New Mexico's Real Dishes by Ruth Paget

New Mexico’s Real Dishes by Ruth Paget 

I have been eating spicy Tex-Mex food since I was a teenager in Detroit (Michigan) and still love it. 

However, I would like to try some of the Hispanic food I read about in Dishing Up New Mexico: 145 Recipes from the Land of Enchantment by Dave DeWitt in restaurants. 

I would like to order the following dishes from Mexican restaurants and they might interest other restaurant goers, too: 

-chilaquiles en salsa chipotle 

I have eaten this dish once and liked the fried tortilla chips coated in spicy tomato-pepper-onion-cilantro salsa topped with melted cheese. The chilaquiles I ate at Norma’s Diner in Salinas (California - now the 31st Restaurant) came with two over-easy eggs and sliced avocado. That was breakfast fit for a king, and it tastes great with piping hot coffee. 

-creamy green chile chicken soup 

-Anasazi refried beans made with bacon not lard 

-jalapeño – cheddar cornbread 

-summer squash with red serrano peppers 

-chile con queso de cabro (goat cheese chile dip) 

-green chile and goat cheese muffins 

I make this with cheddar and jalapeño peppers as a home cure for colds. 

-chicken braised in white wine, garlic, and green chiles 

This is a short list of recipes, which I can make at home, but it is fun to get some exotic cuisine for take out once a week, too. 

There are many good recipes for familiar and new dishes in Dishing Up New Mexico: 145 Recipes from the Land of Enchantment by Dave DeWitt; I recommend it for home cookbook reference shelves and take out orders. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting New Mexico and Arizona with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visting the New Mexico Natural History Museum (Albuquerque) and the Grand Canyon (Arizona) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

From Taos we drove to Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Once at the hotel, my husband Laurent and I walked to Old Town Albuquerque, which has adobes all around it with arcades.

The outside of the San Felip de Neri Church had luminarias (paper bags with sand a candle in them put out on Christmas Eve) around it.  The docents inside the church said the luminarias were called farrolitos in Spanish.  I bought postcards and the ladies of the church walked Laurent and me around the church pointing out saints and artwork.  The white marble alter looked beautiful with poinsettias on it.

We walked around the around the arcades and looked through Western shops.  Laurent looked at cowboy hats in a nearby store.  I bought a book called Tradiciones Nuevomexicanos: Hispano Arts and Culture of New Mexico by Mary Montaño.  The book talks about luminarias, retablos (devotional paintings), sacred statues and so on.  It even talks about ristras, hanging bunches of dried red pepper.  We had seen many ristras during our drive into town.

We went to dinner at the La Placita Restaurant on the Plaza.  During the day, the restaurant lets craftsman sell their wares along the front of the restaurant under the adobe arcade.  The restaurant dates from 1706.  The room we sat in had a beautiful Christmas tree that was decorated all over with dried, red chiles.

The next day we went to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History.  It was a great tourism choice.  We saw real dinosaur bones – talk about fossils!

We walked through reproductions of volcanoes, a cave, and a seascape of what New Mexico looked like millions of years ago.  I was fascinated to learn how sandstone is made – compaction by pressure and wind over time.  We went to the planetarium show after visiting the museum.  We were laughing with vertigo when the planetarium turned a giant Mobius Strip into a roller coaster ride.

The next day we drove from Albuquerque to Flagstaff, Arizona.  We went to bed early so we could get up early and see the Grand Canyon.

When we woke up, it was threatening to snow.  We viewed the Grand Canyon at Mother Overlook.  Florence had fun throwing snowballs at us when it started to snow.  Because she was so nice, we bought her a dream catcher at the gift shop.

After the gift shop, we went to see the Grand Canyon film at the Imax Theatre in Tusayin.  The aerial shots were great, but what I really liked were shots of rafts going through white water rapids.  It looked fun, but would probably frighten me if I were to go on a rafting trip.

On the way home, we passed cross country skiers, kids sledding, and snowmen.  I wished every kid in the world could do a trip to the Grand Canyon and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Taos (New Mexico) for Hispanic Christmas Celebrations with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Taos (New Mexico) for Hispanic Christmas Celebrations with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

One year after Christmas my family took a vacation to New Mexico with my mother.

It took us a day to drive down California where we turned left at Needles to head towards New Mexico.  We saw Joshua Trees in Arizona.  The eroded rock on the way there clearly shows layers or strata.  I wanted to be a geologist and look for fossils in some of it.  Mt. Humphrey in Flagstaff, Arizona had snow on it.

We squealed when we saw the snow, because we had been living by the ocean in Monterey, California for several years.  We stayed overnight in Flagstaff and played in the snow.  Flagstaff is ski territory that sits 7,000 feet above sea level.  The pressure going up the mountains caused all my pens to leak ink in my purse.

On the way to Albuquerque, I suggested that we go to Taos, which is considered to be a great arts center.  The road there was very scenic.  It was narrow and squeezed between the Rio Grande River and huge mountains.  Sometimes you could see three ranges of mountains at a time.  The Rio Grande River even carved a valley in some places that looked like a miniature Grand Canyon.

We passed many roadside crosses with flowers, indicating where people had died in accidents.  All through Arizona and New Mexico, there were signs that read, “Don’t Drink and Drive.”

Taos was a treat.  I love peach-colored adobe buildings.  There was a lot of traffic getting into the central plaza area.  The locals must have hated the traffic I thought.

I was making a groupie pilgrimage to Taos.  Two of my favorite writing inspirational teachers had homes there: Nathalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron.  I had fun working through their books alone and with my first writing group.

Taos galleries sell a variety of things such as Navajo blankets, pottery, and jewelry.  I found the gallery that sells Nathalie Goldberg’s artwork and had my photo taken outside of it.  I like French provincial style for decorating, but I saw a glass-topped coffee table that I liked with a Wild West theme.  It was held up by bronze horse heads with flying manes at each end.

The plaza in Taos was all done in wood and adobe.  The adobe was restored and painted.  We went to some souvenir shops where I bought Florence a brown, lacquer cross.  Laurent bought a bolo tie with a buffalo on it.

All around the plaza were brown paper bags with sand in the bottom in them with a candle inside each bag that had been burned.  Later in the day, I learned that these are called luminarias and are usually placed outside on Christmas Eve.

We ate lunch at a charming, touristy place above the central plaza in Taos.  We had a window table where we could look out on the plaza and admire the luminarias that the restaurant had set up on its balcony.

We all ate chicken in some form.  I ate chicken mole.  Mole is a savory and spicy chocolate sauce with no sugar added to it.  The restaurant’s version of mole had more cinnamon in it than in the versions I had eaten previously.

We left Taos while the sun was still shining to drive down the curving road through Santa Fe.  We no doubt crossed the Santa Fe Trail, which pioneers followed on their way west.  We found no parking in Santa Fe and had to call it a day for any more tourism.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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