Everyone has that meal….. you know, the one from your childhood. Maybe your parents made it for you a few times, it became your after-school snack, then in college, you’d make it to feel closer to home, and in adulthood it’s nostalgic and comforting. That meal. Since my nostalgic meal is best served in the fall, and chile season is upon us, let’s discover a bit about the history of green chile and Hatch, New Mexico! I’ll keep you in suspense as to what my particular meal is until the end….. it’s so good you may want to claim it!
As any good New Mexican knows, Hatch is the Chile Capitol of the World (read it and weep Colorodans), and will be hosting their 53rd annual Hatch Chile Festival over Labor Day weekend (that’s next week, so mark your calendars!).
The town of Hatch New Mexico – and eventually the chile – was named after General Edward Hatch, the Commander of the District of New Mexico in 1875 (while in this position he helped negotiate a treaty with the Ute people of the area). Previously the town had been known as Santa Barbara, but seeing as New Mexico out produces California in tasty green chiles, a certain distinction had to be made.
As for the star of the show, the green chile may have been introduced to the area as early as the arrival of Captain General Juan de Onate in 1598 (founder of Santa Fe in 1609). However, just a decade earlier, on the Antonio Espejo Expedition to New Mexico, one of the members noted about the Puebloans, “They have not chile, but the natives were given some seed to plant.” And once the Spanish began to settle the territory, chiles of all kinds began to be cultivated, but especially the variety (previously known as “Anaheim”) that would grow green and turn red in the fall. These chiles did so well that there are at least a dozen different varieties statewide, not to mention the much milder Anaheim variation from California or “Pueblo Chile” (ahem bell pepper) from Colorado – which is actually a New Mexican variant grown in not-as-good soil.
In the early 20th century a man named Fabian Garcia, a professor of horticulture at the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now known as New Mexico State University) pioneered the New Mexico food industry and introduced new ways to cultivate chiles and pecans, and even introduced new strains of the green chile during his studies.
It is thanks to this history that I am here to share with you my favorite childhood snack..… hopefully you can keep up, it’s a rather complex recipe. Roasted green chile on a tortilla. This snack was first introduced to me when my family moved to New Mexico when I was a little girl. My father had gone to the “local” (45 minutes away) Albertsons to acquire some roasted green chile. If you’re not familiar with the state during the fall, many different stores, farmers markets, gas stations, and roadside minivans, set up their roasters to roast the green chiles to sell. Anyway, while in line, a woman was going down the line with a snack for those having to sit and smell the amazing scent of roasting chiles (surely everyone was drooling). This snack was a freshly roasted green chile sprinkled with garlic salt on a tortilla. Obviously, my dad’s life was changed for the better, and he shared this knowledge with me. A love of green chiles became deeply seeded (pun intended), and in high school my English teacher would open her windows wide during roasting season (the gas station across the street from my high school is still my favorite place to buy green chiles) and torture the whole class..… no off campus lunches for us! Needless to say, peeling and deseeding green chiles became a sort of zen activity for me, as I knew I would soon be enjoying my very favorite snack. Now the best way to eat it is almost certainly freshly out of the roaster, but we often have to settle for the nuked variety.
Green chile on a tortilla:
- 1-2 roasted green chiles
- 1 flour tortilla
- Garlic salt to taste
- Peel and deseed the green chile (I find it’s the easiest to do under a thin stream of running water)
- Place said chile on a tortilla and sprinkle with garlic salt
- Warm in microwave for a few seconds (15 to 30)
- Enjoy and repeat until satisfied..… you may deplete your stock.
You’re Welcome,
Mountain Girl
Mountain Girl Goes 
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