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NM Green Chile Ham Cups

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New Mexico Green Chile Ham Cup
New Mexico Green Chile Ham Cup

While trying to come up with a good inspiration for a cupcake to make, I came across a few recipes that used sliced meat instead of paper for the cup.  So this was born.  Taking the well known quality of NM style Green Chile and putting it in an edible cup, stopped with some bacon and eggs.  I made 24 of these things and they disappeared so fast, I almost didn’t get a picture of them.

I’m working on more varieties of this so keep your eyes open.  They’ll be coming soon.

Serves 24

Ingredients

  • 24 slices Thin Sliced Breakfast Ham
  • 12 slices good quality Bacon
  • 24 Eggs
  • 1 Tbsp Olive Oil
  • 1 Medium White Onion finely chopped
  • 2 cups Chicken or Pork Stock
  • 8 NM Big Jim or Anaheim Chile Peppers, roasted and cleaned
  • 4 Garlic Cloves, roasted and minced
  • 1/2 tsp Oregano
  • 1/2 tsp Cumin
  • 1 tsp Ground Pepper
  • 1/2 tsp Salt
  • 4 Tbsp Flour (or Whole Wheat Flour)

Preparation

First off your going to need 2 cupcake trays that have 12 tins for cupcakes.  You don’t need it right now, but make sure you’ve got them.

First we have to make our NM Green Chile.  Follow this recipe or in a pinch, you can substitute a jar of either El Pinto Roasted Green Chile Sauce or Colorado Green Chile Sauce in place of the peppers, garlic and spices.  Just follow the recipe as noted below.

On either a grill or in your oven at 400 degrees, roast your Chile and Garlic until the skin is blackened.  This should take about 20 minutes, turning them over once while cooking.  Remove and allow to cool until you can easily handle them.  Remove the skin from the Chile and chop into small pieces, less then 1/2 inch.  Fine chop or mince the Garlic.  Transfer to a medium sauce pan and heat to medium-high heat.  Add in the Oregano, Cumin, Pepper and Salt and stir until for about 3 minutes, then reduce heat to medium.

If your taking the short cut, simply put the jar of sauce into the medium sauce pan and bring to a boil.  Stirring occasionally, when boiling reduce to medium heat.

If you’ve taken the short cut, from here on the  where you start.

In a large sauce pan, over medium-high heat, add the oil and when hot enough, add the chopped Onions and saute until tender and starting to turn translucent (about 3 minutes).  Add in the sauce you have in the medium sauce pan and continue to stir until everything comes to a boil again.  Slowly add in the flour to thicken up the mixture.  Then add in the Stock and simmer on medium heat until it thickens up.  Add more flour if you need too.  This should be the consistency of a good thick gravy.

This should make about 3 cups of Green Chile Sauce.  I highly recommend letting this cool and refrigerating, covered for at least 12 hours until final assembly.  It brings the heat up a little while bringing out the flavors as well.

Prepare the Bacon by either baking in the oven at 375 degrees for 15 minutes per side or in a skillet until done.  The remove and drain on some paper towel.  After it’s drained, chopping each slice into 4 pieces.  Store until final assembly.

Final Assembly and Cooking

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Spray the cupcake tray with a light coating of Olive Oil.  In center of each cupcake hole, place one slice of Ham and push down on the center.  The Ham should go into the hole and form a cup.  Pinch one side of the slice to get the cup started.  Then scoop about a 1 inch ball of the Green Chile Sauce and place in each of the Ham cups, pressing to make sure it goes to the bottom and fills the cup.  Then put a couple of pieces of Bacon in each cup, on end so one end of the Bacon sticks up a bit.  Crack open and place one whole egg into the top of each Ham cup.  This should just fill the cups to the top.  Put into the oven and bake for 20 – 40 minutes, checking to see that you don’t burn the egg.  The time you take them out determines how done the eggs are.  30 minutes will usually yield an over medium yoke.  Remove from the oven when the yolks are done to your liking and serve.  I took these to the rink in the trays, double wrapped in foil to keep them warm.

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Jalapeno Black Eyed Pea Quiche

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At New Year’s celebrations in the South, eating Black Eyed Peas is supposed to bring luck in the New Year.  We’ve localized this to the Southwest by adding Jalapeño Peppers to the mix.  If you like though you can use some other kinds of spicy peppers.  But the Jalapeños are our favorites for this.

And we’ve got to pay better attention to how much we drink the night before.  This is the second quiche in a row that we completely forgot to take a picture until it was too late.

Serves: 16 -22 (2 quiches)

Ingredients

  • 2 – 15.5 oz cans of Trappey’s Jalapeño Black Eyed Peas
  • 1/2 cup Panko or bread crumbs
  • 8 – slices Bacon, chopped
  • 1 cup Cheddar Cheese, shredded
  • 1 cup Swiss Cheese, shredded
  •  2 Pie Crusts
  • Base Quiche Mix

Preparation

In a skillet, cook the chopped Bacon until done, remove from heat and allow to drain on paper towels.

In a large pot over medium heat, pour the Black Eyed Peas, extra Chopped Bacon and the Panko and cook, stirring frequently to reduce the liquid volume by 2/3.  This should take about 15 minutes.  Remove and place in a container and refrigerate until ready for final assembly.

Prepare the rest of the ingredients and store until final assembly.

Final Assembly and Cooking

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Get the prepared pie crusts and loosely fill each of them with the Black Eyed Pea mixture prepared above.  Prepare the base quiche mix and pour over the other mixture.  Stir a little to make sure the quiche mix gets well mixed into the Pea mixture.  Top each pie with the cheese mixture and place in the oven.  Cook for 30 – 40 minutes, removing when the cheese starts to turn golden brown.  Serve or pack them up to take to the rink.

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Christmas Quiche

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Your Christmas guests have just left (not yet but this is so you’ll remember to save at least 1 – 1/2 pounds of your Christmas Ham)  and you’ve got an early morning skate coming up.  This quick Christmas Quiche is an easy way to have a good breakfast ready and reduce your leftovers.  This one is colorful, but it was consumed before I remembered to take a picture.

Serves 16 – 22 (2 quiches)

Ingredients

  • 1 – 1/2 lb Christmas Ham, cubed
  • 1/2 cup Green Peppers, chopped (2 or 3 peppers)
  • 1/2 cup Red Peppers, chopped (2 or 3 peppers)
  • 1 cup Cheddar Cheese, shredded
  • 1 cup Swiss Cheese, shredded
  • 2 Potato Crusts
  • Base Quiche Mix

Preparation

I’m assuming that you’ve already made your Christmas Ham, so the only cooking to be done before hand is to prepare your Potato Crusts.  Follow these directions and you’ll be set.  The rest is just chopping up the meat and peppers.  Shred and mix the cheeses together and put everything away until ready for final assembly.

Final Assembly and Cooking

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Get your prepared potato crusts out and add a thin layer of shredded cheese, about 1/4 of the cheese you’ve prepared.  Then add the cubed ham and chopped peppers into the pans.  Prepare the base quiche mix and pour that gently over the mixture.  Then finish with the remaining cheese.  Transfer to the oven and bake for 30 – 40 minutes and remove when the cheese starts to brown.  Either serve or pack it up for the morning skate.

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Deer Dangle Balls

Deer Dangle Balls
Deer Dangle Balls

Due to a planned late start, we tried for a more of a mid day snack.  But these turned out to be big enough to be a small meal.  If you don’t have some venison sausage you can use a good pork sausage.  But then they’d be pig dangle balls.  The other difference here is that I used shell shaped pasta instead of the standard elbow pasta.  Also this recipe is for baking them, but you could deep fry them too.

Serves 16 – 22

Ingredients

  • 1 lb Venison Sausage
  • 6 slices Bacon, fine chopped
  • 3/4 cup Panko
  • 2 Eggs, beaten
  • 2 – 4 Roasted Green Chile Peppers, cleaned and chopped
  • 2 cloves Roasted Garlic, chopped
  • 2 cups Conchiglie or small Shell Pasta
  • 1 cup Gruyere Cheese, shredded
  • 1 cup Parmesan Cheese, shredded
  • 4 Tbsp Butter
  • 1/4 cup All-purpose Flour
  • 4 tsp Black Pepper
  • 2 tsp Kosher Salt

Preparation

Roast the chile peppers and garlic on a hot grill until the skin turns black.  Remove from heat and cool enough to clean and skin the chile and chop the garlic.  Put them both into a food processor or blender and pulse until chopped up into a salsa.  Set these aside until later.

Mix 1 egg, 1/4 cup of Panko and 1/2 of the pepper and salt in with the sausage and mix thoroughly.  When done, put this mixture in the refrigerator so firm up.  In a large pot, cook the pasta shells as directed until al dente, drain and return to the large pot.

While the pasta is cooking, in a skillet cook the bacon until done.  Remove and allow to drain on a paper towel.  Also prepare the cheese sauce in a medium pot over medium high heat, melt the butter and then mix in the flour slowly.  When the mixture starts to brown, reduce the heat to a low to medium and gradually add in all the cheeses and the rest of the salt and pepper.  Then add in the salsa and bacon and stir until fully mixed.

Then start working in the pasta and continue mixing over heat until the cheese fully coats all the pasta.  Then remove from heat and allow to cool.  You might even want to cool this in the refrigerator to make it easier to work with.

Prepare the remaining egg in a small bowl for an egg wash, along with the 1/2 cup of Panko that remains.  Take the meat mixture out of the refrigerator and make small 3/4 – 1 inch balls.  Smash these flat with about 1/8 inch thickness.  Using a small scoop, make a 1/2 diameter ball of the Mac N Cheese.  Place these balls in the center of each of the sausage circles.  Then roll up the sides so that the meat fully coats the Mac N Cheese balls.  Dip each ball in the egg wash and then thoroughly coat with Panko.  Place on a sheet and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or until ready for final assembly.

Final Assembly and Cooking

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Since you’ve already done all the hard work, all that’s left to do is lay out for cooking.  Foil line a baking pan and put the grill in it.  Them evenly spread the balls on the grill.  Cook them in the oven for about 30 minutes, until they are the breading turns golden brown.  For an even better toasting spray or brush on a little olive oil before cooking.

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Venison with Blue Posole Quiche

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Venison with Blue Corn Pasole and Green Chile
Venison with Blue Corn Pasole and Green Chile

If you’ve got 1 – 1/2 pounds of Venison (ground or steaks) around you can easily make this dish.  But be warned, the Posole takes a lot of time to prepare (about 18 hours) if your going to make this from scratch.  You can substitute canned hominy if your like to cut down on the preparation time, but its not as good.  The Blue Corn Posole has a unique flavor that is “fuller” than regular Posole.

Ingredients

  • 1 – 1/2 lb of Venison – either ground or steaks (Pork makes a good substitute)
  • 1/2 White Onion,chopped
  • 12 oz of Blue Corn Posole
  • 1 cup Chicken Stock
  • 1 qt Water – enough to keep the posole covered
  • 4 – 6 Roasted Hot Green Chile Peppers (NM Big Jim or Anaheim)
  • 3 cloves of Garlic, fine chopped
  • 1 tsp Mexican Oregano
  • 4 tsp Olive Oil
  • 2 tsp Black Pepper
  • 1 tsp Salt
  • 1 cup shredded Monterrey Jack Cheese

Preparation

The first thing to is soak the posole in water overnight.  Strain out the soaked posole and throw away the water.  I feed it to my house plants.  Then to finish making this you’ll need to start this last phase at least the 6 hours before you’re going to need to serve it.  Start by roasting your garlic and chile peppers until they start to char.  I usually do this on the grill, but you can also do it in an oven.  Put the whole peppers and garlic cloves in a foil tray with a light coating of olive oil and cook in the oven until the chile skins are turning black.  If you do this on a grill, you’ll only need to put the garlic in the foil.  The peppers go right on the grill.  When done allow to cool enough so you can handle them.  Clean the skins and cut off the stems on the peppers.  Fine chop the garlic.  Put the chile peppers and garlic cloves into a blender or food processor and pulse a few times to chop everything up into a salsa.

In a large pot with a light coat of oil over medium high heat, cook the onions until soft and translucent.  Then add in the chicken stock and bring to a boil.  Add in the dried posole and cover.  Simmer on low heat for 3 – 4 hours, adding water as necessary to keep the posole covered.  While this is going, the meat could use a little attention. If you’re using ground meat, season with salt and pepper and form small meatballs.  If you’ve got roast or steak, cube it so that the chunks are no larger than 3/4 inch.  Season them to your taste.  In a skillet over high heat with a dash of oil brown the meat on all sides.  Remove from heat and let rest at room temperature until the posole is ready for the meat to be added.

When the posole kernels start splitting open, add in the meat, salsa and the oregano.  Cook for about another hour over low heat, uncovered and stirring occasionally.  Continue to cook slowing until the liquid is reduced by 2/3.  This will be dryer than your normal posole.  Remove from heat and allow to cool.  Strain the mixture, reserving the liquid which should be about 1 cup.  Put the posole in a separate container and store until ready for final assembly.

Final Assembly and Cooking

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Gather your prepared pie crusts and half the posole placing each portion into the pie crust and spread the mixture out.  Prepare the usual base quiche mix, but reduce the Half and Half to 1/4 cup, and add to it the liquid reserved from the posole.  Mix thoroughly and gently pour over the filling in the pie crust.  Top with the shredded cheese and place in the oven for 30 – 40 minutes or until the cheese starts to lightly brown.  Remove and either serve or transport to the rink.