By JILL WENDHOLT SILVAThe Kansas City Star

SANTA FE, N.M. | to get to the Saturday morning farmers market from the Eldorado Hotel & Spa, hang a left on South Guadalupe and keep walking until the rail yard.

“You’ll probably smell the market before you actually get there,” a fellow food writer calls after us.

Under a cloudless blue sky, I head out with Lee Dean, food editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Nancy Stohs, food editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. the 10-minute walk takes us past a park, a knot of day laborers, a church, restaurants and plenty of trendy boutiques with chunky squash blossom necklaces and turquoise bracelets.

On the edge of the market, a man with sun-baked skin roasts Hatch chiles in a latticed metal drum. the pungent, vegetal smell of the green chiles shedding their skins makes me hungry, but it also stings my eyes and throat.

During the first week of September, 54 members of the Association of Food Journalists gathered in Santa Fe. we arrived at the height of the chile harvest. Some years the season lasts two weeks; other years it spans two months. Locals say it has been a long time since the arid scrub-brush landscape has been so green. the bounty of chiles this year is expected to be nothing less than “voluminous.”

But why is it de rigueur to roast chiles?

“the skin of chiles grown in the desert can be texturally unpleasant — like eating celluloid film,” says Rocky Durham, culinary director of the Santa Fe Cooking School.

“When you are here, you are at the epicenter of chiles,” Durham says. “the hotness of chile is what people want to talk about, but there are very deep, profound flavors in chile peppers, and they represent the specific terroir they’re grown in.”

At 7,000 feet in altitude, the sun is hot and the air is dry.

“the whole cuisine is based on dry: drying chiles, drying corn, drying mud,” says Katherine Kagel, chef/owner of Café Pasqual’s, an iconic organic restaurant at 121 Don Gaspar Ave. that has been serving up distinctive Santa Fe fare since 1979.

Christmas combo

Forget state songs, birds, flowers or trees, New Mexico’s unofficial state question is of culinary import and boils down to this: red or green?

To which there are only three appropriate answers: Red. or green. or Christmas, a combination of the two.

For a true taste of Christmas, head to Rancho de Chimayò, a restaurant nestled in the mountains 30 miles north of Santa Fe. Run by the Jaramillo family since 1965, the adobe hacienda is decorated with strands of ristras, red chiles hanging from the ceiling to dry. These are fresh chiles (green chiles turn red), not to be confused with the varnished ristras and wreaths sold to unwary tourists. of course, a varnished one is probably easier to get through airport security.

Both red and green have their merits; just don’t try to judge heat by the color.

Cheryl Alters Jamison, a New Mexico-based award-winning food writer, is better known for writing barbecue tomes with her husband, Bill. They recorded the recipes for the restaurant’s cookbook, their first foray into food writing.

“Ladies from the village used to work in the restaurant,” Jamison recalls. “there were no recipes, so you got various variations, depending on who was cooking. … I had to sit in the kitchen and take notes and make a composite recipe and go back to ask, ‘does this taste right?’ ”

Jamison notes that the late New York Times food critic Craig Claiborne once visited the restaurant. Claiborne was enamored with the hearty carne adovada, a sassy dish of marinated and baked pork seasoned with chile caribe, a dried chile pod that is ground and cooked down into a fruity sauce with hints of raisin and cranberry.

The restaurant’s combo plate features carne adovada served with cheese enchiladas topped with green chile sauce, pinto beans cooked with chicos — kernels of sweet or tender green corn cooked in a horno, a beehive-shaped earthen oven, then removed from the cob. Sopaipillas, those warm pillows of bread fried in very hot oil, arrive in a bread basket.

Tastemakers

2010 marks Santa Fe’s 400th anniversary as a city, but there have been native people living in New Mexico for much longer. the Anasazi, for instance, were apartment dwellers and farmers in the region thousands of years before white settlers.

As Spaniards made their way into the region, Santa Fe was a culinary crossroads. “When the old World collided with the new, the blend of agriculture and foods was, without a doubt, the most significant blending of cultures in the world,” said William Dunmire, associate professor of biology at the University of New Mexico.

But how does a modern city of 80,000 people support more than 200 restaurants?

In part, by continuing to celebrate indigenous foods.

“I am really done with industrial food. Done,” Kagel says. “I think America is about ready to take a good hard look after this egg scare (when many Americans were sickened with salmonella). we need to go back to the way things were grown before World War II.”

The Café Pasqual menu offers plenty of New Mexican specialties with chiles, but the restaurant also sources from local farmers such as Talus Wind Ranch (taluswind ranch.com), a 260-acre ranch 30 miles southeast of Santa Fe producing heritage meat, including heritage turkey, as well as five breeds of heritage lamb: Navajo-Churro, Finnsheep, Rambouillet, Southdown and Miniature Southdown.

Café Pasqual’s lunch menu features a Talus Wind Ranch lamb burger on a brioche bun with mint-garlic Greek yogurt accompanied by a watermelon salad or field greens.

Native nosh

Chef/culinary anthropologist Lois Ellen Frank sees a Native American Foods Movement on the horizon — one similar to the slow Foods Movement. the goal, Frank says, is to present modern interpretations of simple, ancient foods.

Born to a Kiowa mother and a Sephardic Jewish father and raised in Long Island, N.Y., Frank grew up in a multicultural world of native seders and Jewish feasts.

Frank began her career as a professional food photographer. When an elder watched her cast a positive light on chicken nuggets, he asked: “are these the poetry from within?”

Frank had to admit the food she was photographing did not reflect her upbringing. looking for a new line of work, she contacted iconic Santa Fe chef Mark Miller and together they birthed “the great Chile Poster,” a popular poster depicting a variety of chile peppers. She has also written the James Beard Award-winning cookbook “Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations” (Ten-Speed Press) and owns the Red Mesa Cuisine, a catering company that combines native foods and contemporary techniques.

Before Spaniards began colonizing the region, the Native Americans had few sweet foods in the diet — watermelon was a treat. nor did they drink alcohol.

When Navajo and Hopi tribes were later relocated to reservations, they changed their diet from healthy, indigenous foods to government rations, including bug-infested flour. Making do, the women concocted fry bread. “Fry bread is native, iconic food. But you can’t eat it every day and be healthy,” Frank says.

More recently, trading posts on reservations have become food deserts where less than healthful foods are sold. American Indian youth suffer from a high rate of overweight and obesity.

Tequila 101

As owner of Maria’s New Mexican Kitchen, Al Lucero sells 3,000 margaritas a week during tourist season. the restaurant’s eight-page list features more than 170 margaritas ranging from $6 to $75 a glass, depending on the quality of the tequila.

After 30 years as a radio and TV broadcaster, Lucero was able to ride the emerging premium tequila trend, becoming an expert on margaritas. his “the great Margarita Book” (Random House) — with a foreword by Robert Redford — has sold more than 100,000 copies. Yet despite his expert credentials, I was shocked to learn that Lucero makes his margaritas with fresh lemon instead of lime.

“Lemons are more abundant and less expensive,” he says. plus, “they have the same sugar content, regardless of the time of year.”

At Maria’s they dilute the fresh-squeezed juice with 10 percent tap water to mellow the tartness.

•Tequila is made from the blue agave plant. the desert plant is not a cactus; instead it’s related to the lily and takes eight to 12 years to mature.

•Agave is grown primarily for use in tequila; it’s also used as an alternative sweetener.

•If it doesn’t say 100-percent agave on the label, it’s not authentic. “Tequila has to come from Mexico,” he says. “If it’s 100-percent agave it must be bottled at an estate.”

•“Don’t ever hesitate to put a good tequila in a margarita.” in other words, your cocktail is only as good as your ingredients.

•“be careful not to pay for the shape of the bottle. it should be in a relatively plain bottle.”

•Remember, tequila does not have a worm in the bottle. Mezcal is the “moonshine of Mexico.” It’s made from agave but is processed to take on a smoky flavor — and a worm.

Want to try a tequila tasting at home? we sampled Jose Cuervo Gold Mixto: a blend of 51 percent agave and 49 percent cane sugar dissolved in water; El Tesoro Silver (blanco): 100-percent agave fresh from the still; El Tesoro Reposado: 100-percent agave aged in oak for at least 60 days; and El Tesoro Anejo: 100-percent agave aged in oak for at least one year.

Carne Adovada

Makes 6 to 8 servings

8 ounces (about 25) whole dried red chile pods, preferably Chimayò or other New Mexico red, or ancho

1 tablespoon minced white onion

1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 teaspoon white pepper

3 pounds boneless pork chops, trimmed of fat and cut into 1- to 2-inch cubes

For the sauce: Preheat oven to 300 degrees. break stems off chile pods and discard seeds. (It is not necessary to get rid of every seed, but most should be removed.) place chiles in sink or large bowl, rinse carefully and then drain.

Place damp pods in one layer on baking sheet and roast 5 minutes in oven. Watch pods carefully so they don’t burn. the chiles can have a little remaining moisture. Remove from oven and let cool. break each chile into two or three pieces.

In blender, puree half of pods with 2 cups water. Pour liquid into large, heavy saucepan. Repeat with remaining pods and water.

Add remaining sauce ingredients to chile puree and bring to boil over medium-high heat. Simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Mixture will be thickened, but should remain a bit soupy. Remove from heat. Set aside.

For the meat: In a large, oiled baking pot with lid, pour enough sauce over bottom of pot to fully cover and top with pork cubes. Pour remaining sauce over pork. there should be more sauce than meat. Cover pot and bake until meat is tender and sauce cooks down, about 3  1/2 hours. (Check meat after 3 hours.) Carne adovada can be left uncovered for the last few minutes of baking if sauce seems watery.

Sauce can be made in advance and refrigerated for up to a day. the finished recipe can be refrigerated for up to 3 days. Add a couple of tablespoons of water before reheating in oven or on top of stove.

Per serving, based on 6: 411 calories (35 percent from fat), 16 grams total fat (5 grams saturated), 134 milligrams cholesterol, 20 grams carbohydrates, 47 grams protein, 302 milligrams sodium, 8 grams dietary fiber.