I impulse-bought a bag of frozen roast green New Mexico chiles yesterday. I am Australian, living in California, and have never come across this product before, although I am aware of the reputation of Hatch and similar chiles from that region.
I should make some… salsa? Enchiladas? I confess, any time I want Mexican-ish food, I just go to one of the fab taquerias, thick on the ground here in the Bay area. Haven’t experimented much with making it myself, so any help appreciated.
(Which reminds me of a sheltered little white girl I used to work with, who told us she made Mexican food all the time, completely nonplussed at the mention of “cumin” - she’d never heard of it!)
Use all of your green chile. In fact, go buy some more. Ok, use about 2 to 3 pounds. More is better.
Are the chiles roasted and peeled, or just roasted? If they still have the charred skins on them, you’ll want to remove most of that. Leave about 5-10% still on, preferably that dark black roasty bits and blend the hell out of it. If they still have the stems, cut them off with about 1/4" of the top of the chiles. You can either remove the seeds or keep them. if you use enough green chile you can skip the jalapeno and poblano.
Skip the cilantro. It tastes like the Devil’s ass. Or so I’ve been told.
Don’t add the garlic in raw when you cook the onions. Instead, roast it when you roast the tomatillos and add it to the blender. Roasted garlic is the opposite of the Devil’s ass.
Go easy on the clove. Just a little is probably too much - it’s easy to over do it.
You can also add hominy if you want to make a green chile posole. That’s what I usually do.
You should definitely make some green chile stew. It’s really easy. There are lots of recipes out there; here is one. They say use pork, chicken, or beef. Pork is traditional.
If you have any green chiles left over, you can add them to almost anything- as Lamar Mundane said, they’re good on hamburgers or in scrambled eggs. They’re great on pizza too. I add them to my taco soup recipe. They make almost everything better (of course, I live in New Mexico and get them all the time).
I like making New Mexican green chile sauce, and then working that into pretty much anything. Eggs (like huevos rancheros or even scrambled.) Enchiladas. Chili. Spooned over roast chicken pieces or, for that matter, pretty much any roasted or grilled meat. It’s extremely versatile and will freeze well.
Last time I had a bunch of peppers (I don’t remember what kind, had a mild spice to them), I gave them to a friend who made a delicious creamy soup out of them. So that’s my idea. Some kind of creamy soup.
Yeah, they’ll pair well with corn in a chowdery kind of creamy soup (or you can just go for a straight creamy soup. I do both versions.) Poblanos work even better (at least for my tastes) for these soups.
Quick note for the OP. As an Australian you will probably know cilantro better as coriander.
For the longest time (more than a decade) I absolutely hated cilantro/coriander, but I have to admit that I’ve now acquired a taste for it. It wasn’t deliberate, but it kept cropping up in a variety of restaurant dishes. I still don’t cook with it myself and my kids hate it.
Wrap some corn tortillas (lightly toasted in a skillet) around a melty cheese, pour the green chili over it, sprinkle a little more cheese over the top, then pop in the oven until bubbly.