Calabacitos con Chile Verde (1903)
Reader ratingsCalabacitos con chile verde from the Spanish-American chapter of the 1903 Landmarks Club Cook Book: summer squash, corn and fresh green chile fried with salt pork and onion, cooked down dry and finished with a little cream.
- Recipe makes
- 6 servings as a side dish
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Most of the time is the pan cooking down; stir it now and then toward the end so it doesn’t catch.
Calabacitos with green chile, corn and salt pork.
The story behind the recipe
Summer squash, corn and green chile cooked together are still on New Mexican tables as calabacitas. Miss H. Knickerbocker’s recipe, which spells it calabacitos, “little squashes,” appeared in the Spanish-American chapter of The Landmarks Club Cook Book, published in Los Angeles in 1903: ten years after Vicenta Labadie de Chaves’s recipes in Favorite Dishes, and in a California book.
Salt pork and six green peppers
The recipe is short: half a pound of salt pork, two summer squash, a can of corn or the same amount cut from the cob, two onions and six green peppers. The onions and pork fry together, the vegetables and water go in, and it all cooks until “very dry,” so that a little cream can be stirred in before serving. The same signer’s Calabacitos con Queso has the same habit: “keep as dry as possible without burning.” The book was compiled for Charles Lummis’s Landmarks Club, which raised money to save California’s old missions, and Lummis had eaten at the Chaves table in New Mexico years before.
Read more about this recipe
Making it today
We halve the salt pork: half a pound to two squash is a great deal of salt and fat for a side dish. We read the “green peppers” of a dish called con chile verde as green chiles, and use fresh New Mexico or Anaheim chiles, chopped raw, as Miss Knickerbocker’s cheese version on the same page chops them. Their heat varies from pod to pod, so taste a piece first. We set the cooking times.
We serve it with the tamales in What Did the Southwest’s Tamales Look Like in Print?, and it fills out a plate of the Pollo con Arroz (1893), which has no vegetable of its own.
Half pound salt pork, two summer squash, one can of corn or the same amount of green corn cut from the cob, ...
Recipe makes: 6 servings as a side dish
Ingredients
For 6 servings as a side dish. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for 6 servings as a side dish.
- Salt pork, rind removed, in 1/4-inch dice4 oz
- Medium onions, chopped2
- Zucchini or yellow summer squash, in 1/2-inch pieces1 lb
- Corn kernels, fresh or canned and drained1 1/2 cups
- Fresh New Mexico or Anaheim green chiles, seeded and chopped6
- Water1/2 cup
- Heavy cream3 tbsp
- Salt, if needed1 pinch
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 4 oz salt pork, rind removed, in ¼-inch dice
- 2 medium onions, chopped
- 1 lb zucchini or yellow summer squash, in ½-inch pieces
- 1½ cups corn kernels, fresh or canned and drained
- 6 fresh New Mexico or Anaheim green chiles, seeded and chopped
- ½ cup water
- 3 tbsp heavy cream
- 1 pinch salt, if needed
Equipment
- Large, deep skillet with a lid
- Cutting board and knife
Instructions
Put the salt pork in the cold skillet and cook over medium-low heat for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring now and then, until the fat runs and the pieces are golden.
Add the onions and cook for about 8 minutes, until soft.
Add the squash, corn, green chiles and water. Cover and cook over medium-low heat for 10 minutes.
Uncover and cook for 10 to 15 minutes more, stirring often, until the squash is tender and the liquid has cooked away.
Stir in the cream, let it bubble for a minute, and taste. Add salt only if it needs it; the pork is salty. Serve hot.
Nutrition
245calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- 6 servings as a side dish
- Servings
- 6
Estimated per serving from USDA FoodData Central values for the listed ingredients.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
Half the original’s salt pork to its two squash; the vegetables scale freely.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.
The source cooks the chiles raw. If their skins are tough, roast and peel them first. For the companion Calabacitos con Queso on the same page, leave out the salt pork, soften the onions and chiles in a tablespoon of olive oil, add the squash with two or three peeled, sliced tomatoes, and stir in grated cheese at the end in place of the cream. Leftovers keep for 2 days in the refrigerator. Contains milk.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
After Miss H. Knickerbocker, in The Landmarks Club Cook Book (Los Angeles: Out West Company, 1903), Calabacitos con Chile Verde
Recipe details
- Course
- Side dish
- Dish family
- Vegetables & Sides
- Region
- American
- Source decade
- 1900s
- Main ingredient
- Vegetables
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Season
- Summer