Soup or Stew?: The Posole Predicament

The terms soup and stew can be defined fairly simply: Make the ingredients for a soup chunky enough and simmer them until thick, and you have a stew; add sufficient broth to a stew and there’s soup for you. Yet in the Southwest there is a culinary gray area between soup and stew that remains delightfully blurred. And the citizenry is happy for that, thank you very much.

Take posole as a prime example. This robust bowlful begins with hominy: large kernels of dried corn soaked in lime to remove their hulls and plump them up. Several hours of simmering with a few chunks of pork, dried chiles, onions, garlic, herbs and spices yields an everyday favorite.

If more of the pig gets added, the posole becomes a customary New Mexican Christmas and New Year’s dish. Substitute lamb for the pork and you have a more typically Navajo recipe. But whatever the form, is posole a soup or a stew? Make your own guess; then pick up any other book or article on Southwestern cooking and you have a roughly 50-50 chance of agreeing with the author.

The point is, traditional Southwestern soups and stews exemplify a necessarily rough-and-ready approach to providing human sustenance. Cowboys on the range, pioneers on the trail, Native American hunters and early European settlers had few options for what they cooked or how they cooked it. Into the pot went their latest catch or scraps of tough and scrawny livestock, along with the odd vegetable, water and whatever seasonings were at hand; out came a one-dish meal, whatever it might be called.

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It is easy to imagine the dismay such cooking might have caused the uninitiated. Imagine the “mixture of meat, chilly verde & onions boiled together” that 16-year-old newlywed Susan Shelby Magoffin describes in the journal she kept on her first journey to New Mexico along the Santa Fe Trail in 1846. “There were a few mouthfuls taken,” she continues, “for I could not eat a dish so strong and unaccustomed to my palate.”

Not to say that the emigre’s palate could not adjust in time, as Magoffin’s did, or that such catch-as-catch-can cooking could not on occasion produce distinctive results. A case in point is the dish many people consider the Southwest’s greatest culinary gift to the world: chili.

When most outsiders sing chili’s praises, they pay homage, in fact, to a specialty of Texas: chili con carne , literally “chile peppers with meat.” That phrase describes a native Texan dish often referred to with typical cowboy terseness as a “bowl o’ red”: dried red chiles simmered with small cubes of seared beef, some cumin and oregano, salt, garlic, a smattering of other peppers to spice it up a little more and maybe a sprinkling of corn tortilla flour, or masa harina , for thickening. It is easy to imagine the recipe prepared on a trail-side chuck wagon, accompanied by a scoop of boiled beans to help soak up and temper the fiery juices.

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Staunch traditionalists will swear that true chili begins and ends with such a formula. But a survey of other Southwestern regions tells a different story.

The chile colorado of New Mexico, for example, stands out as a close cousin of old-fashioned Texas chili. Long, dried red pods are stemmed and seeded, toasted in the oven or over a flame, pureed with broth and simmered with chunks of beef and simple seasonings. The result is generally a thinner, redder, more intense concoction, as much chile peppers as it is meat. And because the emphasis of the dish has changed, New Mexicans call and spell it “chile,” never “chili,” as the Texans do.

Even more popular in New Mexico is chile verde , green chile. At its simplest, this dish consists of nothing more than freshly picked, fire-roasted New Mexican green chiles, their stems and skins removed, their juicy flesh torn or coarsely chopped and served warm with beans and tortillas. At once green-tasting, sweet and subtly fiery, chiles prepared thus present a quintessential experience of the Southwest.

Just as commonly, you’ll find green chiles simmered with pieces of pork to produce a stew with the same moist chile-to-meat balance as its colorado cousin.

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As chili’s popularity has grown, so have the variations. Fresh, dried and powdered chiles of all colors, shapes, sizes and intensities may season the stew, singly or in combination. The beans originally served on the side have found their way into the pot even beyond the borders of Texas; and not just pinto or kidney beans, but black beans, white beans--beans of every color and creed.

Tomatoes may be added to deepen the color and underscore the flavor of the chiles with an edge of sweetness and acidity. Other forms of protein replace the beef or the pork--turkey or chicken, for today’s health-conscious cook; all manner of game, for hunter-cooks harking back to pioneer days; mixtures of two or more kinds of game or domestic meat; meatier varieties of seafood such as tuna or shark; and even beans alone, with no meat at all.

Indeed, during almost every weekend hundreds of amateur and professional chili chefs show off their own versions of chili in cook-offs throughout the Southwest and throughout the rest of the United States. And no two recipes are ever quite alike.

But when you get right down to the barest of essentials, what they all have in common is chiles. And every recipe induces in its creator a heartwarming and soul-stirring feeling akin to that expressed by Lady Bird Johnson, wife of U.S. President and lifelong Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson, in a letter she wrote to legendary Dallas chili expert Frank X. Tolbert for publication in his definitive book, “A Bowl of Red”:

“My feeling about chili is this--along in November, when the first norther strikes and the skies are gray, along about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, I get to thinking how good chili would taste for supper. It always lives up to expectations. In fact, you don’t even mind the cold November winds.”

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Frontiersman and Taos resident Kit Carson certainly would have agreed. His reputed dying words were: “Wish I had time for just one more bowl of chili.”

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This versatile soup is good either hot or cold, so it may be served in any season. Available throughout the year in Latino and specialty markets, tomatillos will keep for up to a month if refrigerated in a paper bag.

TOMATILLO SOUP

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 shallots, minced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 pound tomatillos, husked and diced

3 Anaheim chiles, roasted, peeled, cored, seeded and diced

6 cups chicken stock

1 jalapeno chile, seeded and minced

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Sour cream thinned with little whipping cream

Fresh cilantro leaves

Heat olive oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots and garlic. Saute until tender, 4 to 5 minutes. Add tomatillos, Anaheim chiles and chicken stock. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until tomatillos are softened, 10 to 15 minutes.

Transfer mixture to food processor or blender and puree along with jalapeno, lime juice and cilantro. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Divide soup among 6 bowls. Drizzle sour cream mixture on top. Garnish with cilantro leaves. Soup may also be refrigerated overnight and served cold. Makes 6 servings.

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The subtle flavors of roasted corn and sweet yellow peppers add a distinct taste to this soup. Although it may be made any time with frozen corn, it’s best with just-picked yellow or white corn on the cob. For a more refined soup, strain before adding half and half.

ROASTED CORN SOUP

4 ears fresh corn, husked, or 4 cups corn kernels

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 cup finely chopped red onion

1/2 cup finely chopped carrot

1/2 cup finely chopped celery

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

2 sweet yellow peppers, roasted, peeled, cored, seeded and diced

1 serrano chile, seeded and minced

4 cups chicken stock

1 cup half and half

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Over open flame, on very hot grill or under broiler, roast corn until kernels are browned and beginning to caramelize. If using whole ears of corn, cut kernels off cob after roasting.

Heat olive oil in large saucepan. Add garlic, onion, carrot and celery. Saute over medium heat until tender, about 5 minutes. Add corn kernels, cumin and sweet yellow peppers and cook, stirring, 1 minute.

Add serrano chile and chicken stock. Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes. Transfer to food processor or blender and process 1 to 2 minutes. Return puree to saucepan. Add half and half. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Heat until warmed through. Divide soup among 6 bowls and serve immediately. Makes 6 servings.

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New Mexicans believe that chile must be undiluted with beans or tomatoes, so their recipes often call for little besides meat and New Mexico green chiles. The Anaheim is similar to the New Mexico green chile, although the latter has a sharper flavor. Delicious as a main course served with warm tortillas, chile verde also makes an excellent filling for burritos and chimichangas, or a sauce for enchiladas and chiles rellenos.

CHILE VERDE

3 tablespoons bacon fat or vegetable oil

1 cup coarsely chopped onions

2 pounds lean pork, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

2 tablespoons flour

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

2 garlic cloves, minced

10 New Mexico green or Anaheim chiles, roasted, peeled, cored, seeded and diced

3 cups boiling chicken stock or water

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Heat bacon fat in large, heavy pan over medium-low heat. Add onions and saute until tender, about 5 minutes. Add pork cubes and cook, stirring, another 5 minutes, or until meat loses pink color.

Sprinkle flour over pork and onions. Increase heat slightly and cook until pork is browned and onions are golden. Stir in cumin, garlic and chiles, mixing well. Slowly add boiling stock and stir until well incorporated. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, until meat is tender, 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Serve with warm tortillas. Makes 6 servings.

Fenzle and Kolpas are the authors of the newly released “Southwest the Beautiful Cookbook” (Collins Publishers), from which this article is excerpted.