The Dish that Fueled Thriller

The Golden Temple's New Mexican Red Chile Sauce HIStory

“Can you bring the red chile enchilada, the ginger-miso salad and some cookies to the studio”, MJ asked in that polite, earnest and only somewhat breathy voice. “Just no brownies or chocolate chip cookies, I don’t like chocolate”, he added. The chocoholic in me was appalled but I knew we had great blueberry bars and still made carob brownies. I dropped off the food through the rear entrance at Quincy Jones’ Westlake studio on Beverly Blvd. and was paid by a secretary. She handed me $30 for an $18 order. A $12 tip in those days? Wonderful. Michael would soon be placing his orders directly with me.

This was 1982, Michael Jackson was hunkered down on the soon to be best-selling album of all time, Thriller, and he had happened into our restaurant and loved the food. Like, Billboard Top Ten loved the food, and as a new- ish vegetarian, he was soon eating nowhere but our place, The Golden Temple.

I was a part of a throuple, a working vegetarian health food restaurant throuple, the kind of teamwork you stumble on rarely in this life. Gurmukh was the restaurant manager, Akasha was the chef and I was the kitchen and catering manager. They were determined to bring the restaurant into the 80s and transcend its 1970s ethos. Gurmukh focused on imbuing the dining room with ambience and heart while Akasha was focused on the menu, escaping our hippie roots, that era of everything served “on a bed of sprouts with a blanket of melted (rennetless) cheese”. I got caught up in their relentless yet infectious drive, as did our customers.

While most vegetarians cooked from the newer crop of hearty and whole grain health food books published since the late 1960s, Akasha scoured traditional cookbooks for technique, flavor development and style then applied it within the limits of our lacto-vegetarian diet. As a first-time chef she surpassed expectations, foraging Japanese eggplant, wild mushrooms and this new revelation called chevre, aka goat cheese. While she was busy overhauling the entire menu, I was tasked with updating the enchilada sauce; ours was dismal. To be a vegetarian restaurant and not have great Mexican food? That was a hard no.

Gurmukh tracked down a recipe from the now closed Golden Temple in Santa Fe, where she had previously worked. A meal there four years earlier at sixteen years old had left visceral memories simmering in the back of my mind, both their flavorful vegetarian food and the stunning, pueblo style restaurant located one block from Santa Fe’s historic Plaza. The clay adobe exterior, desert gold and turquoise interior tiled walls, handmade furniture and multi-level dining room were all beyond anything I had ever experienced in a vegetarian restaurant. We had to capture that taste and bring it to Los Angeles.

(Culinary history note – Café Pasqual would take over the Golden Temple space by 1979 and keep the authentic flame of New Mexican and Mexican food alive to this day).

The recipe was handed over with measurements included, but the method was vague; I had to bring it to life. It had an unusual step for a chile sauce; it was based on a roux, a process of browning flour in fat, oil in this case, till it was deep, nutty and resonant, with a very large quantity of hot chile broth added, whisked and stirred in properly for a thick, creamy texture, no lumps allowed, then simmered till it was…just right.

I had learned the craft of making a roux just a year earlier; applying the roux technique to the chile sauce with its minimal instructions turned out to be much simplified since it called for vegetable oil, not ghee, as the fat. From the first whiff of the New Mexican chile powder I knew it was different from any generic chile powder blend, with both sweet and smoky notes. Some chili powders are either bland and lack personality or they’re merely hot and burn your tongue, but the New Mexican chile powder has a slow building heat, rounded out by a sweetness and a smokiness. I kept checking the label to see if there weren’t other spices contributing to the overall taste, but no. It all emanated from just one chile.

And what a chile it was. New Mexico chiles are green when ripe and can be picked and roasted, or they can stay on the vine and turn red when dried in the sun, often in the form of the chile ristra, later ground into a fine powder. Green chiles come mostly from the Hatch Valley in the southern part of the state which you might see roasted fresh at farmers market in season, and frozen or bottled as a chunky fresh sauce. The deep red of the chile powder is generally from the chiles from the Chimayo area in the northern part of the state, both hotter on the Scoville scale and as a powder, it’s stable for up to a year at room temperature. Choosing red or green chile on just about anything is a daily occurrence around New Mexico, burger and fast-food pizza chains included.

The next culinary surprise came in learning how a New Mexican enchilada was served. We were used to rolling tortillas around a filling, dousing them in sauce and cheese then baking an entire pan of a dozen or more. This was extremely inefficient in a restaurant setting as they sat on a steam table over heating for hours until served, or they may not have sold out at all contributing to food waste. By contrast, the method from New Mexico was a layered affair, broiled fresh to order with the two tortillas then stacked on top of each other when serving. We had wonderful fresh tortillas delivered several times a week, soft and pliable. With a little experimentation I created a standard method to spread the chile sauce evenly to the edges of the tortilla; as long as the outer edge of the tortillas were slathered in both sauce and cheese before placing under the broiler for three minutes, it resulted in a perfect enchilada. The sauce and cheese integrated to more than their individual parts and the tortilla itself had an al dente-like chew. The layered style covered almost ¾ of a dinner plate; when served with our own frijoles, sour cream, guacamole and chips we had a truly signature dish.

Akasha worked her creative magic on our tired old menu, I was the organizing force for the kitchen and burgeoning catering business and our customers were swayed by Gurmukh’s sincere charm. We worked together for almost four years, rarely fought, saw other staff come and go, socialized outside of work and became friends. It became standard procedure to hand the phone to me whenever Michael Jackson called in for his favorite food; that red chile sauce held the key to his culinary heart.

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Enchiladas with New Mexican Red Chile Sauce

For the sauce:

1/3 cup New Mexican red chile powder*

1 teaspoons cumin

¾ teaspoon salt

2 ½ cups chicken or vegetable stock, or water

2 tablespoons vegetable oil such as avocado

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Whisk the chile powder, cumin and salt into the liquid, bring to a simmer and set aside off the heat.

While the liquid is cooling, heat the oil in a heavy skillet on medium-low heat. Add the flour and cook, stirring frequently, until browned, 2-4 minutes. As the flour gets darker, it will require constant stirring to avoid scorching.

When it is browned and smells somewhat nutty, slowly pour in the hot liquid and chile mixture. Add a little at a time, stir or whisk well in between each addition to prevent lumps from forming.

When all the liquid is added, reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 8-10 minutes until the sauce has thickened.

Makes about 1-2/3 cups

To make 4 layered enchiladas:

8 corn tortillas

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Red chile sauce to taste**

3 cups grated Monterey jack cheese

To assemble-

Preheat a broiler.

Brush 4 tortilla with the oil on both sides. Most likely you can fit 4 tortillas on one baking sheet, making 2 finished enchiladas at a time.

Use about 3-4 tablespoons of the sauce, spoon and spread it on both sides of the tortillas, more thoroughly on the top side. The tortillas will get tough and leathery if the sauce is not spread even. Cover the tortillas with the cheese, reserving enough for the remainder, and place the tortillas under the broiler for 3-4 minutes, until the cheese is melted and bubbling but not browned.

Remove from the oven and using a spatula, slide one tortilla on top of another. Keep each enchilada warm on a plate in the lower part of the oven and repeat with the remaining 4 tortillas.

Serve with beans, rice, guacamole, sour cream and plenty of chips.

*available at specialty stores, in bulk spice sections or online

**this makes more than you’ll need, store the remaining sauce covered and refrigerated, for 5-6 days