Chile Verde con Calabaza

It's not a big secret that I love poblano peppers, the large dark green mild chiles from central Mexico, now grown all over and available in most American grocery stores. I discovered poblanos a long time ago as a young man while living in Texas, an opportunity that dramatically expanded my culinary horizons and firmly cemented my love of Mexican food.

I was a poor graduate student living on a $650 per month stipend for teaching undergraduates at Texas A&M. My apartment was $400 per month, so you can imagine that making ends meet on $250 per month was difficult. It forced me to shop where the day laborers shopped, at the bodegas and mercados, and to eat what they ate: lots of beans and tortillas. But it also gave me the opportunity to learn about cilantro, cumin, nopales, dried chiles, tomatillos, posole, menudo, and not least of all, poblanos, all of which I got to taste and cook for the first time in Texas.

When I tasted poblanos for the first time, I was struck by their essential pepper flavor, deep with just a hint of spice, but﹘and here's the payoff for me﹘none of the grassy, bitter, pyrazine flavors that we associate with bell peppers. I don't really care for those flavors in a cooked bell pepper and worse still, like a lot of folks, I despise them when I keep tasting them all night long. For me, poblanos are a glorious solution to that problem and I have not been without them since discovering them.

In the mid-1980s when I moved to the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC, poblanos were hard to find, unlike today when they are a staple at most groceries. The situation improved by the 1990s when they started making appearances in large groceries, even out in the rural Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where I lived at the time. And by the time I started my restaurant in 2002, they were common. Poblano peppers were the only mild green pepper that I used at the restaurant.

And it was at the restaurant when my love affair with poblanos and chile verde really bloomed. We would change the menu daily in response to what our farmers were bringing us. And to make use of the vast quantities of tomatillos and poblanos that we would get in late summer, chile verde was a regular feature on the menu and for staff meals. Diners would probably never recognize the unctuous and delicious green sauce garnishing their plates as chile verde, but there it was nonetheless.

Suffice it to say that when summer slips into fall and brings out the annual hankering for soups and stews, my thoughts run to chile verde. A few weeks ago when I made yet another batch of chile verde, I saw a butternut squash on the counter, pretty typical for this time of year, and thought that it would make a terrific vegetarian chile verde. Ann and I are trying to reduce the amount of meat that we eat without compromising on flavor and I had the idea that really hard roasted butternut could in part take the place of meat. Hence the chile verde con calabaza experiment.

Chile Verde con Calabaza

Garlic, Green Onions, Cilantro, Onions, Poblanos

Cooking the Vegetables

Roasted Butternut Squash

There are a couple of ways to make chile verde, at least. Sometimes, I will put all the vegetables (onions, poblanos, garlic cloves, and tomatillos) on sheet trays and roast them to concentrate their flavors. Then I will add them to broth and make the stew. This is typically the approach I take when working with fresh tomatillos, which are a thing of the past at this time of the year.

Other times, such as this time, I will sauté the vegetables directly in the soup pot and use canned tomatillos. I will rinse the tomatillos and put them back in the can with water or stock and blend them with my stick blender to form the soup base.

Butternut squash can be insipid or delicious. It is really bland when lightly cooked, but like many things, it concentrates and develops deep complex flavors when really roasted. It takes a long time in the oven to achieve the level of concentration of the squash that you see in the photo above. This squash roasted in a hot oven 400-425F) for an hour and a quarter. After all that water evaporates from the squash, you will have about a third as much squash by weight and volume as you started with.

Chile Verde con Calabaza

The following recipe feeds about four people. It fed the two of us quite well, with leftovers for lunch the day following.

1 large butternut squash, about 5 pounds

6 poblanos, chopped

3 yellow onions, chopped

1 bunch of cilantro, chopped, stems chopped fine

1 bunch of green onions, sliced

8 cloves garlic, minced

1 28-ounce can of whole tomatillos

2 quarts of vegetable stock or water (or meat stock if you prefer)

1 teaspoon Mexican oregano

salt to taste

6 corn tortillas, chopped

Cube the butternut squash and put on an oiled sheet tray in a hot oven (425F), turning every 15-20 minutes until the squash browns on all surfaces. It will take an hour or longer. You should not rush this step as it is critical for the development of flavor.

In a large soup pot, sauté the poblanos, onions, cilantro, green onions, and garlic until the onions turn transparent.

Drain and rinse the tomatillos. You can add them directly to the soup pot as-is or you can blend or chop them, your choice. It takes longer for whole tomatillos to break down, so I like to speed things up and to obliterate the skins by blending. I put them back in the can and cover them with water, then roughly blend them directly in the can with my immersion blender, leaving some texture. You can always throw them in the regular blender or chop them with a knife.

Add the tomatillos and stock/water to the pot and rub the the oregano between your palms over the pot to break it down.

Let the stew simmer gently for 45 minutes to an hour to meld the flavors. Season to taste and add the tortillas. Cook for an additional 15-20 minutes to break down the tortillas which will thicken the stew. You can always use fresh or dried masa as a thickener. And you don't have to thicken at all if you want more of a soup than a stew.

Ten minutes before service, add the butternut squash to the pot to warm back through. It is important that you not cook the squash for longer or it will start to break down. Breaking down is OK if you want to make an orange squash soup, but for a green stew with discrete chunks of roasted squash, less cooking is more.