Some Enchanted Pepper

New Mexico is called "The Land of Enchantment," and is a place unlike any other I've ever visited. It's home to Roswell, which claims to have had more than one alien landing/encounter, and the landscape is truly Western, with vast and wide open spaces, and mountains. All this, and the food is amazing.
Several years ago, Troy and I went to Santa Fe and Taos, to ski. My happy memories from that trip are still fresh and distinct. While the Taos ski valley has a European alpine atmosphere, Santa Fe is all Southwestern. Being a hot pepper enthusiast, I was really excited to try the green and red chiles while visiting. A typical Santa Fe dish would be a perfectly grilled steak, served with red or green chile sauce, and warm corn tortillas on the side. For those who want it all (or can't make a decision), there is the option to order red and green chile sauce with any of your food. That, my friends, is what the natives call, "Christmas" style, and it's the winning ticket.
There is a little town in New Mexico that is famous for its chiles: Hatch. Hatch is a mecca for pepper-lovers, and at the end of every September, harvest time culminates in the Hatch Chile Festival. Whole fresh chiles are roasted over flames, and people stock up on bagfuls of chiles that they freeze for use throughout the coming year. It's truly an event, and these fresh chile roasts take place not only in Hatch, but all over the Southwestern United States, including Southern California. Imagine the scent of the air during this time!
My friend Barbara is a wonderful woman who often half-jokes to me that she loves to feel needed. She's actually serious about that, and so, when she told me she was going to New Mexico to visit her son and daughter-in-law, in September, and asked me if there was anything I needed, it was like the planets had aligned! I said, "Well, if you happen to come upon some fresh, roasted chiles, and can somehow get them home, I would love a bag!"
She immediately accepted this idea as a mission!
Two days later, she called me from her cell phone and told me that she was standing in the County Fairgrounds, watching some guys roast the chiles for me! She said she ordered "hot," and she said the air smelled fantastic. The best-known variety of Hatch chile is called the Big Jim, and it grows mild, medium, hot, or super-hot. Barbara made the perfect choice for me.
I was so excited to hear the news, but I still wondered if she could actually get the peppers back home. In order to fly out of Sarasota at a specific time, Barbara had ended up having to take a route tha trequired five plane changes. Five. Who knew how many security checks she would have to go through, and she not only faced Homeland Security neuroses about food and bags, but also could encounter some nefarious guards who recognized a roasted Hatch when they saw one. Therefore, I calculated an extremely high risk of pepper confiscation (code orange)! I wasn't going to count my peppers until they...Hatched.
In the end, however, no one could stop Barbara, and a few days later, this packed cooler was delivered to me.

Five bags of freshly roasted hot Big Jims! She wrapped them up so nicely in freezer bags and newspaper with ice packs. I transferred them to my freezer.

I was really excited to use them, and decided to make a green chile pork stew. I got a pork loin from Whole Foods, sliced it up, and marinated it in crushed garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Stews are my forte, as they are hard to mess up, but I was still nervous about mucking up this pot of food containing the precious chiles!
I sauteed an onion, browned the pork, and then added diced potatoes, chicken broth, a tin of tomatoes, some corn, and the chiles, of course.
I thought polenta would be a good accompaniment, and used my favorite, Bob's Red Mill corn grits (same thing as polenta). It's a high-quality, organic product. Here is the final dish, which, I'm relieved to say, lived up to the star ingredient.

Cheers to the intrepid Barbara, and to the great state of New Mexico, Land of Enchantment for many fine reasons.