Books on New Mexican Food Detail a Variety of Approaches : The Unusual Cuisine Is a Blend of Elements From Several Cultures

New Mexico’s unique cuisine blends Indian, Spanish, Mexican and Anglo cookery with dashes of seasoning from a wide range of other cultures.

Browsing in New Mexican markets, one is intrigued by such regional foods as blue cornmeal, dried corn kernels called chicos, sprouted wheat flour, sopaipilla mix and the state’s famous chiles, whole, powdered and in seasoning mixes. A few years back, it became a fad for baking enthusiasts to build copies of the beehive-shaped pueblo Indian horno (oven) in their yards. More recently, such New Mexican specialties as blue corn tortillas and sopaipillas have become prominent in the contemporary Southwestern cooking trend.

In the last few years, a number of cookbooks devoted to New Mexican food have been published or, in the case of one, reissued. Four of these come from New Mexico. The fifth and most recent is Huntley Dent’s scholarly and entertaining “The Feast of Santa Fe” (Simon & Schuster: $16.95). Dent writes so colorfully of New Mexican food that his book is a pleasure to read even if one has no desire to cook. Literature and history figure in his approach. Dent’s recipe for bean salad, for example, is headed by a reference to that same dish as described in Willa Cather’s New Mexican novel, “Death Comes to the Archbishop.”

The Old Ways

Dent knows the old ways of cooking. He also acknowledges convenience products and the food processor so that his book is practical for modern cooks. He even makes it possible for the reader to produce tamale dough in five minutes, using the processor and instant masa. The recipe is a fascinating one. The tamales aren’t stuffed with meat. Instead, the dough is spiced with cloves and cinnamon, flavored with cheese and dotted with pecans. To make the procedure even easier, the tamales are steamed in foil wrappers rather than corn husks, which take more effort to prepare and fold.

In an effort to resurrect old flavors, Dent presents a rundown of current cheeses that recapture the taste of goat and sheep cheeses once made around Santa Fe. California goat cheese “makes a wonderfully strange stuffing for enchiladas,” he writes. He also suggests sprinkling it over tacos and tostadas for intriguing flavor.

Dent is an innovator, willing to toss tamales unorthodoxly in butter if it fits the menu better than a conventional sauce. Amenable to all tastes, he tells how to adapt his New Mexican chili recipe to Texas standards, and he tolerates the addition of California-style garnishes such as sliced olives, chopped onion, sour cream and grated cheese, although he says they are unnecessary.

Dent is a chatty writer and a philosopher who understands that cookery is a fantasy world for many. Writing about hobbyists who stock their ultramodern kitchens with humble clay pots for beans and other utensils that are authentic but not really necessary, he says, “I always picture such cooks standing before their four-burner stoves with microwave and warming oven, the processor humming in the distance, but thinking in their imaginations that they are in fact barefoot and wearing sombreros.”

A Revised Guide

In 1968, long before chefs made the Southwest fashionable, Ronald Johnson wrote “An Aficionado’s Guide to Southwest Cooking.” That book has now been revised, expanded and reissued as “Southwestern Cooking New and Old” (University of New Mexico Press: $17.50).

A cookbook is never a final achievement, complete and unalterable. Authors continue to grow, finding new and sometimes better versions of a dish, developing new recipes and changing their culinary philosophies. So it is with Johnson. In his new book, he drops the MSG that had been included in some recipes. Garlic salt becomes fresh garlic. The parsley added to a garbanzo bean dip is replaced by cilantro. Black beans replace kidney beans as an alternative to pintos for refried beans.

In the soup chapter, canned condensed beef bouillon is scrapped in favor of light beef stock. And the revised version of Texas gazpacho is more elaborate than the first, adding cilantro, tomatillos, green chiles and oregano, whereas the original basil and ground coriander are dropped.

Now living in San Francisco, Johnson has introduced new dishes encountered on return trips to the Southwest. Among these are a salsa that he calls the “world’s best Green Chile Sauce,” carne adovada, which is a marinated pork dish, and a “superior” version of natillas, a custard dessert.

Johnson rates the salsa so highly that he has made it his “one and only green chile sauce” and uses it in a variety of ways. “It makes a splendid meal over beans, with a topping of sour cream--so good in fact you won’t miss having meat,” he writes. Johnson is a man of many fewer words than Dent, adding only spare commentary to his recipes. But, in the end, the recipes must speak for themselves, and these promise a lot of good eating.

Family Foods

Dent and Johnson write of Southwestern cooking as admiring observers. Irene Barraza Sanchez and Gloria Sanchez Yund write from the inside out, so to speak, presenting dishes that have been prepared in their families for generations. Their book is “Comida Sabrosa,” subtitled “Home Style Southwestern Cooking.” First published in a hardback edition that is now out of print, the book is currently available as a paperback (University of New Mexico Press: $9.95).

Sanchez grew up in Gallup, N.M., and Yund in Albuquerque. The two are not only co-authors but sisters-in-law, and they have dedicated the book to their mothers, which indicates that the reader is being offered a treasury of old-time family food.

The recipes portray two styles of New Mexican cooking. Yund uses more spices, as is typical of cooks from the southern part of the state. Northerners such as Sanchez favor chiles over spices.

Southwestern cuisine in their definition means New Mexican and southern Coloradan, “not Texan, or Mexican, or Californian.” The most distinctive ingredient in this cuisine, they say, is chile. And very few of their recipes are without it.

No chile product is more characteristic of New Mexico than the ristra, the string of dried red chiles that is as decorative as it is useful. Ristras hanging from the eaves brighten the landscape as the chiles dry in the clear, crisp New Mexican air and are popular tourist souvenirs. In their chapter on chile preparation and sauces, Yund and Sanchez tell how to make a ristra, then how to use the dried chiles in the New Mexican concentrate called chile caribe, in chili powder and sauce.

Fresh Chiles

New Mexicans apparently do some extraordinary things with fresh chiles, judging from their recipe for Sweet Chiles Rellenos, which are served at Christmas and weddings. These are not the usual cheese-stuffed whole chiles but deep-fried croquettes made of pork, green chile, brown sugar, raisins and spices. And what goes over the top? Not tomato salsa but caramel syrup.

More conventional dishes include red chile tamales, chalupas, pozole, green chile stew and others that will satisfy the appetite for simple, robust, home-style cookery.

Two books from New Mexico Magazine capture a wide variety of contemporary New Mexican cooking. The first is “The Best From New Mexico Kitchens,” published in 1978. Its sequel is “More of the Best from New Mexico Kitchens,” published in 1983. Sheila MacNiven Cameron compiled both books, assisted by the magazine staff.

Classic Dishes

The first book deals more in classic New Mexican dishes, such as Green Chile Stew as prepared by Rosella Frederick, a Cochiti Pueblo Indian, and includes the plans for building an Indian horno. The second book supplements classic fare with such interlopers as satay, which Cameron links to local foods through its use of chile. There are several Lebanese recipes, too, but these have a legitimate place because New Mexico has a long-established Lebanese community, Cameron reports.

Contributed by restaurants and individuals, the recipes range from blue cornmeal atole to poulet Marengo and French apple pie, both legitimately New Mexican because they are specialties of the Pink Adobe restaurant in Santa Fe.

The newer book recaps such fundamentals as how to cook beans and includes such traditional foods as pozole, calabacitas, red and green chile sauces, chiles rellenos, chimichangas and capirotada, a bread pudding that in New Mexico is known as sopa. A repeat from the first book is Christina’s Always-Perfect Flan, a recipe that, according to Cameron, produces “a perfect flan every time, even at high altitudes, where bubbles in the custard can be a problem.” The books are $6.95 each and can be ordered through New Mexico Magazine, Bataan Memorial Building, Santa Fe, N.M. 87503. The postage charge is $1 for one or both books.

The following are representative recipes from each book.

MODEST TAMALES WITH

CHEESE AND PECANS

(“The Feast of Santa Fe”)

1 cup instant masa

3 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons lard or vegetable shortening

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon cloves

1/2 cup shredded Jack cheese

1/2 cup pecans

2/3 cup warm water

Prepared red chile sauce, optional

Butter, optional

Combine instant masa, butter, lard, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, cheese and pecans in food processor bowl fitted with metal blade. Process until mixture forms coarse meal, about 10 seconds, stopping once to scrape down bowl. With motor running, pour in warm water and blend to form smooth, pasty dough. Scrape down bowl and blend a few seconds longer.

Prepare 12 (6-inch) foil squares. Spread oblong shape of dough below center of sheet. Fold sheet over so 2 sides meet. Tightly crimp foil along long side and 1 short side of packet. Loosely fold over open end and stand on rack in steamer with folded end at top. Steam 1 hour. Serve hot with red chile sauce poured over just before serving, or toss in butter if sauce is not desired. Makes 12 small tamales.

GREEN CHILE SAUCE

(“Southwestern Cooking New and Old”)

1 tablespoon butter

1 clove garlic, minced

1 cup green chiles, roasted, peeled and chopped

3/4 cup tomatillos, peeled and chopped

1 tablespoon parsley, minced

1 tablespoon cilantro, minced

1 tablespoon flour

1/2 cup chicken stock

Salt

Dash sugar

Heat butter in saucepan. Add garlic and saute 1 to 2 minutes. Add chiles and tomatillos and cook over medium heat 5 minutes. Add parsley, cilantro and flour. Cook 3 to 4 minutes, then add stock. Cook and stir until sauce is smooth and thickened. Add salt and sugar to taste. Cook over low heat 15 to 20 minutes. Makes 2 cups.

SWEET CHILES RELLENOS

(“Comida Sabrosa”)

1 egg

1/4 cup milk

2 pounds boiled pork, diced

1 cup chopped green chile

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1 cup raisins, finely chopped

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Pine nuts, optional

1/2 cup flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

Oil for deep-frying

Caramel Syrup

Beat egg and milk together. In separate bowl, combine meat, chile, sugar, raisins, nutmeg, cinnamon and nuts. Add 2 tablespoons egg mixture. Coat hands with flour and shape meat mixture into 12 small ovals. Add flour and salt to remaining egg mixture. Dip each oval in egg mixture. Fry in hot, deep oil until golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Serve topped with Caramel Syrup. Makes 1 dozen.

Caramel Syrup

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed

1 cup water

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Heat sugar in small saucepan until melted. Add water, vanilla and cinnamon and boil several minutes, until mixture reaches syrup consistency.

GREEN CHILE STEW

(“The Best From New Mexico Kitchens”)

2 pounds lean beef chuck, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

Lard or oil

1/2 medium onion, chopped

4 medium potatoes, peeled and diced, optional

4 medium zucchini, diced, optional

12 large green chiles, roasted, peeled and chopped or 2 (4-ounce) cans chopped green chile

1 teaspoon garlic salt

1 teaspoon salt

6 to 7 cups water

Brown meat in small amount lard in large, deep, heavy pan. Add onion and potatoes and brown. Drain off any excess fat. Add zucchini, chiles, garlic salt, salt and water. Bring to boil and simmer 30 minutes or longer. Eat stew with spoon, like hearty soup. Makes 6 servings.

CHRISTINA’S ALWAYS-PERFECT

FLAN

(“More of the Best From

New Mexico Kitchens”)

1/2 cup sugar

8 egg yolks

2 egg whites

1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

1 (13-ounce) can evaporated milk

2 cups whole milk or water

1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt sugar in heavy skillet, stirring constantly. When melted sugar is light brown, pour into 2-quart mold. Tip mold quickly in all directions so that caramel coats inside. Set aside. Beat egg yolks and whites until thick. Beat in condensed milk, evaporated milk, whole milk and vanilla. Pour into prepared mold. Cover securely with tight lid or 3 layers foil tied down.

Place on rack in pressure cooker with 2 to 3 cups water, following manufacturer’s directions. Cook 20 minutes after pressure comes up, or slightly longer at higher altitudes. Cool rapidly. After custard is chilled, turn out onto serving dish. Makes 12 servings.