green chile kitchen

Happy Half-Christmas to all!

http://www.greenchilekitchen.com/


Place: green chile kitchen
Location: 1801 McAllister Street
(on the corner of Baker Street)
Hours: open for breakfast Monday - Friday at 9:00am; "Brunch" available Saturday & Sunday at 9:00am
Meal: Root Vegetable Hash ~ carne adovada[1], 2 fried eggs, sautéed greens, red chile & crema; a side of Roasted Potatoes + chile[2] & cheese added; and a large glassa sandía agua fresca

(Today's EweToobular juxtaselections should be pretty self-exploratory.

"Green" on Red[3] ~ simples. 

And everyone knows that Les Black Carnations are originally from Tucumcari, New Mexico.[4])


I really don't know why it has taken me this long to get back to green chile kitchen (see previous 'blog-entry from January 25th, 2015); I know that I had them marked as my "New Find for 2015". Well, it was my new find, they are already celebrating their ten-year anniversary this year. They have been open for six years at their current location and the previous four years were at a smaller location a block away on the corner of Fulton and Baker Streets. They have a hermana ubicación named chile pies baking co. that is located there now. Unfortunately, that restaurant doesn't open for breakfast (or "Brunch" even). I have eaten their hand pies before, but I really need to get back to check out their Fritos® Pie (vegetarian-style).

http://www.greenchilekitchen.com/chilepies/

This is set up like a lot of coffeehouse joints in the city. You order at the front counter, pay for the meal first, they give you a number (mine today was "Lucky #13!"), and then they bring the meal over to you when it is ready.

One of the reasons I really thought that I would get back again a lot sooner than a year and a half later was that they have several other great-sounding ideas for breakfast ("Brunch", whatever; even though they call this meal "Brunch" on the weekends, they open up at 9:00am, which is plenty early enough for me to forgive that snooty-*ss moniker):

Quelites[5] & Eggs ~ scrambled eggs, sautéed greens, brown rice, avocado & pico de gallo;

Migas ~ eggs, crispy tortilla strips, green chile, tomatillo avocado salsa & cotija, served w/ black beans (this is just a Tex-New Mex version of chilaquiles);

Huevos Motuleños[6] ~ corn tortilla, eggs, black beans, green chile, peas, Feta(?!?) & fried plantains; 

or

Breakfast Flat Enchilada Plate ~ housemade corn tortillas, eggs, meat, chile, cheese & crema, served w/ posole[7] & beans (I would have to order that without the dead, decaying animal flesh and possibly no posole, depending on how they prepare their posole).

Of course, I ochenta-y-seis-ed the descomposición carne de animales muertos and went with la opción vegetariana. I am not exactly sure what all the "root vegetables" entailed; I am pretty sure there were sweet potatoes and red bell peppers (while not being a root vegetable, these are botanically a berry, but who would ever order "Root Vegetable & Berry Hash"?). I asked the pretty order-taking counter lady-person which vegetables these were, but she could only name sweet potatoes and squash(? Since when is squash a root vegetable?). She asked the cooker-staff guy what else might be in these, but there seemed to be a bit of a translation problem, so we will just stick with sweet potatoes, squash (possibly, of some sort), and red bell peppers for now. I was thinking that one of the other root vegetables might have been yuca (as in cassava/manioc), but the pretty order-taking counter lady-person said that wasn't right (and "yuca" in Spanish is "yuca", so there shouldn't have been any translational mix-up there, anyway). I would liked to have seen (or been told that) there were one or two other root vegetables in this dish (I know they use zanahorias in Mexican cooking all the time). And unlike the Roasted Root Vegetables that used to be offered at Miss Millie's, this did not include any fennel. 

I didn't bother the pretty order-taking counter lady-person to find out which greens were in the "sautéed greens" (I am pretty sure that there was no way the cooker-staff guy would have been able to tell her which specific greens they were). However, I think it was kale, mustard, and probably either some collard or turnip greens. Whatever the combination was, I liked it very much.

They offer the Roasted Potatoes as either "mild" or "spicy". Of course, I ordered these "espicy", but they turned out to be only picante gringo, which was still tasty enough for me, anyway. (New Mexico chillies can range anywhere from 0-70,000 Scoville Heat Units; that means they can be as mild as bell peppers or about as hot as pequin chillies or the milder-range of piri piri chillies. These today seemed about as "jot as jalapeños" to me.)

At first, I thought that this was all going to be too much food, but the portions were not that large, and this ended up being the perfect amount of food for the likes of me (or for me to like).

For condimentary supplementation, green chile kitchen has Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (Original Red Sauce), Tapatío® Salsa Picante Hot Sauce, and Melinda's® Hot Sauce (Original Habanero Pepper Sauce). It really didn't matter, as none were needed or used. I didn't want to mess with the nice flavours that were already there.

I skipped any Coffee with the meal (they offer Mr. Espresso® ~ or at least they did the last time I was there ~ which is decent enough). So when I got home, I figured to keep with the whole "Half-Christmas" (whole half?!) theme, I would brew myself some Bettys Christmas Blend ~ Single Origin (Do you think in Yorkshire-speak they say "Mash the Coffee", too?) which I still have some (well, a lot) left over from an actual Christmas gift (Thanks, Greg & Cindy!) to enjoy while computering-up this 'blog-entry.

https://www.bettys.co.uk/christmas-coffee-pack


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: 
Root Vegetable Hash ~ 6.9;
Roasted Potatoes + chile & cheese ~ 6.8;
Bettys Christmas Blend ~ Single Origin ~ 7.1

___________________

1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinaristic pointer of the day:

"Carne adovada (or adobada)" simply means "marinated meat" in Spanish. The combination of spices, chillies, and vinegar used for the marinade is called "adobo".

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico_chile

Per green chile kitchen's web-site:

"Red and green chile is native to New Mexico, and is harvested each fall at different times of ripeness. Green chile, which is picked earlier than red, is considered a super food by some, containing more vitamin c than citrus fruit, and creating a 'high' similar to the endorphins produced when exercising. We use Bueno chile in all our dishes, which has been owned and operated by the Baca family since 1951."

3.  This also goes along with the whole "Half-Christmas" theme. 

I actually saw these guys live in old West Berlin-town back in 1985 (Thanks, Mr. Fraga!). I still have this album ~ as in vinyl, with the extra-added bonus of the vinyl being translucent green, too.

http://www.greenonred.net/

4. Nah! Les Black Carnations were a local West Berlin-town band back in the mid-80's. They were the opening act for Green on Red the night I saw them. I guess the best way to describe their music was a nouveau-Surf Punk style.

I also still have this 45rpm of theirs, and, coincidentally enough, it is in black vinyl...

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/les_black_carnations/_you_change_your_mood__so_frequently___black_carnations/

5. ¿Qué?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quelite

I just assume that they use the same combination of greens that I had this morning, though.

6. Not really another stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer, but just a sorta stupid, useless pseudo-culinaristic/geographical pointer of the day:

"Huevos Motuleños" simply means "eggs Motul style". Motul is a city on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huevos_motule%C3%B1os

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motul,_Yucat%C3%A1n

7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozole