That is a closeup of a great big pot of carne adovada. It was magnificent!

Somehow, we’ve never made red chile dishes as much as green. But some recent internet rabbit hole led me back to Albuquerque foods, and I got a terrible hankering for carne adovada… pork stewed / roasted in red chile.

The trick here is to get the red chile sauce right. Pork is pork more or less, especially after cooking for a few hours.

In NM, you’d go out to the porch and pull some wizened chiles off the ristra that hangs there all year. There would be much preparation where you’d have to be careful not to get chile burns: chopping, removal of seeds, sautéing with the onions, blending, straining out the bits of peel, and so on. But here, things are different. So we went to the Asian store and found a biggish jar of coarse ground chile. Woo-hoo! It had excellent flavor, although we had to add some cayenne to get the heat right.

The other key spice is oregano. After hunting in vain at various local stores, last year we ordered a bulk bag of Mexican oregano from a place that sort of mixes between being a wholesaler and a retailer.

We made our carne adovada in the slow cooker instead of the oven, which might or might not pass muster with the abuelitas back in Corrales. But it sure turned out delicious! We didn’t have any pozole in the house, so we’ve just had tacos and burritos so far. But there’s plenty left in the freezer, so next time we get to the American store we’ll be able to make a beautiful pot of pozole.