I've experimented with this dish a couple of times before, but I don't really have a good reference point for what it's really supposed to be like. Granted, obsession over the "authenticity" of traditional dishes tends toward the comical - a cook's strident advocacy of the bona fides of their barbecue, borscht, or bouillabaisse generally rises in direct proportion to the number of widely accepted (and just as widely divergent) recipes for it.
Regardless, I've never tasted a traditional New Mexico chile verde. And since the only recipes I looked at when I made this batch were found on the internet, devoid of the exposition and context that makes the quality and, yes, authenticity, of a cookbook relatively easy to judge after just a few minutes of browsing, I decided to wing it.
Ingredients:
~2-3 lbs. of good fatty pork (i.e. shoulder)
3 fresh big green chiles (Mine were poblano, although I believe Anaheim are more traditonal. They are both good.)
2 serrano or other hot chiles (to taste)
1 medium can fire-roasted green chiles
1 medium yellow onion
4-6 cloves garlic
4-6 medium ripe tomatillos
water or chicken broth
olive oil
salt
pepper
Procedure:
Cut the pork in at least 1 1/4" dice, discarding any too-large pieces of fat and gristle. Don't worry about getting big dry stewy lumps of meat - you'll be cooking this until it falls apart, and you don't want the resulting shreds to be too short.
Roast the large green chiles (and the small ones too, if you want). It's easy with an electric burner.
Tongs are a must, for a couple of reasons:
Peel, seed, and chop the chiles, and all of the other ingredients. Everything but the tomatillos should be chopped fairly fine, so that you'll have maximum surface area to brown.
Get your pot good and hot, throw in a decent measure of oil, and brown the meat. Remove when complete.
Toss in a little bit more oil, and saute the onions, garlic, and fresh chiles. The onions are the least apt to burn out of all of these, so I like to let them go for a few minutes on their own before adding the other ingredients.
Add the canned chiles and tomatillos and cook until everything's soft, 5-10 minutes. If you want chunky chile with lots of tomatillo skins that get in your teeth and make you furious, you can deglaze your pot with broth or water, put the pork back in, and cook. But Porktopians do not roll that way:
You'll get the best product if you puree the sauteed vegetables in a Cuisinart or blender before you deglaze your pot with broth or water, put the pork back in, and cook it. (In case you aren't familiar with the term, to 'deglaze' is simply to pour liquid into a hot pot that's been used for sauteeing and letting it boil all of the browned goodness off of the bottom.)
Cover, and simmer gently for two hours or more, until meat begins to fall apart.
At this point, remove the pot's cover, start mashing the meat up, and cook until you reduce the liquid to whatever consistency you desire. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. This dish can be served as more of a soup, or as... I dunno what you'd call it, maybe just chile? It freezes really well, too.
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