Tomatillos!

Red or green? Those 3 words make up the offical New Mexico state question. With the Balloon Fiesta around the corner and 2,230 miles between us we can’t help but think about green chile harvest season in New Mexico. Luckily, we received a nice batch of tomatillos from Steve at Parker Farm and decided to use these as a base for our pork chile verde. Given we did not have green chilies to make this truly authentic, we found poblanos to be a worthy contender.

The first step to a great chile verde involves lots of roasting. We grabbed our largest baking pan and threw in our tomatillos along with four jalapenos drizzled with oil.

We roasted our pepper pan at 500 for a good 20 minutes until the skins were slightly charred. While those were roasting in the oven, we utilized all four burners on our gas stovetop as a make-shift chili roaster for the poblanos. The chilies finished around the same time and the house smelled SPICY!

In our over-sized Le Creuset we slowly browned four pounds of pork shoulder and to this we added a puree of the roasted tomatillos and peppers, four cups of chicken stock and cumin to taste. Set to low heat, we walked away and let our stew simmer for 6 hours.

After the stew was done simmering, we had delicious filling for our enchiladas topped with fresh cilantro and jack cheese.

The Salted Cod is not one for showboating but this was an excellent chile verde and we couldn't have been prouder. It brought us right back to our stay in New Mexico.