba Dulce in Oaxaca City. Its lasting picor, the pungent tingle of the chile, is pleasant. “Other chiles are irritating,” she went on. “It has a very special aroma, a very good one, and it isn’t dañino like the chile guajillo, chile de arbol, or chile morita, which can hurt the stomach because they scream, whereas the chilhaucle negro doesn’t.”

Yet the chilhuacle is increasingly rare in Oaxacan cuisine. Recognized by UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as an important component of Mexican cuisine, the crop is in danger of extinction, according to the Mexican government and local scientists studying the crop. There are three types of chilhuacle—negro, rojo, and most rare of all, amarillo—and each type is used slightly differently, with different flavor profiles. The chilhuacle rojo, for example, might be featured prominently in a traditional manchamanteles, whereas the chilhuacle negro is the backbone of a traditional mole negro or chichilo.

Oaxaca is often called the land of seven moles, but I repeatedly heard from chefs there that something like the land of two hundred moles would be more accurate.

There are regional variations of the classics, along with entirely different moles, such as the mole blanco, that are traditionally only made in certain areas of the state.

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Left: A paste of garlic, onion, and the chilhuacle negro coat the molcajete as a salsa is prepared.

Right: Chilhuacle negro waiting to be used for a salsa. Photos by Willy Carleton.

Oaxaca is often called the land of seven moles, but I repeatedly heard from chefs there that something like the land of two hundred moles would be more accurate. There are regional variations of the classics, along with entirely different moles, such as the mole blanco, that are traditionally only made in certain areas of the state. Each of these moles is traditionally shaped around the endemic chiles of the region, of which there are over twenty. Oaxaca, in fact, has the highest diversity of landrace chiles in Mexico, and the Tehuacán Valley, which stretches between Oaxaca and Puebla, is also the home to some of the oldest domesticated chile seeds ever found. There, in a cave not too far from Cuicatlán and in the same valley the chilhuacle today calls home, a 5,600-year-old capsicum seed was found.

If you dig around the libraries of Oaxaca and look for old cookbooks, as I did one afternoon in the city, you might come across the Libro de cocina de D. Jose Moreda, año de 1832. Recipes that call for chilhuacle fill the pages. There are recipes for cod and bobo fish with chilhuacle, salsas, and moles. Reading the cookbook, the chilhuacle is so common you might even mistake it as synonymous with chile itself.

Yet today, the chilhuacle in Oaxaca is hardly common in most kitchens. “By the end of the nineties,” writes journalist Lucas Laurson, “this chile had become a cultural treasure in danger of both invasive pests and the abandonment of the few traditional producers that remained.” An important ingredient for traditional holiday meals, such as mole negro on the Day of the Dead, its importance is more cultural than purely a matter of sustenance. Home cooks throughout the state, unable to afford this traditional ingredient, often substitute it with cheaper, industrially produced chiles, such as the guajillo, pasilla, and ancho, in their mole recipes. These days, it’s only in a dozen or so restaurants in Oaxaca City that you can still regularly taste moles with chilhuacle negro.

Among those handful of restaurants is Las Quince Letras, whose chef-owner, Celia Florián, has worked hard in recent years to build a market for the Oaxacan-grown chile across the city, helping organize a network of chefs in the city to buy directly from producers in the Cañada region. Her work led to the creation of the Asociación de Cocineras Tradicionales de Oaxaca (the Association of Traditional Cooks of Oaxaca), for which she serves as president and which further helps champion the cause of the chilhuacle.

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Speaking with me one evening at her restaurant about a year before the pandemic, Florián expressed particular alarm about the trend of more and more industrially grown chilhuacles being produced in the state of Zacatecas. These peppers could potentially drive the price down and squeeze the traditional producers even more—a concern Villalpando, who only sources chilhuacle from Oaxaca, shares. What’s more is that they do not taste the same as chilhuacle grown in Oaxaca.

“They do not have the same organoleptic properties,” she explained.

The climate, the altitude, the characteristics of the water and soil—in short, the terroir—all impact the flavor. “Even if they are the same seeds, the chile is not the same result.”

I know for sure that Florián is right about the terroir of the chilhuacle, not only because she is vastly knowledgeable about Oaxacan chile, but also because, a couple of years ago now, I grew them in small isolated plots on the land I was farming in northern New Mexico.

Equipped with a USDA permit, I shipped a few bags of seed from Oaxaca to the USDA inspection station, which then, months later, sent the seeds to my home in New Mexico. I germinated the seeds in trays, transplanted them into irrigated beds, weeded them throughout the year, and watched nervously as the still-green peppers slowly ripened amid the chill of northern New Mexico’s September nights. (The New Mexican landrace chile nativo I also grew, in a separate plot that was well isolated from the chilhuacles, ripened well before the threat of frost.) Just before an early October freeze, I harvested the fruits and dried them on a rack I built in my high tunnel. Then, once they were fully dried, I made a mole.

The mole wasn’t bad, but it was nothing like the ones I had tasted in Oaxaca. It had much more fire but lacked a certain warmth. The complex mix of tobacco and chocolate was absent and the sharp, smoky bitterness was muted. It didn’t smell like an old man’s closet at all; the old man, it seemed, was still in Oaxaca. It was the same seed, but not at all the same chile.

Photo by Stephanie Cameron.

Left: A salsa molcajeteada with chilhuacle negro in the foreground, beside the coals used to cook the ingredients.

Right: A fire prepares coals to cook ingredients for a salsa. Photos by Willy Carleton.

After my recent conversation with Villalpando, my attention turned to New Mexico’s own rare and fiery cultural treasures. New Mexico’s chile nativo, a general term for the landrace chile varieties that have developed over centuries in New Mexico and become uniquely adapted to our high-desert climate and soils, is more than simply a source of pride for many in the state. It is what gives the particular type of slow burn, the lingering smokiness, the smooth and comforting flavor to some of New Mexico’s most distinctive dishes.

It also contains unique genetics, shaped by centuries of being grown here, that provide a wealth of potential protection against future chile-plant diseases and climate disruptions that could hinder local agricultural production of chiles.

Perhaps most well known among New Mexico’s landrace varieties is the Chimayó, grown in and near the town of its name for roughly four centuries. There are unique varieties to many villages and Pueblos of northern New Mexico. While they impart a complex flavor uniquely their own, they also tend to grow less uniformly than the “improved” varieties grown in the southern part of the state. They can vary in heat levels, shape, yield, and size, even among plants in the same field.

In part because of this variability and lower yield, commercial growers can often make more money growing other varieties. As a result, many are hard, if not impossible, to find commercially. And some varieties, such as the Escondida that was traditionally grown outside of Socorro, are no longer grown at all in their place of origin.

Even though “New Mexico landrace chile peppers contribute to the cultural identity of many communities in northern New Mexico,” as a recent study from New Mexico State University (NMSU) reported, “New Mexico landrace chile is threatened from a variety of issues, including cross-pollination from other C. annum cultivars, economic issues resulting in some of the farmers moving out of farming altogether, and the loss of arable farmland in northern New Mexico.” Even in Chimayó, only a handful of farmers grow the traditional landrace variety and it is not always easy to find a bag of dried red pods for your kitchen. There are reports of people selling non-landrace chile as Chimayó chile (landrace pods tend to be more wrinkled at the stem and smaller than other New Mexico chiles). For all these reasons, the NMSU report concludes that “public and community awareness and appreciation of these

unique accessions of chile pepper is critical to their preservation.”

As in Oaxaca, where the majority of restaurants opt for cheaper chiles over the Oaxacan-grown chilhuacles, most restaurants and home cooks in New Mexico opt for industrially grown, cheaper chile, grown on larger scales and most often with herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, and other chemical inputs. One key to preserving this chile is cultivating enough local appreciation for it that customers will gladly pay a bit extra for the real thing, and enough knowledge about it that restaurants and purveyors tempted to sell non-landrace chiles under the label of “native chile” would not easily succeed. More demand, of course, means more incentive for farmers to grow it.

Seeds migrate. We all eat foods from seeds that originated far from our homes. It is far more rare to eat food from seeds endemic to our place. When that is possible—and in New Mexico, that is possible with foods like blue corn, bolita beans, and chile nativo—it is an invaluable source of culinary and cultural wealth well worth preserving.

There are real concerns among local producers, whether they be in Cuicatlán or Chimayó, about large-scale farms growing vast amounts of the crop that generations of farmers have shaped over centuries—in many cases, they are the direct forebearers of those few farmers still growing it—and then selling the chile at prices low enough to make the original farming communities move away from the crop. To address these legitimate concerns, well-written and small-farmer-friendly laws that regulate origin labeling designations can help. Seeking out landrace chiles from traditional growers to help these communities is a strong incentive. Beyond that, there is also simply the matter of taste. Without a doubt, a chilhuacle grown in Zacatecas, or New Mexico, does not taste the same as grown in Oaxaca, just as, I am sure, a Chimayó chile grown in Zacatecas or Oaxaca would not either.

This brings us back to moles. What if you want to make delicious mole, reminiscent of the ones found in southern Mexico, while helping preserve endemic chiles? One good option is buy chilhuacles from importers, such as Nomada Goods, who only source their chilhuacle from point-of-origin communities in Oaxaca, when they are available (which, hopefully, they will be in early 2022). If EDIBLENM.COM

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Oaxacan-grown chilhuacles are not available, another option is to create your own versions of the moles based on the chile nativo that we have here in New Mexico.

tional Oaxacan moles nor classic iterations of New Mexico red, but rather new creations, inspired by the old chile of Oaxaca, that showcase the flavor of New Mexico’s own cultural treasure.

What follows are three recipes—two moles and one table salsa— I gathered in Oaxaca that, when substituted with New Mexico chile nativo, taste exquisitely complex. They are neither tradi-

Manchamanteles with New Mexico Chile Nativo. Photo by Stephanie Cameron.

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MANCHAMANTELES WITH NEW MEXICO CHILE NATIVO Prep time: 20 minutes (not including marination time); Cook time: 40 minutes; Total time: 1 hour Yield: 4–5 servings 6 New Mexico chile nativo pods OR 6 chilhuacle rojo pods 1 tablespoon oregano 4 large garlic cloves, minced 1 small cinnamon stick 2 cloves 3 black peppercorns 1/4 cup pine nuts 1 slice whole wheat bread 1/2 pineapple, skin removed and cubed 1/4 pound pancetta, diced 1 1/4 pound chicken thighs, skinless 1 ripe plantain 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar 2 tablespoons avocado oil or other neutral-flavored, high-heat cooking oil Salt

This is a version of the manchamanteles described in Libro de cocina de D. Jose Moreda, año de 1832, which I stumbled upon in the archives of a public library in Oaxaca. Literally meaning “tablecloth stainer,” this dish is one of the traditional seven moles of Oaxaca and, with chunks of fruit and meat dispersed among the chile, is true to its name. The original recipe is quite simple and allows for some interpretation: First, you half-toast some presoaked chilhuacle, grind them with cinnamon, clove, and pepper, and mix with meat that has been fried in a rub of oregano, garlic, and vinegar in a pot. From there, add pieces of plantain and pineapple, the amount is not precise, and a little bit of bread crumbs, and you’ve got the mole.

Here, I substitute chilhuacle with New Mexico chile nativo, and add some pine nuts to account for the change of flavor profile in chiles and to create a bit more of a New Mexican flavor. If you have access to Oaxacan-grown chilhuacle, by all means use them, and omit the pine nuts to bring out the full flavor of the chile.

In a bowl, combine garlic, oregano, and vinegar, and marinate chicken, covered, for at least an hour or up to a day, under refrigeration.

Remove the stems and seeds from chiles and toast chiles on a skillet over medium-high heat. When the sides of the chiles begin to blacken, after about 2 minutes, flip and toast the other side. The chiles are sufficiently toasted when their skin has begun to darken but is not yet charred throughout. Be sure to keep the oven fan on and ventilate the room well.

Place toasted chiles in a bowl of hot water and let sit. In the same skillet, toast cinnamon, cloves, and peppercorns for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add pine nuts. Once pine nuts become chestnut brown, usually after about 1 minute, place all ingredients into a food processor, along with a couple pinches of salt, and let sit.

Toast a slice of whole wheat bread and add to the food processor.

Meanwhile, peel the plantain and cut into 1/2-inch-thick discs. Heat 2 tablespoons of avocado oil in the same skillet, and add plantain, frying each side until it begins to crisp and darken. Remove from heat once both sides are fried. Set aside.

After the chiles have soaked for at least 20 minutes, remove from the hot water and add chiles to the food processor. Discard the chile water and add 1 cup of fresh water to the food processor. Blend until smooth.

Heat a heavy-bottomed pan over medium-high heat. Add the pancetta.

Once the fat begins to cover the bottom of the pan and the color of the pancetta begins to deepen, add chicken thighs, browning each side for 2–3 minutes. When the chicken is browned, add chile mix from the food processor, along with 1 1/2 more cups of water. Bring to a quick boil, then lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add pineapple chunks and simmer for 10 additional minutes. Add fried plantains and simmer for an additional 10 minutes, or until the sauce is the desired consistency. Add salt, to taste.

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Salsa Molcajeteada with New Mexico Chile Nativo.

Photo by Stephanie Cameron.

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SALSA MOLCAJETEADA WITH NEW MEXICO CHILE NATIVO Prep time: 5 minutes (not including time to prepare coals); Cook time: 30 minutes; Total time: 35 minutes Yield: 2 cups 2 chile nativo pods or 2 chilhuacle negro pods, seeded and destemmed 1 large tomato 1 small onion, peeled and quartered 1 head garlic 2 cups water (to soak grilled chile pods) Salt, to taste

This is a basic table salsa made with dried chile pods in a traditional volcanic-rock molcajete, or mortar. The recipe was originally given to me by a young cook in Oaxaca who has a degree in gastronomy and who goes by Ángel Miguel. At the time, he was working at a small restaurant called El Mundo Ceiba. He used chilhuacle negro, but this recipe incorporates chile nativo, if chilhuacle negro is not available. While deceptively simple, a key to this salsa is to fully cook and char the ingredients directly on hot coals, giving the salsa a smoky flavor. If making a small fire and using coals is not an option for you, grill the ingredients. Using a molcajete, rather than a blender, offers a smooth but textured sauce.

Heat coals in a grill. Once they are too hot to keep your hand directly over them for 2 seconds, add onion, garlic, tomato, and chile pods.

Move them occasionally with tongs to char the sides evenly. Once chile pods begin to blacken on both sides, remove and place into 1–2 cups of recently boiled water. Let sit for at least 15 minutes (soaking the pods makes them easier to break down into a paste). Meanwhile, once garlic is soft and roasted through, remove and set aside until cool enough to peel. When onions are charred on each side, remove and set aside.

Once tomato is charred on each side and is soft throughout, remove carefully and set aside.

Peel garlic and, along with a couple pinches of salt, place in the molcajete. Grind it into a paste with the tejolote (pestle). Once it is a smooth paste that coats the bottom of the vessel, add the onion and grind until it also is smooth. Add soaked chile pods (do not add any of the chile water), and grind into garlic-onion paste until smooth.

Add tomato, and begin to mash it gently, taking care not to splash the tomato juice. As it becomes more liquified, grind it into the base of the vessel until the salsa has a smooth consistency. Add salt, to taste.

New Mexico chile nativo. Photo by Willy Carleton.

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Miso Mushroom Mole. Photo by Stephanie Cameron.

MISO MUSHROOM MOLE Prep time: 7 minutes; Cook time: 50 minutes; Total time: about 1 hour Yield: 4 cups 1 pound crimini or button mushrooms, chopped 1 medium onion, chopped 4 garlic cloves, chopped 5 pods chile nativo or chilhuacle negro 1/4 cup pine nuts (omit if using chilhuacle negro) 3 medium-sized red potatoes, cubed Avocado oil 2 1/2 cups low-sodium vegetable stock 1 tablespoon miso paste

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This recipe is derived from one developed by Chef Valerie Frei, who was then at El Destilado in Oaxaca. Frei's original recipe for this smooth and umami-rich vegan mole uses chilhuacle negro, but here I subsitute New Mexico chile nativo, along with pine nuts, to create a sauce with a uniquely New Mexican character. I love this sauce on a simple plate of rice, beans, and roasted winter squash and root vegetables, served with tortillas.

Over medium-high heat, sauté mushrooms in 2 tablespoons of avocado oil. Stir frequently at first, then occasionally as the natural liquid of the mushrooms cooks down. Sauté until they begin to caramelize, about 15 minutes, then add garlic and onion and 1 more tablespoon of oil. Sauté for 5 more minutes, adding the pine nuts for the final minute.

Add potatoes, chile pods, and stock. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft. Turn off heat and add the miso paste. Blend with an immersion blender, or transfer to a blender.

Mix until smooth. Add salt, to taste.

EXPERIENCE Oaxaca

Edible Travels–Oaxaca! | January 26–February 3, 2022

Experience Oaxaca and all its flavor while traveling with Edible New Mexico.

We will come together around the tables of Oaxaca to share meals and

stories, discover new culinary traditions, and awaken our taste buds. Edible New Mexico patrons will appreciate special-topic visits with organic farms

and community members involved with Oaxacan sustainability efforts.

OPENHEARTTOURS.COM EDIBLENM.COM

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CHILE IS HOME

By Denise Chávez

Joe E. Parker green chiles at Luján Farms in Doña Ana. Photo by Stephanie Cameron.

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Chile is home.

It is my family. My neighborhood. My inheritance.

Es mi familia. Mi vecindad. Mi herencia.

Our family once had farms. My grandfather, Epifanio Chávez Sr., moved away from his land in Las Cruces to seek his fortune elsewhere. He worked at Shalam Colony, the utopian settlement community founded in 1884 by Faithist religious leader, John Newbrough.

Newbrough’s dream was to raise orphaned children in a healthy and natural environment. The site selected was six miles west of Las Cruces, in Doña Ana, New Mexico. Epifanio was a carpenter and laborer at Shalam Colony, but his real desire was to find gold in “them thar hills,” much to the consternation of his long-suffering wife, Guadalupe. He never did. Like Newbrough’s dreams of Shalam, Epifanio’s never came to fruition.

This loss of our land has grieved me and set me on the path of reclaiming what does belong to me: the story of my immediate family and, later, the connected family that comes from living a long time in a certain place. This blessing celebrates the enduring nature and ties that can never be broken. What belongs to me is the story of chile.

The smell of chile wafted for years between the walls of my childhood home. My next-door neighbor, Ofelia Carrillo, had converted her large backyard into a chile factory. Day in and day out during the harvest season, women with greasy arms plastered with burnt, darkened chile skins—the pellejo—pulled fresh green chiles out of costales and dropped them into a huge vat of heated oil on a burner.

The cooked chiles were removed from the giant oil pit, cooled, and then put into containers to be frozen. The large walk-in freezer in a nearby room had tubs of chile ready to be used in Ofelia’s popular restaurant, El Sombrero.

I have always loved the smell of roasting chile, and this factory suited me well. Sometimes, Ofelia would bring my mother chile fresh from the field, and my mother, Delfina, would grab one and bite into it. She liked her chile uncooked, raw.

Later, when my mother passed on and I bought the house from my sisters, Ofelia, now a dear friend, would invite me over to eat dinner with her in her lovely little yellow kitchen. Oftentimes, my husband and I would also join her for dinner at her restaurant. At that time, the restau-

“T

rant was located behind the legendary Welcome Inn Bar. Ofelia was a great storyteller and regaled us with stories of her customers and how one Sunday afternoon she ran out of glasses and went next door to the bar to borrow some. The bar had topless dancers on Sunday afternoons and her descriptions were priceless. She remembered how the elder denizens found great delight in the mature dancers—the nearby younger pool players, not so much. Ofelia had a sense of humor, but she was also a shrewd and talented businesswoman. She guarded our neighborhood fiercely and would call out to strangers, “Who are you? You’re a stranger.

Now move along, you don’t belong in this neighborhood.”

I miss the chile factory next door.

Several blocks from our house was Memorial General Hospital.

McBride Hospital, its former incarnation, was located on the same site before it was razed. The new hospital was built in 1947, shortly before my birth, but my mother felt it wasn’t up to her standards, so I was born at home. McBride Hospital was where Dr. Fabián García, the father of New Mexico chile, bedridden and sick with Parkinson’s disease, died. My mother used to talk about him all the time. They were friends, and she used to go visit him often in the hospital. She said few people went to see him there. He died August 9, 1948, six days before I was born.

My chile world includes Amador Street, named for the illustrious and prominent New Mexico family. Don Fabián García was married to Julieta Amador, but she died early, as did their infant son. Just before you get to Compress Street, and in the shadow of the giant cotton gin, was the packing shed of the Nakayama Farms. A shedlike structure is still there, reminding me of my frequent visits to Mrs. Tome Nakayama, who was always working, bending, lifting, and hauling costales of their farm produce: melons, onions, chile.

Mrs. Nakayama, the matriarch of the family, was a Japanese immigrant like her husband, John. Their son, Dr. Roy Nakayama, went on to become one of the most distinguished chile researchers in the world. In the summertime and early fall, my mother, my sister, and I would drive over to the shed, where my mother would buy melons, onions, and chile directly from Mrs. Nakayama. Her granddaughter and my friend, Peggy Nakayama Swoveland, said the packing shed was a distribution point and that most of the produce was sent to retailers. Somehow, my mother always left with produce.

This loss of our land has grieved me and set me on the path of reclaiming what does belong to me: the story of my immediate family and, later, the connected family that comes from living a long time in a certain place. This blessing celebrates the enduring nature and ties that can never be broken. What belongs to me is the story of chile.

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DR. FABIÁN GARCÍA (1871–1948) is considered the Father of New Mexico chile.

Born in Chihuahua, México, his parents died when he was a baby and he moved to the Mimbres Valley, then to Mesilla, with his grandmother. The first Hispano graduate of New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (later New Mexico State University), he was the director of the Agricultural Experiment Station and also became a professor of horticulture at the college. For many years, he was the only faculty member of Mexican descent. He developed new varieties of chile peppers, pecans, and onions that are still grown throughout the world. Dr. García left his entire estate to NMSU, including $89,000 toward the construction of a dormitory on campus for Hispano students, stating “I want to help poor boys, for I know their hardship." Portrait by Fred Feldman.

Photo courtesy of Archives and Special Collections at NMSU Library.

looking out to the world. The neighborhood grocery store sold Cokes, ice cream, and a little bit of produce, including chile. Her medicinal plants in nearby coffee tins offered help to those in need. “This one is for the females. And if you can’t make pee, try this . . .” Generous pots of red- and rose-colored bougainvillea sat near the large windows, offering a lovely view to all who entered into this neighborhood grocery store, a little treasure trove of family and story.

I have fond and enduring memories of Mrs. Nakayama, a small but incredibly strong woman, hauling costales from one area to another.

I recall that searing summer heat, the paper bags full of itchy, fuzzy melons, the odor of strong and potent onions. The chile, too, caused a reaction, and as my mother grabbed a chile with a dirt clod, dusted it off, and bit into it, I felt a tingly heat. We drove home, rich in harvest, to roast, bag, and then freeze our chile.

As a young person, I often complained about our freezer. It was small and always full of chile. We had no room for trays of ice. This was before the days of automatic ice makers, and it annoyed me that chile always supplanted anything cold.

My freezer is still full of chile, a little bit from last year, a lot from the recent harvest, with ice now taking too much space from the chile.

For many years, my family bought chile from family. We would drive out to Shalam Colony Road and find the farm of Isa Chávez and his son, Reyes, my father’s cousins. The chile crop was plentiful and delicious. Reyes’ wife, my Tía Ofelia Mesa Chávez, was always cheerful and on hand. Reyes died in his fifties, and Tía Ofelia ran the farm for more than thirty years. I loved being there and talking to her and wish I’d spent more time asking about family. Eventually, her daughter, Ana, took over. For years, I bought chile from Ana, until the farm began to concentrate on alfalfa and pecans.

My elderly father, Epifanio Jr., loved nothing more than a ride in the car to see his old haunts, especially the family home on Mesquite Street, the nearby Sunshine Grocery store catty-corner to my grandfather’s house where he slept four to a bed with his brothers. An elderly neighbor and cousin, Bestina Sánchez, now the matriarch of the little store, held court in front of the Sunshine in her wheelchair, 70

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The old neighborhood on Mesquite Street was the end of civilized Las Cruces, my father said. He often told me of walking through fields of rabbits during the Great Depression to get to school—what was then New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, now NMSU. The streets were named for trees: Mesquite, Tornillo, Álamo, with Espina Street, known for its thorns, the location of San José Cemetery. It was the cemetery where most Mexicanos were buried at that time in the city. Colorful, full of plastic flowers and homemade markers, it is the heart of La Vecindad.

These jaunts with my father were treasured. We drove around town as he enjoyed a cold yogurt treat, visiting the house he grew up in, now an art gallery. He reminisced about his family, how poor they were. “We once had land. But Dad was too good, too kind, and he gave it all away. Or he lost it.”

At one point, Epifanio moved his family to California, like many who had that dream, and came back with seashells and the memory of a child who died there, a girl named Lilia.

My childhood home, and the place where I still live, was built on cotton fields, and that has always posed a problem when having a garden. The land remembers cotton. I have a photo of those cotton fields with our lone house on that property that once belonged to my aunt, Elsie.

My father had Alzheimer’s, and he was often confused, but he always loved seeing his old house, his old street, visiting Doña Ana, where he was born before New Mexico was a state, and seeing the farms to the north and south. He loved the rows of pecan trees and seeing the chile reddening in the sun, seeing the cotton bolls full and white, ready to be harvested. Together, we bought pecans and chile from the Chávez farm off Shalam Colony Road. “This is our land?” he would ask, and I’d answer, “Yes, this was where the Chávezes had their land.”

By then, my father couldn’t eat chile, and we resorted to that familiar recipe for those with delicate stomachs: enchiladas made with

DR. ROY MINORU NAKAYAMA (1923–1988) was known as Mr. Chile.

He was the son of John K. and Tome Nakayama, who emigrated to the United States from Japan. Settling in Nebraska, they later moved to Las Cruces for John’s health. Roy attended two years at NMSU (then New Mexico A&M), enlisted in the US Army, and was called to active duty in 1943. He participated in the Battle of the Bulge and was captured. He spent seven months as a prisoner of war.

Nakayama taught and conducted research in agriculture and horticulture at NMSU for thirty-two years before retiring in the mid-1980s. He developed chile varieties that helped make chile a commercial crop, including the chile cultivars NuMex Big Jim, the NuMex R Naky (the “R” is for his wife, Rose) and the Española Improved, which was released in collaboration with Frank Mata, then superintendent of the NMSU Agricultural Science Center in Alcalde.

Photo courtesy of Archives and Special Collections at NMSU Library.

A modest and humble man, Nakayama is one of the founders of the modern chile industry in New Mexico, greatly building on the work of Dr. Fabián García.

canned Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom, Cream of Celery, or Cream of Chicken soup. As many do, my father enjoyed his creamy enchiladas. Having grown up with a single mother who was a schoolteacher and never had time to cook, I’ve never denigrated others for what they eat. Coming home for a quick lunch, she would grab a can of cold corn or peas and a raw chile, and she was set.

Nonetheless, when I was growing up, our refrigerator always had roasted chile, an olla of frijoles, and taco meat. You could always count on that food being ready to go when people came around. And many did. I am not as social as my mother, but I can say I always have chile and corn tortillas. It is surprising to know that the nearby grocery store mostly carries tortillas from Santa Fe, San Antonio, Lubbock, and Albuquerque when we have such wonderful tortillerías. One is Roberto's, founded by Roberto Estrada, who set the Guinness World Record for making the largest enchilada, and who also founded and owned Roberto's Mexican Food. Another is El Indio, a newer place that has set a very high standard.

Nowadays I buy my chile from Luján Farms in Doña Ana, near Hill. There are two ways to get there from my house, and I alternate routes. There’s always something to see along the way: the chile crop maturing in the sun, the cotton and onions ready to be picked, the pecans and their constant march to take over land and water. My heart is full and peaceful when I am around chile and on these rides to and from my chile world.

When my older sister was very ill, I bought two costales of chile for her, Sandía and Big Jim, one for salsa, the other for chile rellenos.

You buy the chile for what you are going to use it for—the Sandía, smaller and hotter for salsa; the Big Jim, for its fleshy richness as a

chile relleno. Now I mostly buy Joe E. Parker, a savory medium-hot chile that suits all my recipes. This year’s crop is different, with larger Joe E. Parker chiles that look like Big Jims, only thinner.

Of course, the big question for everyone is red or green? I would say my favorite is the red. But then again, it depends on what you are cooking, what you have on hand, y que te antoja, what is your yen.

Posole with red or green? Enchiladas with red or green? Frito pies with red? It all depends.

Red, to me, has more maturity and is more highly evolved. It has a spiritual nature that green doesn’t. I can’t and don’t want to debate this, but I do think about it. The red stays in the earth longer and its knowing is deep. There is nothing better than red enchiladas with an egg, or a red burrito bañado with frijoles de la olla. I would not eschew frijoles refritos either, especially if they are guiso-ed, or flash fried. To guiso brings out the flavor in the beans. Heat a cast-iron sartén and add cooking oil. It will steam and fill the air with heat. This is when you put in some cooked beans. They will caramelize and enrich the taste. To guiso makes a difference.

My mother never had time to really cook except when she did cook—holidays, birthdays, special days. Her tacos were legend, as were her sopapillas. She made a bread out of tortilla masa that she called galletas. My mother mostly worked with green chile, as it takes time to process dry red. Time she never had.

I prepare my red chile the old-fashioned way, by scraping the boiled red chile meat with a small, non-serrated knife that belonged to my husband’s grandfather, Xavier Wehrlen, who was in the French Foreign Legion. I am not a seed lover and will often remove the vein EDIBLENM.COM

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Denise Chávez in front of her uncle Eduardo "Eddie" Chávez’s mural. Photo by Daniel Zolinsky.

of the chile for my quesadilla, as it is the hottest part of the chile. I have never understood why people blend the chile, pellejo and all. It’s indigestible and it is the waxy exterior of the chile, the skin that you peel when it is roasted. Who wants that in their system?

When my older sister, Faride, was dying, she requested I buy her some chile. We got a costal each of Big Jim and Sandía at Luján Farms.

We drove out there and picked it up and then went to her home to bag it and put it in her freezer. She was tired and had trouble remembering which chile went in which bag. Her husband couldn’t understand why she had gotten so much chile and what all the fuss was about. I couldn’t explain it to him. Christmas was coming and it was her wish to make it to Christmas. She wanted to have the chile ready for her family. How proud and happy we were to work together bagging that chile!

Faride died in early December. Roberto Estrada had been her classmate at Las Cruces High School, and it was he who catered her funeral meal, for free. That was Roberto’s nature and why his hometown has loved him so much. When Christmas came around, my sister’s chile was ready to go.

My life is a circle of family. A circle of neighborhood. That circle leads next door to Ofelia Carrillo’s chile world. Near the corner is 72

edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

the memory of Memorial General Hospital, before that the McBride Hospital, the memory of Don Fabián García dying there, not alone, but with the company of my mother. I had a job there as a summer intern and often thought of him as I walked that long hallway on the third floor. I was in college at NMSU and knew that the most handsome boys, the ones I was attracted to, lived in García Hall, named in honor of Don Fabián García because of an endowment he left to the university.

The circle continues as I walk my neighborhood in the summer evenings and smell roasting chile and the aroma of cumin coming from a nearby processing plant the next street over. That tangy, pungent, and rich scent is my summer blessing. Down the street is the old Nakayama packing shed in another incarnation. If you take a right onto Valley Drive, it leads you eventually to one of two routes, the old Chávez farms off Picacho Street, where you turn right on Shalam Colony Road, or straight north to Doña Ana and Luján Farms, where Lucinda Luján keeps alive the legacy of her family’s chile farm.

This year’s crop of Joe E. Parker has been phenomenal. To drive to Luján Farms and to arrive there is a joyful experience. I feel at home there and feel blessed by the work and love that goes into their chile.

Lucinda honors her father, Joe, and his memory is sacred to everyone.

This year, I asked Lucinda if I could put ajo/garlic in the roaster.

On a visit to a school in Pueblo, Colorado, several years ago, they were roasting chile in the football field. The principal told me you could ask for plain chile or chile roasted with ajo. Ajo? Ajo! I resolved to try it and, this year, I did. It’s the best. I added fifteen heads. Next year, I’ll double that amount.

Much more needs to be written about Dr. Fabián García, Dr. Roy Nakayama, Roberto Estrada, and the Shalam Colony, as the history of southern New Mexico is mostly unclaimed by its people. The loss of story is always present in a living culture. And in one’s youth, the importance of this legacy seems far removed, not crucial to a person at the time. It is only when time passes that we begin to reconstruct lost stories. It is my honor to be able to share what I know about my hometown. My chile town. ¡Ay, mi chile! Chile is home.

IN LOVING MEMORY Epifanio Chávez Sr. Dr. Fabián García. Tome and John Nakayama.

Dr. Roy Nakayama. Ofelia Carrillo. Xavier Wehrlen. Epifanio Chávez Jr. Roberto Estrada. Joe M. Luján. Ofelia M. Chávez. Faride Faver Chávez Conway. Delfina Faver Chávez.

RECIPE FOR GREEN TOMATILLO ENCHILADAS For two people, with a little bit left over for quesadillas the next day 2 pounds tomatillos 1 bunch cilantro Garlic/ajo, fresh or powdered, to taste Salt Green chiles, to taste (around 4 or 5), hot as you want it Good tortillas from Las Cruces (I use Roberto’s or El Indio brand) Cheese to taste: longhorn, cheddar, colby, Monterey Jack (whatever you have on hand, but no swiss) Onion, to taste Be picky about the tomatillos. Select firm green tomatillos, nothing scrawny, mushy, or dry. The skins will be dry, but look through them to the green fleshy pulp inside.

Boil tomatillos for a few minutes until the skins are soft but not mushy. Save the water.

Blend tomatillos with 1/3–1/2 of the bunch of cilantro. Add water as needed, but not too much.

Remove seeds from the chiles. Add 4–6 chiles, to taste.

Add fresh or powdered garlic/ajo, to taste.

Add more water as needed to make a sauce that is not too thin. The taste improves the next day.

Save tomatillo water to add to soups or vegetable dishes, or to water plants.

Fry tortillas, layer flat, and spread with cheese and onion. Ladle prepared chile onto the cooked tortilla sureño/southern style. I usually do at least three layers and have often done up to seven. ¡Buen provecho! Enjoy!

Top left: Roy Nakayama's seed holder that he used while at NMSU, given to Denise Chávez and now located at her bookstore, Casa Camino Real. Photo by Denise Chávez.

Bottom left: Sun-dried red chiles and roasted green chile at Luján Farms in Doña Ana. Photo by Stephanie Cameron.

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EAT & DRINK LOCAL GUID E

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LOCAL SOURCE GUIDE FOOD ARTISANS / RETAILERS Barrio Brinery

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220 North Guadalupe, Santa Fe, 505-930-5339, kureforlife.com

La Montañita Co-op

La Montañita Co-op is New Mexico's largest community-owned natural and organic food market. Locations in Albuquerque, Gallup, and Santa Fe, lamontanita.coop

Mesa Meats

Bringing ranchers and consumers together with local quality beef, pork, and lamb.

6368 South Hwy 55, Mountainair, 575-799-0770, mesameat.com

New Mexico Harvest

Susan's Fine Wine & Spirits

Your local liquor store in Santa Fe. 632 Auga Fria, sfwineandspirits.com

Talin Market

88 Louisiana SE, Albuquerque, 505-268-0206, talinmarket.com

Bishop's Lodge is a soulful retreat steeped in heritage. 1297 Bishops Lodge, Santa Fe, aubergeresorts.com/bishopslodge

Irresistible and gently used gourmet cooking and entertaining ware. 1222 Siler, Santa Fe, 505-471-7780, kitchenangels.org

Bishop's Lodge

Kitchenality

Heritage Hotels and Resorts

Next Best Thing to Being There

Los Poblanos Historic Inn & Organic Farm

Sarabande Home

Hotels in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, and Las Cruces. hhandr.com

4803 Rio Grande NW, Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, 505-344-9297, lospoblanos.com

Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi

Sophisticated modern aesthetic celebrating the southwestern spirit. 113 Washington, Santa Fe, 505-988-3030

Sarabande B & B

An eclectic shop for handmade products.

1315 Mountain NW, Albuquerque, 505-433-3204, beingthereabq.com We have a passion for finding the perfect gift. 4022 Rio Grande NW, Albuquerque, 505-344-1253, sarabandehome.com

Smash Bangles

The newest and quirkiest gift shop in Santa Fe. 328 S Guadalupe, Santa Fe, 505-557-6149, smashbangles.com

Comfort, elegance, and simplicity.

5637 Rio Grande NW, Albuquerque, 505-348-5593, sarabandebnb.com

The Parador

Our 200-year-old farmhouse, Santa Fe's oldest inn, is located in historic downtown Santa Fe. 220 W Manhattan, Santa Fe, 505988-1177, elparadero.com

NURSERIES & SERVICES deerBrooke

Irrigation and backflow prevention specialists. Repairs, installations, and consulting.

505-319-5730, nmlawnsprinklerexperts.com

Osuna Nursery

A family-owned and -operated nursery, gardening center, and landscaping company. 501 Osuna NE, Albuquerque, 505-345-6644, osunanursery.com

ORGANIZATIONS & EDUCATION Museum of New Mexico Foundation

Philanthropic support for our state's cultural heritage. museumfoundation.org

Rio Grande Credit Union

TRIFECTA COFFEE COMPANY

Multiple locations in Albuquerque. riograndecu.org

Skarsgard Farms

RETAILERS

edible New Mexico | EARLY WINTER 2021

Gallery Ethnica

Live globally! 1301 Cerrillos, Santa Fe, 505-557-6654, galleryethnica.com

Slow Food Santa Fe

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The eclectic lifestyle store. Vintage home decor and unique gifts. 8909 Fourth Street NW, Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, 505-508-2207, foundon4th.com

LODGING

A community of people that actively invests in our food system. Eat Local. Eat Seasonal.

Eat Outside the Box Stores. Delivering across New Mexico. newmexicoharvest.com Delivering fresh, local, and organically grown produce and natural groceries to doorsteps across New Mexico. 505-681-4060, skarsgardfarms.com

Found on 4th

Slow Food is about enjoying food and the community it creates. Intrigued? Learn more at slowfoodsantafe.org.

Flyby Provisions

Enjoy shopping for boutique local New Mexico gifts—thoughtfully selected and packaged with care. flybyprovisions.com

413 Montano NE, Albuquerque 505-803-7579, trifectacoffeeco.com We roast coffee, and brew it in unique ways utilizing some of the best methods available. All of our baked goods, sweet, and savory are made in house.

Chef Michel Nischan

Photo: Saverio Blasi/shutterstock.com

Photo courtesy of Wholesome Wave

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WE ARE WHAT WE EAT It’s Time To Make Food Decisions With the Climate Crisis in Mind

STO RY

BY

Twilight Greenaway, senior editor of Civil Eats,

produced in partnership with civileats.com

If we had been told, a decade ago, that so many climate-

they said that other parts of the world—developing na-

fueled disasters would hit the food system so soon, would

tions with little infrastructure and large numbers of subsis-

we have believed it?

tence farmers—would face the worst of the problem. And

If someone had described the catastrophic flooding of the Missouri river that submerged a million acres of corn

those of us in North America? We’d be fine until at least the end of the century.

and soybeans in 2019 (followed a year later by winds in the

Then someone turned the lights back on, the economists

same region that were so destructive they flattened corn si-

thanked the audience and everyone went home. I wrote

los), produce crops in Texas freezing in April, winemakers

about the lecture, quoted the experts on the science and was

having to throw away entire vintages because they tasted of

careful to take a similarly calm tone, as if I were writing from

wildfire smoke, shellfish in British Columbia being literally

a great distance about something that may or may not occur.

cooked alive in the ocean and ranchers throughout the West

Of course, some climate scientists were already issuing

being forced to sell off tens of thousands of cattle so they

dire warnings at that point, and many had made concerns

wouldn’t starve due to drought—would we have listened?

about our ability to feed ourselves central to their pleas

Would we have done more to prepare?

for action.

I can’t help but think back to a lecture I sat in on in

But most of us had no idea how urgently we needed to

2008 on the future of food and climate change by a pair of

prepare for what we’re now seeing play out in the food sys-

Ivy League economists. I had seen An Inconvenient Truth

tem—and in the world at large. Indeed, the stakes couldn’t

and was serious about local food. And I had a hunch that

be higher. Food production has been rocked to the core and

reducing my “food miles” wouldn’t cut it.

many small and medium-scale farmers are contemplating

The economists talked about the potential boon to crop yields, due to “increased photosynthesis” and “CO2

throwing in the towel.

This fact was driven home for me this summer, as I

fertilization,” but added that warming temperature and ris-

trudged through ankle-deep mud on my family’s small farm

ing evaporation would balance one another out, at least in

in Captain Cook, Hawaii—on what was once the “dry side

our lifetimes. Some places would get too wet, and some

of the island” but has seen record-level, nearly non-stop rain-

would be too dry, they warned. And, as if to reassure us,

fall for the past year. My mother, a farmer, was dismayed at

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the constant rain’s impact on her orchards, and by the host of new

be marketing ploys, but it’s clear that they’ve realized “sustain-

invasive species—from fire ants and wild boars to slugs that carry

ability” is a term they must use literally, as in, do their business

a brain-eating parasite—that are thriving there due to warming

models have a future?

temperatures. The soil has been consistently saturated with water,

When it comes to making sure the rest of us have a future,

and the coffee and fruit trees are suffering from multiple fungal

however, I’m betting on the work of small-scale farmers and

diseases at once. The vegetables in the gardens are often stunted

ranchers—and more of them working at a human scale—as one

and mildewy as the sun has stubbornly refused to shine.

of our most important solutions to the climate crisis.

And I thought about those self-assured economists when I

If done right, farming and ranching can help bring the natu-

returned home to drought-stricken Northern California, where

ral world back into balance. And it has the potential to reverse our

I saved water from my kitchen and shower and lugged it to the

current scenario: millions of acres of land covered in monocrops

tiny garden I struggle to keep alive through the dry season. Most

growing in soil that is overly tilled, void of most life and actively

of the small-scale farms in the area didn’t have the luxury of re-

washing into the ocean nearly every time it rains.

claimed water; instead, they found themselves abandoning doz-

Soil holds three times more carbon globally than the atmo-

ens of acres at a time, making radical changes to their business

sphere does. And it can hold more if it’s managed in a way that

models, and discontinuing their CSAs. Meanwhile, the ongoing,

brings more of it back to life. But to do that we need producers

often terrifying onslaught of wildfires made the mere thought of

who are immensely curious and dedicated—who see the chal-

rain seem like a mirage on the other end of a very long desert.

lenge at hand and want to rise to meet it.

The fact that these “new normals” have already had a dra-

They need to work in concert, and they need to represent a

matic impact on the food system probably shouldn’t be a sur-

much wider swath of the population—here in North America

prise. Global temperatures have already risen 1.5 degrees Celsius

that means intentionally making space for exponentially more

above pre-industrial levels and the impacts are evident. The sixth

young people, more Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BI-

assessment report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on

POC) producers, and more LGBTQ producers. It also means

Climate Change (IPCC) in August warned of significant drops in

passing systemic policies that help them explore, invest in and

crop yields for corn, wheat, rice and other cereal grains if global

modernize the farming practices that have long been successful

temperatures hit the 2 degree C level. If that happens, the report

at cooling the planet.

said, there will be “more times of year when temperatures exceed

In plain terms that means we need more perennial crops, trees

what crops can stand” and “risks across energy, food and water

on farms (i.e., agroforestry and silvopasture), managed grazing,

sectors could overlap spatially and temporally, creating new and

cover crops, waffle gardens and other methods of deep-soil plant-

exacerbating current hazards, exposures, and vulnerabilities that

ing, crop diversity, prescriptive burns, seed sovereignty, local food

could affect increasing numbers of people and regions.”

and farm infrastructure, and multitrophic aquaculture.

Among the clear list of hazards are the “food shocks” caused

We need to help more farmers control weeds without tilling

by extreme weather events—and they show no sign of slowing

the soil. We need more compost on the surface of the soil and

down. For these reasons, food prices are expected to grow at a

more mycelia and living ecosystems below. We also need more

steadier clip than most of us have experienced in our lifetimes.

plants at the center of our plates. We need to spend more time

According to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organi-

listening to Indigenous communities and remembering that our

zation (FAO), for instance, global food prices rose by nearly 33

needs are inextricable from the needs of the natural world, and

percent between September 2020 and September 2021.

the ecosystems that have kept it in balance for millennia.

It’s not just farmers who are scrambling to respond. Many of

Most of this probably won’t require new cap and trade

the world’s largest, most powerful food companies are starting

markets, new consumer labels or new technology. But it will

to examine their supply chains in a new light, hoping to posi-

require more hands—and very likely a different, more collec-

tion themselves as part of the solution. Multinational food com-

tive approach to land ownership, at a moment when building

panies like General Mills, Smithfield, Unilever and Danone are

housing is considered a much more valuable use of land than

all publicizing the changes they’re making in their supply chains

producing food.

to address emissions and rethink their farming practices. Some

None of this will mean much if we don’t also stop burning

of these changes could have a real impact and others might just

fossil fuels—and subsidizing that burning on a global scale. But continued

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there’s more and more agreement among scientists and cli-

their foods, it often has the curious effect of making us

mate advocates that we also need to turn more of our agri-

into the kinds of people who want to vote for—and fight

cultural soil into a carbon sink, and that doing so is a matter

for—systemic change.

of how—not if.

I was thinking about this recently while lugging a

The good news is that a lot of smart people are already

bucket of dishwater out to my garden and feeling a little

working on the how. And that’s where your dinner—and

like I was wasting my time, as my neighbors were still turn-

breakfast, lunch, snacks—enter the picture.

ing on their hoses. It hurts my back, it’s absurdly time con-

There’s a healthy debate in both agriculture and climate

suming. But every time I do it, I am made again and again

circles about the value of individual action versus the need

into the person who notices water and who keeps noticing

for systemic change. And food, thankfully, lies at the in-

water—who notices plants, notices soil. And being that

tersection of both. What we do—and eat—every day is

person is what makes me ache for climate policy that pri-

who we are. When we support people who produce food

oritizes survival for all.

with soil health and the climate in mind—whether that’s

Can we change the food system in time to help cool the

buying from them directly, using a farmers’ market dollar-

planet? That’s an open question. Do we have any real choice

matching program or dining in restaurants that cook with

but to try? As I see it, absolutely not.

Closing Thoughts From Our Founder Thank you for joining us on these pages, the third in a series of thought leadership pieces from Edible Communities.

We would like to send a special thanks to our partners for this issue, Twilight Greenaway, Naomi Starkman and the team at Civil Eats who made this story possible.

Telling powerful stories about local food and community has been the mission of Edible Communities for the past 20 years. And while I know we’ve had an impact on the way food is grown and consumed throughout North America, now more than ever there is a greater urgency for all of us to do more. A lot more.

As Twilight so elegantly points out in this article, taking individual action daily—whether recycling household water in our garden or demanding more inclusivity for those raising the food we eat—is what keeps us aware and makes us pay attention. It is what makes it impossible for us to ignore the honest reality inherent in: “What we do—and eat—every day is who we are.” And it is what will ultimately lead to systemic change.

During this holiday season and as we begin a new year, I want to express my deep and enduring gratitude to the network of wildly talented individuals who are the lifeblood of Edible Communities—the publishers, editors, contributors and staff who so diligently work to bring you these important stories throughout the year—every single one of whom has courageously and tirelessly fought to keep their local food communities alive, even in the face of a global pandemic. With independent journalism being threatened today more than at any time in our history, it’s especially important for us to support their efforts. The ability to maintain editorial independence and to dive deeply into urgent issues like the climate crisis are critical to the health of our society. That is why organizations like Civil Eats (civileats.com) are so important to us and to our mission. I encourage you to subscribe to their newsletter, donate, be informed, pay attention—help effect change.

Tracey Ryder, Co-Founder & CEO Edible Communities

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LAST BITE

D.H. LESCOMBES WINERY & BISTRO IN OLD TOWN ALBUQUERQUE From lush, dark reds to bubbly and bright whites, there’s a wine for everyone at D.H. Lescombes. Their epicurean offerings complement their wines to provide an exquisite dining experience. D.H. Lescombes Winery & Bistro opened in Albuquerque’s historic Old Town in 2005, originally under the St. Clair Winery & Bistro name.

The Lescombes Family Vineyards sits on two hundred acres outside of Deming in the Mimbres Valley, where Florent and Emmanuel Lescombes carry on their family’s sixgeneration history of winemaking. In addition to their vineyard and winery in the southern part of New Mexico, they also have bistros located around the state.

The Last Bite is brought to you by Rio Grande Credit Union and highlights New Mexico’s food entrepreneurs and small businesses.

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