question about mexican food and chile usage?

I too grew up in Northern New Mexico, but have lived a lot in Colorado. You are thinking of New Mexican food. Traditional New Mexican food has no tomatillos, no cilantro, no cumin, no sour cream, no black beans, no pico de gallo, no guacamole, no chipotle, no poblano, no jalapeno, no tomato sauce, no queso fresco, no funny sauces like mango salsa. Some of these ingredients have crept in the last few decades, but are not traditional. NM chile is based heavily on the NM chile pepper. Chile sauces are made either of red or green chile (the same variety just different ripeness), water, salt, and a little garlic powder. That's it. You will find Tex-Mex very different. American Chile doesn't resemble NM food at all. Almost like calling minestrone "chili". No resemblance what so ever. When I lived in SoCal for a short while, their food was Mexican. I had never seen a tomatillo before going there. Also chicarones in NM are fried cubed pork but in CA it seemed like it was pork rinds (like what you buy in a chip bag). Their green sauce had no chile. Every place does things just a little different. AZ chile is different. Even Colorado where I noticed flour gets mixed in as a thickener with their chile more often than it does in NM which just thickens its sauces by adding more chile powder instead. Heck, there is even a difference between northern NM and southern NM foods. There is a real fight between Hatch (south) vs Chimayo (north) chile pepper varieties. Also you won't find blue corn tortillas and flat enchiladas much outside NM. And sopapillas are always served as a dinner bread in NM, not as desert (although any left over can be finished off with a little honey). Sopapillas with ice cream? That's sacrilege! NM also tends to prefer flour tortillas more than corn tortillas. I never heard of black beans until I left NM. Funny because outside of NM black beans are considered SW fare. Its pinto all the way. The essential differences I think is that NM food doesn't have much in the way of seasonings. Instead it depends almost entirely on the taste of the chile peppers. Hmm. now I'm hungry for a blue corn enchilada with red chile and a fried egg on top, or maybe a stuffed sopapilla with red chile!

I'm a little confused about what you're asking/saying. No matter where "Mexican" food is served, those that have red-colored sauces are tomato-based and those that are greenish are tomatillo-based.

Chiles would often be a part of both of those sauces/etc though...even if they're red chiles the color wouldn't necessarily predominate though, especially if not in visible bits (so tomatillo sauces could have red chile peppers and red sauces could have jalapeno chile peppers, etc).

If you grew up in Colorado and New Mexico, according to Wikipedia though you'd be used to "Southwest Cuisine" rather than true "Tex-Mex" (or Tex-Mex is just one kind of Southwest Cuisine).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex-Mex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_the_Southw...

Here's something else:

". . . Tex-Mex is a blend of food products available in America combined with Mexican Americans' influences from across the border. Generally Tex-Mex has beef product due to the ranching culture of South Texas. Toss in the Americanized elements of yellow cheese because of its cheap availability along with an emphasis in cumin.

. . . Southwestern-Style Mexican food is a blending of items that may have been eaten by Spanish colonial settlers in the United States, cowboys, Native Americans, Mexicans and now modified by accountants and new-age chefs. It is similar to Mexican food, but it’s emphasis is in the chile such as red or green, most notably Hatch chile. Ask for red and green and they will bring it to your table “Christmas” style. In Texas and Arizona, green is not popular at all. "

and more:

https://www.google.com/search?q=tex-mex+Southwest+...

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What you grew up with is authentic - tomato is used to dumb it down for the wussy mouth people who just don't get it.

you are running into what I call gringo mexican food. it looks like the real thing but doesn't have much spice