State-by-State Redux: IV of X - The Mountain West and Southwest Revisited - Bison, Fajita-Style

We start forging our way eastward now, hitting that Continental Divide.  For this post I wanted to figure out how to meld the tastes of the Mountain States with those of the Southwest.

Snacking State-by-State Redux IV of X: The Mountain West and Southwestern States

What are the Mountain (or Interior) West States?: Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming; sometimes Arizona, New Mexico
What are the Southwestern States?: Arizona, New Mexico, Texas; sometimes California, Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah
Important Cities: Albuquerque, Austin, Billings, Boise, Cheyenne, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Santa Fe, Tucson, Tulsa
Regions and Subregions: Big Sky Country; Southwest; Rockies; Mountain, West South Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Bison (southern Alberta & Saskatchewan, eastern Montana and Colorado, parts of eastern Wyoming and New Mexico, Oklahoma, interior Texas). Chile Pepper (southern and central Arizona, southern New Mexico, western Texas, Sonora, Chihuahua, western Coahuila), Corn Bread & BBQ (southeastern Oklahoma, northeastern Texas), Gumbo (coastal Texas) Pinyon Nut (southern Idaho, Nevada, western Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, northern Arizona, northern New Mexico), Salmon (Idaho)
Foods the Region is Best Known For: frontier foods (beans, prairie breads, etc), Native American foods (pine nuts: Great Basin; wojapi, pemmican, wahuwapa wasna, etc: Big Sky and Great Plains; Three Sisters: Southwest); Southwestern (Tex-Mex in eastern Texas & Oklahoma, New Mexican in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah); bison, beef; potatoes (Idaho); huckleberries, blackberries (Northwest)

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To fuse the Northwest with the Southwest, my mind went straight to fajitas.  I'm not sure why that was the first thing to pop up in my head, but it was, and it never left.  Sufficiently Southwestern and Mexican as it is, I sought to fuse that with bison, an animal you're quite likely to see in the Rockies and the Plains but not really in much of the Southwest.  The end result: bison fajitas, paired not with red bell peppers, mind you, but with some of the delicious Hatch chiles I bought and froze when still in season.  And what fajita wouldn't go with guacamole?

The Recipe: Bison and Hatch Chile Fajitas with Guacamole

While I mostly winged this recipe, I did get one part from an outside source: the (seemingly no longer updated) 10 Cent Diet blog, where a recipe for bison fajitas was posted in 2009.  The only part I used was the blogger's marinade for her bison strip loin steak (or in my case, flank steak, which several other recipes suggested). Further credit where it is due: the 10 Cent Diet blogger adapted her recipe from one she found on Epicurious.  And the citations go on.

For this recipe you will need the following:

* bison steak, in this case flank steak ($18/lb at Gunpowder Bison!  I justified it by saying that I don't buy this very often - I don't; I just don't have that kind of money.  If you have no locally available source of bison steaks, since most supermarkets don't carry bison and the ones that do pretty much only have it ground, get beef steak instead)

For the bison marinade, you need:
* garlic (I have both the cloves and garlic paste pictured.  I found it easier to just use the paste)
* cumin (had it - make sure you grind it up)
* salt (had it)
* lime juice (three limes for $1.50)
* olive oil (had it)

To assemble the fajitas, you will also need:

* Hatch chiles (if you can't find any or didn't get them when in stores - truly one of the few vegetables to appear in the supermarket "in season only" these days - just go ahead and use bell peppers, which won't have that Hatch chile flavor or heat.  Anaheims and poblanos will, however)
* onion (a few dimes for one)
* guacamole (I whipped up one from an avocado I bought, adding to that garlic, onion, tomato, jalapeño and leftover cilantro);
* And of course, large flour tortillas (not pictured.  Typically, I don't like the flour ones, much preferring the flavor and texture of the corn tortillas, but for a fajita you really need a large flour tortilla.  I bought the low carb whole wheat ones for about $3 at Harris Teeter)

Juice the limes - this will yield you about a little more than 1/4 cup.

Mix the lime juice with the rest of the fajita marinade ingredients in a large zip locked bag.

Put in the bison and let it marinade for about a day in the fridge.

The next day, you will want to fry up your bison - this flank steak took a total of about 15 minutes, with me constantly turning it over every few.

Lookin' nice, there...

Once out of the pan, put the bison on a plate and tent it with aluminum foil.

Next, strip the Hatch chile skins off, and de-seed them (I roasted them before freezing.  If roasted before freezing, the skins really come off like magic once you thaw them)

Pan fry the Hatch chiles with the onion.  They won't be crispy, since they are thawed.  Bell peppers will more likely keep their crunch though.

While that is cooking, throw together the guacamole.  I like mine chunkier like you find farther south in Mexico, not the thinner northern kind.

You are just about ready to put together some fajitas.  Heat up your flour tortillas.

Slice the flank steak thinly along the grain.

And throw a few pieces of bison in your tortilla with some chiles, onion and guacamole.

I didn't bring mine out in a fancy fajita pan, and mine were not sizzling at the table.  Still, I had some juicy, wonderful bison piled on top with spicy Hatch chiles and their distinctive vegetal taste.  I don't know if I can ever eat a fajita with just bell peppers again.  It is a filling meal and I only could eat about two at one sitting.  

- - - - -

We keep wending our way Back East, as we hit the prairies and the Great Lakes to sample hearty Midwestern food in this series just one more time.

Sources:

The 10 Cent Diet (blog).  "Bison Fajitas".  Posted January 27, 2009.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia and from the Food Timeline State Foods webpage.

Snacking State-by-State: New Mexico I - Behold the power of the New Mexico chile

New Mexico's cuisine offers up its own take on Southwestern - the fabled "New Mexican" cuisine, which stands in somewhat stark contrast to America's better-known version of Southwestern, the "Tex-Mex" style.  A few of the upcoming recipes, including the sauce that follows, are part of the New Mexican food tradition.

Official Name: State of New Mexico
State Nicknames: The Land of Enchantment
Admission to the US: January 6, 1912 (#47)
Capital: Santa Fe (4th largest)
Other Important Cities: Albuquerque (largest), Las Cruces (2nd largest), Rio Rancho (3rd largest) 
Region: Southwest, West; Mountain (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Chile Pepper; Pinyon Nut; Bison
Bordered by: Colorado (north), Oklahoma & Texas (east), Sonora & Chihuahua (Mexico) (south), Arizona (west), Utah (northwest)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: biscochito (cookie), New Mexico cutthroat trout (fish), yucca flower (flower), chile pepper (vegetable, though technically it's a fruit), frijol (vegetable - yes, two state vegetables), pine nut tree (tree - for the pine nuts, not the tree), New Mexico black bear (animal, though these are not ever eaten these days)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: Southwestern (specifically New Mexican) cuisine; the fabled New Mexico chile, Native American (such as Navajo) foods such as frybread, Navajo taco, etc.


As the Albuquerque Convention Center says right on its website,

New Mexican cuisine is a fusion of Spanish, Native American and Mexican ingredients and techniques. While familiar items like corn, beans and squash are often used, New Mexican cuisine has its own distinct preparation, ingredients and flavor.  [Albuqueque Convention Center 2008] 

New Mexican is not what most Americans think of when we think of Southwestern.  Just as Massachusetts has managed to corner the market on American attitudes towards New England cuisine, so Texas has done the same for Southwestern: in much of the country, "Southwestern" = "Tex-Mex".

Just don't go around saying that in New Mexico.  According to the Albuquerque Journal dining glossary [date unknown], you need go no farther to see the difference between New Mexican and Tex-Mex than the simple chili vs chile.  Chili is the beef & bean concoction (that I will get around to when I hit Texas if not also sooner).  This is a hallmark of Tex-Mex cuisine.  Chile, the fruit (a berry to be specific) of the Capsicum plant, is the bedrock of New Mexican cuisine.

Though of course, it isn't just the New Mexico green chile that we identify with New Mexican, but let's face it: the chile is the star.  Back to the Albuquerque Convention Center's website, which has more:

Harvested in the late summer, the long, narrow peppers are served freshly roasted and peeled, or frozen for use throughout the year. Most commonly, green chile is made into a spicy sauce that’s ladled over enchiladas, burritos and stuffed sopaipillas. Green chile is also found piled on top of cheeseburgers, stuffed into breakfast burritos, fried into rellenos (stuffed chiles) and made into a stew with chunks of potatoes and ground beef, but green chile is such a prominent part of the cuisine that it is also found in breads, on pizza, in pasta and much more. [Albuqueque Convention Center 2008]

It should come as no surprise that New Mexico is the country's leading producer of chile peppers [Albuqueque Convention Center 2008].

Though the local food movement is important - many of my chiles I grew myself, thousands of miles away from the Land of Enchantment - I wanted specifically to use New Mexico chiles for this recipe.  They're not terribly easy to find here in the Back East: most are grown either closer to home or very far, like Mexico or even overseas.  Still, they can be found.  I found a tub of frozen New Mexico green chiles produced by Bueno out of Albuquerque at the Adams Morgan Harris Teeter in Washington, DC.  It's a lovely chile, and as Jane & Michael Stern have so often asserted, both on NPR's Splendid Table and in their 500 Things to Eat Before It's Too Late [2009], the New Mexico green chile is like no other.  That's whether it's picked green or allowed to ripen to red, and whether it is eaten fresh, frozen or dried and ground up.

For this recipe I wanted to make some sort of green chile cheeseburger.  One problem: I had forgotten to pick up hamburger buns (D'oh!).  So instead I ended up making a makeshift open-faced enchilada (another New Mexican specialty) that really turned out to be more like an open-faced taco than anything else.  Tasty nonetheless, especially with shredded Pecorino Romano left over from the New Jersey recipes I just got through.  So instead, I'm just going to focus on the green chile sauce that would have gone on the burger, and which can be used on so many things.

The Recipe: Traditional New Mexico Green Chile Sauce

The following recipe is from Bueno, printed on the side of their 13 oz container of green chiles.  I could not find the exact recipe on their website (they do have many others), but I did take a photograph of it, so that you, too, can make this recipe:

To make this recipe from the Bueno Foods people, you will need:

* 13 oz green chiles (yes, you may not be able to find New Mexico green chiles, and you can be forgiven for trying but failing to do so - or opting to go the "locally sustainable" route.  But just this once, please try to find the ones from New Mexico.  Only then can you be forgiven for giving up. One container of Bueno's brand, certainly not the only one but the only one I found, cost a little under $4 at the above-mentioned Harris Teeter.  Perhaps the one in Baltimore has them too?)
* vegetable oil (had it)
* onion & garlic (had those too)
* flour (just a little to thicken it - yes, you are making a roux here, just one with garlic and onion in it)
* salt & water (had it)

Heat your oil and add the chopped onion and garlic.

Fry over low heat for a few minutes.

Then add a little flour and stir for half a minute.

Make sure your chiles are thawed if you got them frozen (oops).  Now before I added them to the saucepan I just had to try one "in the buff" (um, no, the chile was in the buff!  Ah, forget it).  The Sterns were right: it is pungent, tangy, spicy and fruity all at once.  It's one hell of a chile.  This is what sparkling wine is from France, or what fish sauce is from Vietnam: it's the best version there is.

Go ahead.  Throw in those chiles.

And then add the salt and water.

You will next bring the chile sauce to a boil, cover and simmer for twelve minutes.

What I got in the end was not as spicy as what I ate beforehand.  It was still spicy, and most of my family would find it hot.  I thought it had just enough.  But there again was the tanginess and the fruitiness, mixed in with a little more of a salty flavor.  I don't see how you could eat this on a cheeseburger without making a mess.  But then again, I don't think New Mexicans are concerned about the messiness of a cheeseburger covered in green chile sauce.

And yes, I did try to make a very on-the-fly open-faced taco, in the spirit of the open-faced enchilada.  Before anybody at all says anything: this is not an enchilada, either the New Mexican style or the traditional Mexican one.  What I did was throw a few corn tortillas on the burner, stack grated Pecorino Romano cheese in between them and top the whole thing with beef & onion, and then - finally - the green chile sauce.  It was a bit difficult to eat without making a mess (yes, that again), but still just as tasty.

I'm going to look for these New Mexico chiles more often in the freezer section.


Sources:


Albuquerque Convention & Visitor's Bureau.  "New Mexican Cuisine".  Published 2008.  Copyright Albuquerque Convention & Visitor's Bureau 2012.


Albuquerque Journal.  "Mexican Food Lover's Guide".  Date unknown.  Copyright Albuquerque Journal 2012.


Bueno Foods.  "Traditional New Mexican Green Chile Sauce".  Date unknown.


Detterick-Piñeda, Cynthia.  "Navajo Fry Bread, Indian Fry Bread".  WhatsCookingAmerica.Net, date unknown.  Copyright WhatsCookingAmerica.Net 2012.


Niederman, Sharon.  "Bizcochitos? Biscochitos?".  Posted December 16, 2008.  Copyright The Santa Fe New Mexican 2012.


Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "New Mexico" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "New Mexico".