Modern Day Madeleine

It takes a lot to be able to call a place home.  When I moved from San Francisco to Santa Fe-- i.e., from my hometown and the greatest city on earth to some dusty, forgotten trading post in the middle of a state a lot of Americans have never heard of-- I had no intention of putting down roots.  Funny how fast a girl can eat her words.  As it turned out, Santa Fe was such a magical place that just one blog post could never do it justice.  I might be a bit biased-- after all, I spent two years at a wonderful school, I met my future husband, I got a really fantastic dog, and had some great friends during the time I spent in The City Different.  The cards really were stacked in my favor.

But let me describe one of the things that makes Santa Fe, and the southwest as a whole, objectively special: chile.  My first night in Santa Fe, I arrived at the hostel after dark.  Hungry and tired, I asked at the front desk if there were any decent restaurants close by that would still be open.  Ten minutes later I was sitting at a little two-top tucked in the corner of one of the dark, labyrinthine rooms of a Santa Fe institution, Maria's New Mexican Kitchen.  While I stared at a margarita menu several pages long, a waiter who looked and acted like he'd been working there for 20 years (and I later found out that he had), asked me what'll I have.  Cheese enchiladas, please.  Red, green, or Christmas? he asked.  When I looked up at him blankly, he actually cracked a smile and said, Red chile, Green chile, or both?  And right then and there, yet another fierce addiction to chile was born.  

Some people adhere to red chile, the chile which has been allowed to ripen to redness and is then dried-- it's a much smokier, earthier flavor, and often much spicier than the green.  And others are intense supporters of the green chile, picked while still young and then roasted in massive, rotating metal roasters till the skins blister off.  Green chile, since it is cooked fresh, is always chunky; red chile, since it's made from dried chiles that must be blended, is always smooth.  Both, especially in late fall right after harvest, are as spicy as anything you have ever eaten.  I myself, ever since my first night in Maria's, have always been a Christmas girl.

After Adam and I graduated from school, curiosity brought us to Portland, and then a year and a half later, a job opportunity brought us out to Hood River.  We love it here, and I hope we stay a long time, but we are both homesick for Santa Fe, there's no denying it.  But as luck would have it, New Mexicans are not as few and far between as I thought, and I discovered that not only is one of my new co-workers from Albuquerque, but she loves chile too!  Loves it so much that she stocks up on it when she goes home to visit, and even had enough to give me a bag of it!  I couldn't believe my luck, and after some cursory protestations, I happily received her kind gift.

A couple nights later, look what Adam and I had for dinner:  

Green chile enchiladas!  Though the October Gorge winds whipped around outside our house, and the snow-capped Mt. Adams sat stately in the dining room window, we were transported to the dry sunny heat of the high desert for a few happy minutes.

My coworker gave me a great recipe for green chile sauce, too-- after thawing the raw green chile, you just stir it into a roux and then thin or thicken to your contentment with water.  You may also add oregano and cumin if you like.  If your chile is from New Mexico, you will NOT need to make it any spicier than it already is.  Case in point, my shiny forehead:

As we gasped and exhaled and chugged water, Adam said, "Woo!  I'm starting to get leaky."  and he blew his nose.  We laughed, and reminisced some more about our beloved southwestern town.