The fisherman's larder:
Christmas in the Gila
This month, Josh Crumpton visits America’s first wilderness in search of one of the country’s rarest native trout and discovers a characterful sixty-year-old kitchen in Silver City
MY FIRST wild Gila trout ate a small dry on the fourth pool. A flash against the cobble, a slow turn, a quiet rise. Hand-sized. The flank doesn’t quite read as gold until you have the fish in your palm under wet fingers — more like oxidized copper, with sparse black spots scattered across it like someone flicked ink and didn’t try too hard. I unhooked it without lifting it from the water and watched it slide back into the shadow. Two more came in the next two hours. Each one stopped time the same way bigger fish in bigger water do.
This is trout-under-the-rod-tip territory.
The whole exchange is a privilege you didn’t earn — somebody else earned it for you decades ago, and your job is to be careful enough not to undo it
The water is tight. The cover is dense. You don’t double-haul or shoot line. You flick with a three-weight into pockets the size of dinner plates and try not to throw a shadow on the surface. The pools are small enough that you can stand at the lip of one and see every fish in it. They see you back. A clumsy step on the cobbled riverbed will send them into the undercut, and you stand there for ten minutes waiting for the water to remember you weren’t there.
These are not “wall hangers.” You don’t measure them. You don’t photograph them out of the water. You hold them for ten seconds in a wet palm and then you give them back. The whole exchange is a privilege you didn’t earn — somebody else earned it for you decades ago, and your job is to be careful enough not to undo it.
I climbed back out. Thirteen hundred feet doesn’t sound like much until your legs are pre-failing somewhere in the second hour and the switchbacks aren’t done with you yet. I made the truck before sundown, soaked through, calves cooked. I dropped the tailgate, set the camp stove on it, and started building the dish I’d been carrying in my head since the first afternoon I walked into Nancy’s.
We’d come to Silver City for a week to film a show about this fishery — the easier stocked waters near town first, building toward the canyon trip that would close the show. The days the schedule gave us air, I walked town instead of going back to the rental. Late-afternoon light on adobe storefronts, dust from the morning’s water still on my boots. That’s how I arrived at Nancy’s the second day in.
The sign over the door reads “Nancy’s Silver Cafe”. The last two words of that name belong to the place itself — it has stood there for 60 years. The first belongs to the woman who crossed into the country with her twelve-year-old daughter Dora, worked the place for six years under its previous owners, then bought it and put her own name in front of the existing one. Dora has been in the kitchen since the family arrived. She runs it now.
The cafe opens at two and closes at seven — five hours a day, no more, no less — and the locals have trained their day around it. Dora knows everyone who walks in by name. The kitchen behind her is, no exaggeration, one of the cleanest I’ve ever stood in front of as a chef — 60 years of service and not a speck of old grease on the tile, not a streak on the steel.
She has the kind of hands that have been doing one specific job for so long they stop needing her eyes
The first afternoon I walked in, I found Dora at the back of that kitchen sorting avocados. I’d find her in the same spot every time I came in that week — and I’d bet most days of most weeks, going back as long as anyone remembers.
She has the kind of hands that have been doing one specific job for so long they stop needing her eyes — checking each avocado by feel, turning it once in her palm, deciding whether it went out to the dining room or onto a tray for tomorrow. The ones that didn’t make her cut weren't bad. They just weren't ready today.
Nancy’s Silver Cafe in Silver City, where Dora keeps the family tradition alive.
Nancy’s Silver Cafe in Silver City, where Dora keeps the family tradition alive.
The sign over the door reads “Nancy’s Silver Cafe”. The last two words of that name belong to the place itself — it has stood there for 60 years. The first belongs to the woman who crossed into the country with her twelve-year-old daughter Dora, worked the place for six years under its previous owners, then bought it and put her own name in front of the existing one. Dora has been in the kitchen since the family arrived. She runs it now.
The cafe opens at two and closes at seven — five hours a day, no more, no less — and the locals have trained their day around it. Dora knows everyone who walks in by name. The kitchen behind her is, no exaggeration, one of the cleanest I’ve ever stood in front of as a chef — 60 years of service and not a speck of old grease on the tile, not a streak on the steel.
We fished until our arms gave out, then found another flat and fished some more
The first afternoon I walked in, I found Dora at the back of that kitchen sorting avocados. I’d find her in the same spot every time I came in that week — and I’d bet most days of most weeks, going back as long as anyone remembers.
She has the kind of hands that have been doing one specific job for so long they stop needing her eyes — checking each avocado by feel, turning it once in her palm, deciding whether it went out to the dining room or onto a tray for tomorrow. The ones that didn’t make her cut weren't bad. They just weren't ready today.
New Mexico made “Red or Green?” its official state question — the legislature put it on the books in 1996. Order food and answer the question, which dictates the colour of the accompanying chile sauce. I’d known about “Christmas” as the third answer — the locals’ answer, the one that refuses to choose. I’d seen it ordered. But I hadn’t experienced what it meant until seeing Dora’s plates over a few visits that week — cheese enchiladas, half red, half green, the way the locals had been asking for it long before I sat down at her counter. The green keeps the red honest. The red gives the green depth. You don’t pick. You take both. No compromise.
I ate standing at the tailgate with the wilderness around me
Silver City worked on me the same way Nancy’s did. Artists in storefronts that used to be hardware stores. Coffee shops with flair sitting next to bookstores someone’s grandfather opened. People who’d lived there long enough to give directions to landmarks no map would help with.
A whole community living on the edge of civilization right up against America’s first wilderness — doing their thing, feeding each other, pointing strangers like me at the trailheads only the locals know about. By the end of the week, I’d made friends I’d come back for. The fishing was the reason I was there. It was no longer the reason I stayed.
Josh seasons the red chili sauce.
The dish assembled on my truck’s tailgate came out of all of it. Green chile poaching the eggs. Red chile drizzled over. Both colors holding the same plate, the way Dora served it. Christmas, the New Mexico way. I ate standing at the tailgate with the wilderness around me, the canyon I’d just climbed out of below me, three wild trout swimming back in pools I’d be sore about for days, and Dora’s avocados somehow still in the back of my mind.
Here is what I think travel does to anglers, if we let it.
We always go for the fish. But the trips that stay with us aren’t only the days we’re on the water. They’re the mornings on a strange porch with strange coffee. The afternoons spent following someone else’s directions to a gallery or a kitchen or a bookstore. The evenings at a counter where the woman in the back has been sorting avocados since she was a girl. If we set the rod down for a day — even half a day — the place starts handing us things we couldn’t have fished out of the water.
The shakshuka goes into the rotation now. It belongs in my larder the way huckleberry chutney from an Idaho avalanche slide belongs there, the way còctel from a Lower Laguna sandbar belongs there. Different country, different chiles, same logic. The dish is the souvenir. The recipe is the durable form. The story — and the people in it — is what makes either one worth a damn.
The dish is the souvenir. The recipe is the durable form
Preparing the shakshuka, a tribute to the places and people that fishing unites.
I broke camp the next morning and pointed the truck north toward Taos. Different country ahead. More small towns to walk into with an open mind and an afternoon to spare.
The next time I’m in a camp where someone’s hungry and the fire is up, I’ll pull out the cast iron and start blistering tomatoes. And while the eggs are setting under the lid, I’ll tell whoever is standing close enough to the fire to listen about an old woman sorting avocados at the back of a kitchen in Silver City, about Christmas plates that aren’t a compromise, about America’s first wilderness two hours up the road from her front door, about a 1,300ft canyon and the wild fish that almost disappeared, and about the friends who pointed me to the trailhead.
That’s what the Fisherman’s Larder is for: not the recipes, but the places we carried home and the people we found there.
Christmas shakshuka, New Mexico style
In New Mexico, when the waitress asks, "Red or green?" and you can't choose, you say "Christmas" and get both. That's the idea here. The eggs poach in a green base of Hatch chile and tomatillo, and a traditional red chile sauce gets drizzled over the top at the end. Aside from a saucepan for the red sauce, it all comes out of one cast iron skillet: blistered tomatoes first, then the green base where the eggs cook.
The red sauce is the only part you make ahead. Do it the day before, or the morning of, and keep it in the fridge. Everything else comes together in about half an hour.
Serves: 3 to 4 Ingredients:
Produce:
- 1 yellow onion
- 1 head garlic
- 2 lemons
- 2 limes
- 1 bunch each: mint, dill, flat-leaf parsley, cilantro
- 6oz–8 oz roasted Hatch green chile (frozen Bueno or 505 works fine when fresh is out of season)
- 5–6 tomatillos, husked and rinsed
- 1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes
Protein (optional, but it makes a meal of it)
- 1lb ground venison or lamb
Dairy and bakery
- 4 eggs, plus extras for breakfast
- 1 block feta, packed in brine (skip the pre-crumbled stuff)
- Crema or sour cream, if you want a cooling ribbon at the end
- 8–10 thick flour tortillas, or pita
- 3–4 corn tortillas, for fried strips on top
Pantry
- Olive oil
- Honey (New Mexico wildflower if you can find it)
- ½ cup chicken stock
- Ground cumin, ground coriander, Mexican oregano
- Sumac and Urfa pepper (Aleppo works too)
- A squirt bottle
For the red sauce:
- 12 dried red chile pods (Bueno, or any NM/Chimayó pods)
- 36oz water (just over 1 litre)
- ½ tsp salt
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- ½ tsp Mexican oregano
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil
- 2 tbsp unbleached flour
Method:
The red chile sauce (make ahead)
This is the classic New Mexico version: chile pods, garlic, oregano, and a quick roux. Nothing fancy, and it's better for it.
- Pull the stems and seeds out of the pods and give them a rinse. Soak them in lukewarm water for a few minutes until they soften, then rinse again, picking out any stray seeds and stripping the veins. Put the pods in a saucepan, cover them with the 36 ounces of water, and bring it to a boil. Cover, drop the heat low, and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Move the pods to a blender with about half the cooking liquid (hang onto the rest), add the salt, garlic, and oregano, and blend until smooth.
- In a skillet over medium heat, warm the oil, then stir in the flour and keep it moving until it turns golden brown. Pull the roux off the heat, add the blended chile, and stir until any lumps dissolve. Back on the heat, work in the remaining cooking liquid a little at a time until it's the consistency of tomato sauce, then let it simmer 10 minutes.
- Refrigerate until you're ready to plate. It's thicker than a syrup, so warm it before serving and thin it with a splash of water if you want it loose enough for the squirt bottle — otherwise just spoon it over.
Tortilla strips
While the skillet heats up, cut the corn tortillas into thin strips and fry them in a half-inch of hot vegetable oil until golden and crisp. It takes a minute or two. Drain them on a paper towel with a pinch of salt and set aside. You'll scatter them over the top at the end for crunch.
Blistered tomatoes
Get the skillet back on high heat with a glug of olive oil. Add the cherry tomatoes whole with a pinch of salt and let them sit untouched for a minute or two so one side chars, then shake the pan and give them another minute. Some should burst and some should stay whole. Pull them into a bowl and set aside. If the pan looks like a mess, wipe it; if the fond is golden, leave it.
The green base
Add a little more oil and cook the diced yellow onion for 3 to 4 minutes until soft, then the minced garlic for 30 seconds, just until fragrant. If you're adding venison, brown it now, breaking it up well and cooking it just past pink.
Season with a big pinch of salt, a teaspoon of cumin, a half teaspoon of coriander, a teaspoon of Mexican oregano, and some black pepper. Add the green chile, the chopped tomatillos, and a half cup of stock. Let it bubble for 8 to 10 minutes. The tomatillos will break down and tighten the sauce, but it should stay loose enough to poach eggs in.
Fold the blistered tomatoes back in, letting some sink and some sit on top. Their juice sweetens the sauce while the eggs cook. Crumble in half the feta and leave it alone so it melts into pockets rather than disappearing.
The eggs
Make four wells in the sauce with a spoon, working around the tomatoes, and crack an egg into each. Cover the skillet with a lid or foil, drop the heat to low, and give it 5 to 7 minutes. You want set whites and loose yolks.
Finishing
Pull the skillet off the heat. Crumble the rest of the feta over the top in big pieces, then hit it with the red sauce: a wide zigzag across the whole skillet, plus a few dots between the eggs so every bite gets some. Pile on the torn herbs — all four of them, more than feels reasonable. Dust with sumac and a pinch of Urfa, drizzle olive oil over everything, and then ribbon honey over the red sauce. That last bit is what makes the dish. Add a thin stripe of crema if you want to soften the heat, scatter the fried tortilla strips over everything, and tuck lemon and lime wedges around the rim.
Warm the tortillas on the edge of the fire, then tear, scoop, and eat straight from the skillet.
PHOTOGRAPHY: JOSH CRUMPTON
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Josh Crumpton
Josh Crumpton brings 30 years of fine dining and wine industry experience to the outdoor world. Having worked alongside world-class chefs and served as a sommelier, he now applies that culinary expertise to hunting, fishing, and camp cooking across the American West. Based in Texas, he bridges the gap between haute cuisine and authentic outdoor pursuits.
