New Mexican cuisine is the regional cuisine of the US state of New Mexico. Part of the broader Southwestern cuisine, New Mexico food culture is a fusion of Pueblo Native American, Spanish, Mexican, Tex-Mex, cowboy chuckwagon, French, and Mediterranean influences. New Mexican cuisine developed in uniquely isolated circumstances and is therefore not like any other Mexican food in the United States.
Video New Mexican cuisine
Chile and other ingredients
New Mexico chile is the defining ingredient of New Mexican food. Chile is New Mexico's largest agricultural crop. Within New Mexico, green chile is also popular in non-New Mexican cuisines including Mexican-style food and "American food" like cheeseburgers, french fries, bagels, and pizza. The New Mexico official State Question is "Red or green?" This refers to the choice of red or green chile with an entrée. "Christmas," a relatively new tradition, is a request for both (one side covered with green, the other with red) New Mexico red and green chile have such a rich and distinctive flavor that traditional preparations require few additional flavoring ingredients. The essence of New Mexico chile preparation is its simplicity.
The New Mexico green chile is a variety of the chile pepper, Capsicum annuum, and was developed as a recognizable strain in New Mexico by the late nineteenth century. It is available today in several distinct and selectively-cultivated strains called cultivars. The chile pepper is grown in the state's very high altitude (4,000-8,000 ft) and dry, hot climate. Much like grapes for wine, these growing conditions contribute, along with genetics, to giving New Mexico green chile its distinctive deep green color, texture, and flavor. The climate of New Mexico tends to increase the capsaicin levels in the chile pod compared to pods grown in other other regions. This results in the possibility of hotter varieties. New Mexico green chiles can range from mild to extremely hot. At harvest time (August through the middle of October) green chile is typically roasted, peeled and frozen for the year ahead. Chile is such a staple in New Mexico that many national restaurant chains offer New Mexico chile at their New Mexico locations.
New Mexico red chile is simply the fully ripened green chile pepper. As it ripens, it first turns orange and then quickly turns red. As it does so, the skin thickens and fuses to the inner fruit or "meat" of the pepper. This means that, for the red pepper to be enjoyable, it must first be dried then blended into a puree. The puree can be made using full red chile pods or red chile powder (which is made by finely grinding the dried pod). The purée is not edible until cooked as red chile sauce. This is made by cooking the puree with garlic, salt - and ocassionally oregano - and has the consistency of tomato soup. Discerning native New Mexicans prefer sun-dried over oven-dried red chile, as the oven-drying process gives it a non-traditional smoky flavor and a dark maroon color. Red chile peppers are traditionally sun-dried in bundles called ristras, which are a common decorative sight on porches and in homes and businesses throughout the Southwest. The process of creating the ristra is highly labor-intensive, so the ristra in recent decades has become a predominantly decorative item.
The bulk of New Mexico chile is grown in the Hatch Valley in the south of the state, in and around the village of Hatch. It is also grown along the entire Rio Grande Valley, and Chimayo in the north is also well known for its chile.
Wheat flour tortillas are more prevalent in New Mexico cuisine as a table bread than corn tortillas. However, corn tortillas, corn tortilla chips, and masa are the foundations of many traditional New Mexico dishes, and sometimes made of blue corn. Common traditional dishes include enchiladas, tacos, posole, tamales, and sopaipillas as a dessert.
Maps New Mexican cuisine
History
Before the arrival of Europeans, New Mexico's current borders overlapped the areas of the Navajo, Mescalero, and Chiricahua tribes. The Spaniards brought their cuisine which mingled with the indigenous. They introduced, wheat, rice, beef, mutton/lamb, among other foods and flavors, to the native corn, chile, beans, squash, and other native delights. At the end of the Mexican-American War, New Mexico became part of the United States, and was strongly influenced by incoming American tastes.
This distinct history--combined with the local terrain and climate--has resulted in significant differences between the cuisine of New Mexico and somewhat similar styles in California, Arizona, and Texas.
Many residents in the north and the capital, Santa Fe, are descended from Spanish noblemen and explorers who came in the 16th century. Mexicans arrived later. "Anglos" and African Americans traded and settled after the Civil War.
New Mexico's population includes Native Americans who have been on the land thousands of years. Most recently, Asian and Indochinese immigrants have discovered New Mexico.
When New Mexicans refer to chile they are talking about pungent pods, or sauce made from those pods, not the concoction of spices, meat or beans known as Texas chili con carne. While chile, the pod, is sometimes spelled chili, chilli, or chillie elsewhere, US Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico made this state's spelling official in a sense, by entering it into the Congressional Record.
One of the first authors to publish a cookbook describing traditional New Mexican cuisine was educator and writer Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert, who published Historic Cookery in 1931. Her work helped introduce cooking with chiles to the United States more broadly.
Popular foods and dishes
The following foods and dishes are common in New Mexican cuisine.
- Albóndigas: Meatball soup - traditionally made with beef broth, ground pork or beef, vegetables and rice. Also known as sopa de albóndigas. Albóndigas is the term for the dish as well as the meatball itself.
- Arroz dulce: sweet rice pudding, a traditional Northern New Mexican desert, primarily popular in traditional homes, and rarely found in restaurants. Rice is generally cooked in milk and water. Then, simmered with sugar and raisins, garnished with cinnamon, and served hot.
- Atole: a thick, hot gruel made from blue corn meal in New Mexico.
- Bizcochito: anise-flavored cookie sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, traditionally made with lard. It was developed by residents of New Mexico over the centuries from the first Spanish colonists of what was then known as Santa Fe de Nuevo México. Although Biscochitos may sometimes be found at any time of year, they are a traditional Christmas cookie.
- Burrito: The New Mexico burrito is a white flour tortilla with fillings such as such as pork carnitas, chicken, ground or shredded beef, carne adovada, refried pinto beans, and fried potatoes. It is often served as an entree smothered with red or green chile sauce and melted cheese. It is often served a la carte and to go with the red or green chile inside rather than smothered. Standard traditional versions: bean and cheese, ground beef and refried beans, ground beef and potato, carne adovada.
- Breakfast burrito: a breakfast version of the above, typically including scrambled eggs, potatoes, red or green chile, cheese (usually Cheddar), and sometimes bacon.
- Calabacitas: Chopped green summer squash with onions, garlic, yellow corn, green chile, sauteed in oil.
- Caldillo: a thin, green chile stew or soup of meat (usually beef, often pork or a mixture), potatoes, and green chiles. Sometimes called caldito, especially as a side dish. Both terms are diminutive forms of the Spanish word, caldo, for soup.
- Capirotada: a bread-pudding dessert, traditionally made during Lent festivities. Capirotada is made of toasted bread crumbs or fried slices of birote or bolillo bread, then soaked in a syrup made of melted sugar, or 'piloncillo, and cinnamon. It usually contains raisins, and possibly other fruits and nut bits. Finely grated cheese may be added when it's still hot from the oven, so that it melts. Served warm or cold.
- Carne adovada: Cubes of pork that have been marinated and slow-cooked in red chile sauce, garlic and oregano,.
- Carne asada: roasted or broiled meat (often flank steak), marinated.
- Carnitas: grilled grilled or broiled cubes of pork traditionally smothered with red or green chile sauce and served as and entree.
- Chalupa: a corn tortilla, fried into a bowl shape and filled with shredded chicken or other meat or beans, and usually topped with guacamole and salsa. (Contrast with the larger and vegetable-laden California-style equivalent known as taco salads; compare with tostadas.)
- Chicharrones: pork rinds, deep-fried pieces of pig skin usually including a layer of meat.
- Chile or chile sauce: A sauce made from red or green chiles by a variety of recipes, and served hot over many (perhaps any) New Mexican dish. Chile does not use vinegar, unlike most salsas, picantes and other hot sauces. Green chile is made with chopped roasted chiles, while red chile is made with chiles dried and ground to a powder. Thickeners like flour, and various spices are often added, especially garlic and salt. Chile is one of the most definitive differences between New Mexican and other Mexican and Mexican-American cuisines (which often make a different green chile sauce from tomatillos). Mexican and Californian tend to use various specialized sauces for different dishes, while Tex-Mex leans toward the use of salsa picante and chili con carne (and even Cajun-style Louisiana hot sauce). New Mexican cuisine uses chile sauce as taco sauce, enchilada sauce, burrito sauce, etc. (though any given meal may use both red and green varieties for different dishes). A thicker version of green chile, with larger pieces of the plant, plus onions and other additions, is called green chile stew and is popular in Albuquerque-style New Mexican food; it is used the same way as green chile sauce, as a topping for virtually anything, including American dishes. The green chile sauce is can sometimes be hotter than its red counterpart, though this depends entirely on the varieties used.
- Chiles: Peppers of the New Mexico cultivars of the Capsicum annuum species. They are visually and genetically similar to Anaheim peppers, but usually hotter with a different taste and texture. The large, flavorful New Mexican variety gives the region's cuisine much of its distinctive style, and used so extensively that it is known simply as "chile" (see entry above). Green chiles are those that are picked unripe, roasted, and peeled for use. Red chiles are the ripe form of the same plant (though particular cultivars are bred for intended use as red or green chile). Generally more piquant than green chiles, they too can be roasted, but are usually dried; they can be added whole, to spice an entire stew, or more often are ground into powder or sometimes flakes. Chiles may be referred to as chile peppers, especially if the sentence requires them to be distinguished from the chile sauce made from them.
- Chile con queso: chile and melted cheese mixed together into a dip.
- Chiles rellenos: whole green chiles stuffed with cheese, dipped in egg batter, and fried. This dish varies from other Mexican-style cuisines in that it uses the New Mexican chile, rather than a poblano pepper.
- Chimichanga: a small, deep-fried meat and (usually) bean wheat-tortilla burrito, also containing (or smothered with) chile sauce and cheese; popularized by the Allsup's convenience store chain with a series of humorous commercials in the 1980s with candid footage of people attempting and failing to pronounce the name correctly. Chimichangas, like flautas and taquitos, are a fast-food adaptation of traditional dishes in a form that can be stored frozen and then quickly fried as needed; they are also rigid and easily hand-held, and thus easy to eat by people while walking or driving.
- Chorizo: spicy pork sausage, seasoned with garlic and red chile, usually used in ground or finely chopped form as a breakfast side dish or quite often as an alternative to ground beef or shredded chicken in other dishes.
- Cilantro: a pungent green herb (also called Mexican or Chinese parsley, the seeds of which are known as coriander) used fresh in salsas, and as a topping for virtually any dish; not common in traditional New Mexican cuisine, but one of the defining tastes of Santa Fe style.
- Cumin (comino): The quintessential "Mexican food" spice, cumin is used very differently in New Mexican food, usually reserved for spicing ground beef and sometimes other meats for burritos, tacos, and nachos. It is not used to flavor red and green chile sauces.
- Corn (maize): A staple grain, the yellow sweet corn variety is most common in New Mexico, though white is sometimes used, and blue and red flint corn varieties are used for specialties like atole and blue-corn tortilla chips. Kernel corn and corn on the cob are frequent side dishes, as in the rest of the American South. Corn is not a frequent component of New Mexico salsa or pico de gallo.
- Empanadita: a little empanada; a pasty or turnover filled with sweet pumpkin, fruit, or minced meat, spices and nuts.
- Enchiladas: corn tortillas filled with chicken, meat or cheese. They are either rolled, or stacked, and covered with chile sauce and cheese. The stacked version is called a flat enchilada, and is normally referred to in New Mexico as a Santa Fe-style enchilada. It is usually covered with either red or green chile sauce, and optionally topped with a fried egg. Flat enchiladas made with blue-corn tortillas are a particularly New Mexican variation.
- Fish: Being landlocked, New Mexico has no native sea food tradition, but freshwater fish are not uncommon entrees, especially trout. Crayfish are found in New Mexico. In the southeast of the state, crayfish tails are also consumed, as in Texas and Louisiana. While the native population made use of freshwater shellfish since prehistoric times, they are not common in modern New Mexico cuisine, though it has adapted various sea food items (e.g., shrimp tacos are common in restaurants).
- Flan: a caramel custard.
- Flauta: a small, tightly rolled, fried enchilada filled with cheese and sometimes chicken, pork, or another meat; corn tortillas are traditional, though flour are also used. Compare chimichanga and taquito.
- Frijoles: whole pinto beans. Along with spanish rice, frijoles are the standard side served with any entrée. Traditional New Mexico beans are cooked very simply with salt pork and garlic. Frijoles are often served whole in New Mexico, rather than as refried beans (Frijoles refritos).
- Frijoles refritos: refried beans. The whole cooked beans are fried in bacon fat and mashed until they turn into a thick paste. Also known as simply refritos and often served with a topping of cheese.
- Frito pie: A Tex-Mex casserole, made of chile con carne atop a bed of Fritos (or similar) corn chips, topped with cheese, and baked. Although a Texas invention, it has become popular in New Mexico.
- Green chile cheeseburger: widely considered the New Mexican variety of cheeseburger, it is a regular hamburger that is topped with melted cheese and either whole or chopped green chile. The flavor is very distinctively New Mexican as opposed to other types of hamburgers, and is even offered in the region by major fast food chains.
- Green chile cheese fries: a New Mexican variant to traditional cheese fries, fries served smothered with green chile sauce and topped with cheese.
- Green chile stew: similar to caldillo with the use of green chile. Standard ingredients are coarsely-chopped green chile, ground or cubed beef, ground or cubed pork, potato, diced tomato, onion, garlic, and chicken or beef stock.
- Guacamole: traditional New Mexico version is made of Haas avocados smashed or blended with a very small amount of the following: onion, tomato, and jalapeño (all finely chopped) ; garlic, and lemon juice. Unlike typical Mexican versions, it is not thinned into a sauce with other ingredients. This makes it so thick that it is often served with a large ice-cream scoop as a ball. It is often served as "Guacamole Salad," an appetizer with tortilla chips on a bed of lettuce and topped with chopped tomatoes and a wedge of lemon (not lime). The lemon wedge, however, is becoming more scarce in recent years. New Mexican guacamole is also popular as a side or addition to other New Mexico dishes. It is most popular as a topping paired with a dollop of sour cream on taco salads and specialized nachos. It is also popular as a dip with taquitos or flautas; as a topping for chimichangas, burritos, tacos, enchiladas; and as a filling or topping for stuffed sopapillas.
- Horno: an outdoor, beehive-shaped oven ubiquitous in Pueblo communities.
- Huevos rancheros: Fried eggs any style on corn tortillas, smothered with red or green chile sauce, and topped with shredded cheddar cheese - often served with potatoes and/or pinto beans. Flour tortillas on the side come standard.
- Indian Fry Bread: A traditional thick flabread of deep-fried dough, developed by the Navajo people after the "Long Walk", when they were forcibly relocated to Bosque Redondo, New Mexico. Served as a snack with honey or for making Navajo tacos. The flavor is very similar to the New Mexico sopaipilla.
- Jalapeño: a small, fat chile pepper, ranging from mild to painfully hot, occasionally used chopped (fresh) in salsa, sliced (pickled) on nachos, or split (fresh) and stuffed with cheese (outside of New Mexico, cream cheese is more common). Although jalapeños are common to all Mexican and Mexican-American cuisines, their use in New Mexican food tends to be lesser, in favor of green chile. Because New Mexican cultivars of the green chile approach them in piquancy, they are often used only when their distinct flavor is desired.
- Natillas: soft custard-like dessert made from egg whites, milk, white sugar, vanilla, nutmeg, and cinnamon - cooked while whisking on a stove top and served either warm or cold.
- Navajo taco: A taco made with frybread, rather than a tortilla.
- Oregano: The most common spice used in traditional New Mexican dishes. It is used sparingly.
- Panocha: a pudding made from sprouted wheat flour and piloncillo. The sprouted-wheat flour is called "panocha flour," or simply "panocha", as well.
- Pastelitos': ("little pies") a thin pie baked on flat cookie sheet with dried fruit and spices, usually cut into small squares.
- Pico de gallo ('rooster's beak'): A cold salsa with thick-chopped fresh chiles, tomatoes, onions and cilantro, it does not have a tomato paste base like commercial packaged salsas, and never contains vinegar.
- Piñones: piñon nuts, a traditional food of Native Americans in New Mexico that is harvested from the ubiquitous piñon pine tree.
- Posole: a thick stew made with hominy and pork. Chicken in lieu of pork is a popular variation. It is simmered for hours with pork or chicken and then combined with red or green chile plus other ingredients such as onion, garlic, and oregano. Native New Mexicans include off-cuts of pork (especially pork rinds and pigs feet) in the pork version. They also prefer to use the un-popped hominy kernel, either blue or white, which goes by the same name as the dish, "posole.". The un-popped kernals are boiled separately from the other ingredients until the kernals pop revealing the hominy-like form. To New Mexicans, posole is one of the most important of Christmas traditions. The Mexican spelling pozole is uncommon in New Mexico.
- Quesadilla: a grilled cheese sandwich of sorts in which two flour tortillas, or one folded, are used instead of bread. The quesadilla is often lightly oiled and toasted on a griddle, to melt the cheese, then served with either salsa, pico de gallo, chile, guacamole, and/or sour cream, as an appetizer or entrée.
- Quelites a traditional New Mexico side dish made with spinach sauteed in bacon fat with onion, garlic, pinto beans, and crushed, red, New Mexico chile flakes. Wild lamb's quarters were the original leafy green for this dish, but now it is extremely rare to find quelites made with them.
- Salsa: generally an uncooked mixture of chiles/peppers, tomatoes, onions, and frequently blended or mixed with tomato paste to produce a more sauce-like texture than pico de gallo; usually contains lemon juice or vinegar in noticeable quantities. The green chile variant usually is mostly green chile and without tomatoes, though some varieties may use some cooked tomatillos; the style does not use avocado (which is very common in California green salsa). The New Mexico and California styles share a typically large amount of cilantro added to the mix. The word simply means 'sauce' in Spanish.
- Salsa picante or picante sauce: A thin, vinegary, piquant (thus its name) sauce of pureéd red peppers and tomatoes with spices, it is reminiscent of a combination of New Mexico-style chile sauce and Louisiana-style tabasco pepper sauce. (Note: American commercial food producers have appropriated the term to refer simply to spicy packaged salsa.) Picante's place in Mexican, Tex-Mex and Californian food, where it is extremely common, especially as a final condiment to add more heat, has largely been supplanted by chile, especially red chile, in New Mexican cuisine.
- Sopaipilla (or sopapilla): a puffed fried quick bread with a flavor similar to Indian Fry Bread. The New Mexico version is very large. It is served as a standard table bread at New Mexican restaurants with a squeeze bottle of honey or honey butter. Prior to the Great Depression in the 1930s, they were served with jelly or jam, and honey was used as a substitute and from then on became the traditional accompaniment. They can also become an entrée by stuffing them with savory ingredients such ground beef, shredded chicken, and refried beans.
- Spanish rice: rice (arroz) with a tomato base and other ingredients; usually a mild dish, but may also be made spicy. Traditional New Mexico versions are made with long-grain rice, onion, and garlic. Rice may also be served in other fashions, and recipes vary.
- Stuffed Sopapilla - A standard New Mexico entrée, it is a sopapilla stuffed it with various fillings, covered with melted cheddar cheese. It is usually smothered with red or green chile sauce and topped with shredded iceberg lettuce and diced tomatoes. Fillings include pinto beans, ground beef, shredded beef, shredded chicken, potatoes, spanish rice, and carne adovada.
- Taco: a corn tortilla fried into a trough shape, it is filled with meats or beans, and fresh chopped lettuce, onions, tomatoes, and cheese. The term can also refers to the soft, rolled flour-tortilla variety popularized by fast-food chains (a soft taco), and the flat, unfriend corn style favored in Mexico, but most corn tortillas for tacos are fried in New Mexican cuisine. The entire taco is not fried (a Mexican style known as taco dorado), just the shell. Compare taquito, tostada.
- Tamal, Tamale (plural tamales): meat rolled in cornmeal dough (masa), wrapped traditionally in corn husks (waxed paper is sometimes used for commercial versions), and steamed. Although there are many delicious variations, the standard New Mexico tamal filling is shredded pork cooked in red chile sauce. New Mexican tamales typically vary from other tamal styles in that red chile powder is typically blended into the masa.
- Taquito a tightly rolled, deep-fried variant of the corn-tortilla taco, usually filled with beef or chicken; essentially the same as a Mexican taco dorado, but rolled into a tube shape rather than friend in wedge shape. Sometimes misspelled "taquita". Compare chimichanga and flauta.
- Torta de huevo: A whipped-egg and wheat-flour pancake, typically topped with red chile, and often and it is then served with fideo (a vermicelli-style noodle), quelites (wild spinach), and beans. It is a traditional dish for Fridays during Lent; some New Mexican restaurants offer it as their Lenten special.
- Tortilla: a flatbread made predominantly either of unbleached white wheat flour or of cornmeal, with wheat flour tortillas the most common in ordinary use. New Mexico-style flour tortillas are typically thicker and less chewy than those found in Sonora, Mexico. Neverthless, blue-corn tortillas are a quintessential New Mexico-style tortilla.
- Tostada: a corn tortilla is deep fried flat until hard and crispy and covered with refried beans, cheese, lettuce, and tomato, with additional toppings such as sour cream and guacamole also added.
Restaurants
There have been several restaurants and restaurant chains serving New Mexican cuisine.
See also
References
External links
- Recipes for New Mexican Dishes published by Viva New Mexico
Source of article : Wikipedia
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