Hatch Pasta

A day or two ago I received a care package from home consisting of a small book (Floor Games, by H. G. Wells), some junk mail from St. Mark's, and a pretty hefty plastic bag of Hatch green chiles. I was in the middle of a "long day" at the office - about a 48 hour junket - so I spent a couple of meals eating canned tuna fish and bad bread with that bag looming in my thoughts like the light at the end of a very long tunnel. As such, when I finally made it home tonight I was determined to use some of those chiles for my dinner.

The larder was pretty bare, and it was late enough that I'd have had to go into Manhattan to find an open grocery store (and I was DONE travelling). Fortunately, I had just enough material to prepare a pasta dish that's been a pretty common meal at my apartment over the last couple of months. I incorporated the chiles into it, and now I get to brag, because the result was AWESOME.

I diced most of an onion and about 4 chiles, leaving in the skin and most of the seeds (I left out a little of the onion so that the diced chiles out-volumed the onion by about 4 to 3). The veggies went in a pot along with all of my remaining olive oil (not much - a tablespoon or 4) and a tiny bit of shortening to supplement the insufficient oil (somewhere in the back of my mind, I seem to remember a reliable source using shortening in their green chile, but that could be pure fiction). Oh, and a pinch or two of salt. I covered it and let it sweat over low heat for a while, until the onions were translucent, then dumped about half a box (8 oz) of dry tri-color rotini on top, covered it back up, and sweated it a little more just for good measure. After a minute or two, I added a can of low-sodium chicken broth and enough extra water to just cover the pasta, brought the liquid to a simmer, put the heat on low, and covered it for about 10 minutes while I called home to thank my parents for the chiles. Then I remembered that maybe the pasta was supposed to cook uncovered, so I uncovered the pot; the pasta was almost done and there was still plenty of liquid. So I upped the heat a bit and stirred constantly until the liquid had pretty much become a thin paste coating the pasta. I folded in a pretty hefty amount of freshly grated parmigian and some black pepper, poured it into a salad bowl, grabbed a bottle of seltzer and some Angostura bitters to drink, and settled in to watch some Dr. Who.

Anyway, the Dr. Who is paused right now, because I finished eating and I was so proud that I had to enter this on the Food Blog right away. TOTAL SUCCESS. The pasta was a tiny bit overcooked because of leaving the lid on, but not really, and the sauce had that same vegetal milkiness that the best green chile has, which dovetailed perfectly with the creaminess from the cheese and starch. The heat was a little less than I'd have liked (next time, more seeds), but the flavor was sensational. I'm supposed to see a man about a pizza tomorrow evening, but I'm definitely cooking this dish again next time I cook a meal at home. Better go fill that larder...

I should give credit where credit is due - the basic cooking technique for this dish, where the pasta in insufficient liquid makes its own sauce, comes from a recipe that the New York Times attributed to Alain Ducasse. The only innovation I'm taking credit for is interpreting "aromatic vegetables" to mean "hatch green chiles", which I don't think is quite what he had in mind. Oh, and just in case it turns out to be the key that makes this whole thing work, that teaspoon or two of shortening, which I'm SURE wasn't part of the original.