My mom used to make green chili on occasion. As a young child, I appreciated it about as much as I appreciated her split pea soup, which is to say not at all.
It took a little growing up before I started to enjoy the way the pork just fell apart into strings and the green chiles in the broth added a little tangy zip. I remember my mom cooking her green chili all day, and hers was on the thin side. That is to say, it wasn’t chunky. The pork sort of became part of the broth.
Now, I see chile verde on Mexican menus all over town. I ordered it once and it was pretty tasty, but it was more like a pile of pork chunks with green sauce. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be made.
Here’s a recipe for chile verde that I received yesterday from the Simply Recipes listserv I joined a while back. It looks a little thicker than Mom’s, but more like a stew than what I’ve been served at restaurants in town. It also calls for roasting a bunch of tomatillos, which just sounds delicious to me.
I think I’ll give it a try. It’s a nice way to use some of those different chile peppers I wrote about in a story last month.

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