The menu reads, “Our Award Winning ‘Clams Lucifer’ with red chile-tequila broth, grilled baguette.” This recipe is my copycat of our favorite dish from The Pink Adobe, which we think is currently the best restaurant in Santa Fe.
We have it on pretty good authority that this is very close to, if not, the actual recipe. They used to give the recipe away, but now they don’t. This comes from someone who had the recipe, but then tweaked it themselves. We tweaked it back to make it like the one we enjoyed so much at the Pink Adobe.
Some of the dried peppers will be unfamiliar to those outside of New Mexico natives or regulars or those with a pantry of Mexican goods, luckily we are both. You can get them from most Mexican markets or Amazon, here in Colorado we have most of them at King Soopers. The rest we get on our trips to New Mexico. We use the same pepper mix, essentially, for tortilla soup. The diversity of the peppers, creates the complexity of the broth (we we sopped up with bread and my daughter drank the rest as a soup), so it’s that worth the effort. And, no, it’s not hot as hell despite the name.
INGREDIENTS
3/4 stick of butter
1 onion
3 shallots
5 cloves of garlic
1 jalapeno
1 chipotle pepper from a can of chipotle in adobo sauce
3 Tbsp red chili powder, preferably Chimayo
1 dried Guajillo pepper
1 dried Pasilla or Mulatto pepper
1 Anaheim pepper
1 cup silver tequila
1 bottle of clam juice
1 bottle white wine, preferably Riesling or Pinot Grigio
1 can of heavy cream
1 ½ lbs of fresh clams
Re-hydrate the dried peppers in hot water, enough to cover. Let rest and rehydrated for 15 minutes. Strain the liquid and reserve to add it to the pot later. Puree the re-hydrated dried peppers with the chipotle peppers until very smooth in a high speed blender. Roast the Anaheim pepper, remove the skin, and chop it. Chop the onions, shallots, garlic and jalapeño.
In a large pot, sauté the onions, shallots, garlic and jalapeno in butter until soft. Add chile powder and stir well to coat the vegetables. Add the diced Anaheim pepper. Deglaze with the tequila, then add the wine and clam juice. Stir in the pureed peppers and reserved water. Allow this mixture to come to a boil and then reduce by ¼. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper.
Add clams and serve after clams open. Serve with plenty of bread to sop up the yummy goodness.