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Sunset, December 2006, by Mary Stuedli (copyright)
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Now, that part of things aside, this little corner of the world has a wonderful vegetable (a pepper to be precise) that was, until just recently, little known and nearly impossible to get outside of the borders of our boxy state. Out of state friends and relatives of mine have hunted, haggled, and fanagled a few places or people who can supply them with this vegetable.
Fall here. . . that magical time when the shadows begin to grow long and golden. The earth and sky cool and you can simply sit where you want and breath in the warm soothing scent of the green chili roasting. Roasting in backyards on grills, parking lots of grocery stores, and at roadside fruit and vegetable stands.
It is said to cure everything from a foul mood to the worst cold. Certainly the endorphins dropped into your system on eating this spicy-leafy flavored pepper will leave you feeling a bit more than you were. In short, it is the ultimate feel good food in my humble little corner of the world.
Tonight I'm sharing my version of a classic way to eat this wonderful vegetable, the green chili pepper. My version uses some spices that are definitely NOT traditional additions to a green chili stew, but they do make the flavor pop! I'll also give some advice for making this dish more palatable to little and/or tender mouths.
Makes about 4 vegetarian servings and 8 - 10 omnivorous servings. Just skates over planned prep and cook time at about 1 hour due to cooking time.
Ingredients:
- 1 lb lean ground beef
- 5 morning star vegetarian breakfast sausage patties (or other vegetarian sausage or lentils heavily spiced with sage, thyme, salt, and pepper).
- 2 tbs thyme
- 2 tbs cumin
- 2 cartons vegetable stock, broth, or 4-5 cups water
- 5-6 roasted green chili pods (a good sized pod will sit just inside the length of your hand with fingers outstretched), peeled, seeded, and chopped OR comparable amount frozen or canned green chilies (roughly 6-8 ozs) - this can and should vary according to taste and your tolerance (or the tolerance of those eating the stew with you) to spicy heat. Although a cousin of the red chili often used in tex-mex or true mexican dishes, green chili tends to be spicier than it's red-headed cousin (so much for that myth, eh?)
- 6 to 8 ready to cook corn tortillas (Fresca and Tortilla Land are the main brands found here, I have no preference for one over the other, Smiths/Kroger has a store brand version here as well). If you can't find ready-to-cook tortillas, the already cooked kind should do, they'll just loose a bit of their vitamins with the extra cooking.
- 6-8 small red potatoes.
Tools:
- You'll need two cooking pots for this one and a cast iron skillet if you are planning to add iron to your vegetarian version of this soup (and that's not a bad idea, green chili is packed with vitamin C which aids in the absorption of iron).
- Large kitchen knife
- Good cutting block or board
- old fashioned wooden spoon
Preparation and cooking:
- Start by sauteing the sausage and ground beef, in that order and not together, in the skillet.
- Cut up the sausage patties into small chunks or break apart to resemble the texture of the ground beef. Saute this in a bit of olive oil or coconut oil over low heat until it starts to brown. Add cumin and time to the sausage and allow to cook until fragrant. Add this to one of your two soup pots.
- Next, saute the ground beef over low heat. Just before it is fully browned, add in cumin and thyme and cook until fragrant. Drain the ground beef immediately. Add it to the remaining empty soup pot.
- Alternatively, you can just cook the sausage and meat in their respective soup pots to save on the extra dish and avoid potentially doing the sauteing in the wrong order which would ruin the vegetarian dish.
- While the sausage and meats are cooking, dice up the chilies (does not need to be done if you bought diced chilies in the can or frozen), cut the potatoes into bite size pieces or smaller, and cut the tortillas into 1 x 1/2 inch strips. Divide the ingredients into the pots so that 1/3 of the ingredients go to the vegetarian pot and 2/3 go into the omnivorous pot. Adjust amounts of green chili now to suit the tastes of those you are serving this to.
- Add vegetable stock and or water so that ingredients are completely covered and submerged by up to 1 to 1 1/2 inches of liquid.
- Cover lightly and bring to a rapid boil (about 10 minutes). Watch carefully during this period and do not cover if your pots have a tendency to boil over.
Reduce heat and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes longer. The tortillas and potatoes will thicken the broth so there is not need to add any flour or other ingredients to the stew. - The stews will cook at slightly different rates since they are different amounts and different ingredients so watch carefully. It is likely that one will have to cook longer than the other.
- The stews will be done when you notice that the broth is gravy like (no longer clear) and the potatoes are tender when pierced.
Serving
- Serve in bowls with a large spoon in a quite place where you can watch the long golden shadows stretch into the pink and orange tinged skies.
Alternatives
- Leave out the corn tortillas and serve with big, fluffy flour tortillas on the side.
- Sides can include the classic simple salad of diced to tomatoes and shredded lettuce, refried beans, or "Spanish" rice if you so choose.
- top with a bit of cheddar.
- For very tender mouths, you can wrap the diced chilies in a bit of cheese cloth and simply dangle them in the soup to flavor it like a bouquet garni during cooking. Remove the bouquet after the soup has finished cooking to avoid biting into a spicy pepper.
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