New Mexican Recipes - Green Chili Enchilada Sauce

[ljplicease]

Background: I get asked for recipes for my Green Chili Enchiladas, Guacamole and Posole from time to time, so I thought I would write them up here so that I can point people to it when they ask for it. These are the instructions for the Green Chili Enchilada Sauce which should be made well in advance of the rest of the Whole Enchilada. I usually make some midweek or so (Wednesday) in preparation for a party on Saturday. Once prepared, you can store the sauce in the fridge for a couple of weeks. I will write up the other recipes later.

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• ½ large onion, chopped
• 1 large clove of garlic, chopped
• 2 tablespoons flour
• ¼ teaspoons ground cumin
• 1½ cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth, if you are cooking for vegetarians)
• green chilies (see note below)
• ¼ teaspoon oregano
• ½ teaspoon salt

Start off by heating up the oil. Once it is nice and hot, throw in the onions and garlic and cook at medium until they start to wilt and begin to become translucent. Stir in the flour, cumin and black pepper. The mixture will tend to ball up, but don't worry about that. Pour in the chicken or vegetable broth and stir with a wire whisk to smooth out the lumps. Add all remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and cover and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Note on "amounts": This is vaguely based on a recipe I got out of a book, but I don't measure things out anymore. I throw in the stuff that I like until it tastes good. One of the fun things about cooking is that you can sample as you go along.

The green chilies in particular play a big part in how spicy the sauce will be. The tricky thing is that spiciness depends in large part to the lack of humidity where the chili was grown. This means there is an enormous variation in the spiciness of two of the supposedly same kind of chili. I am usually making two sets of sauce, one hot and one mild. The mild one is pretty easy. I use canned chopped green chili; frozen is better; fresh is best; but I live in New York so I have to work with I got. Anyway, I usually put one or two 8oz cans of green chilies in the mild version and dump a whole lot in the hot one and sample it until it tastes right. This is important, because you are not throwing in all the chilies just to make it hot, you are throwing them in to make them taste good.

If you have fresh green chilies, you will need to roast and peal them. Chop them up and throw them in at the appropriate moment. If you can, you should get Hatch green chilies, as Hatch claims to be the green chili capital of the universe. Since I don't know of anyone else vying for the title I assume it is legitimate.