Chilies/Chilis/Chillis/Hot peppers: The Topic

[Dana]

A friend gave us a bunch of hot peppers - a couple handfuls of serranos, both red and green, a couple of poblanos, about 5 habeneros, and a sack full of what he calls 'longhorn' peppers. They are red and look like longhorns, and seem to be in the medium hotness range. (apparently they are very prolific) I don't have a clue as to what to do with all these - some kind of relish?, maybe a hot sauce?

Any suggestions?

[Sam Salmon]

Slice 3 Habaneros in half place in a bottle of Vodka for 3 days then remove.

Keep Vodka in freezer for when you need a lift.

Make a Ristra from the Longhorns by threading them on a strong piece of something to decorate your kitchen.They'll smell great too-for a while anyway.

[Malawry]

You can put some of your peppers in vinegar (white wine is probably best) and store them for a long time. Use the vinegar to season your greens in the dead of winter for a kick.

I like pepper jelly, too.

[tryska]

you could make hot sauce or some sofrito to use later on as seasonings...that's what my roommates planning on doing with the peppers she got this year.

here's a bunch of sofrito recipes. they seem light on the chili, but we don't eat like that in my house.

http://www.caribbeanseeds.com/sofrito.htm

Edited August 5, 2004 by tryska (log)

[evilhomer]

a mixed pepper jelly if you want to bother is an amazing thing to have around, a bit time consuming but not difficult or even particularly fussy.

otherwise pickle them, poke a small hole in each first or they'll float, make a simple brine and process them, let them sit a good month before eating to remove the raw edge. Then they're great everywhere, tossed with pasta, in sandwiches, on pizza, in potato salad, with some cheese or cured meat, a pickled pepper is a versatile thing.

you can also stuff them with cream cheese (remove the seeds and ribs first, leaving the pepper as intact as possible), batter and fry them. I've made it as a fun and fatty side dish for tilapia fillets but you can eat them on their own quite happily.

[Jason Perlow]

Put the longhorns in a food drier or cook them on a baking sheet at like 150 degrees to totally dry them out, then crush them to use as pepper flakes.

If you want to make hot sauce, cook the hot ones (habaneros, longhorns) in a saucepan with a cup of vinegar for 5 minutes or so until soft. Thow them with the vinegar from pan into blender with salt (a lot) and some black pepper. Optionally add fruit like apples or mango or citrus juice, blend up. Put in bottles, refrigerate.

The Serranos and Poblanos are good chopped up and cooked in rice with chicken stock, tomatoes and safrron -- that will give you Mexican Rice.

[lovebenton0]

If you want a great kick ass sprinkle vinegar sauce pack a bottle with a sliced habanero, a few whole serranos and sliced longhorns, also a clove or two of garlic. Fill with a heated vinegar, salt and tidge of sugar mixture. Old soy sauce bottles are great for this as they already have a sprinkler. Let sit on shelf for a couple weeks before using. The beauty of this method is that it keeps on giving -- you can refill the bottle with more vinegar solution at least twice allowing some shelf time, but only takes a few days for refills.

I use this method for a percentage of my tabasco peppers every year that I don't make into red vinegar tabasco sauce. Also with a variety of other peppers such as suggested for an entirely different kick.

[Rien]

I was in NYC this weekend and a made a quick trip by Kalustyan's for spice browsing and a sandwich. After passing up a bottle of Argan oil (didn't really need to spend the $30) and admiring the regional variations of za'atar (they had mixes labelled Israeli, Jordanian, Lebanese, and Aleppo/Syrian), I settled on buying a sampling of peppers. I was looking for Maras and Urfa. Though I didn't find Maras they had an Aleppo pepper that they described as being "similar to Turkish Maras Biber" so I grabbed it. They also had Urfa Biber. A four ounce package was $4.99. Before my visit to Kalustyan's I was contemplating ordering Urfa from Zingerman's for $10 for approximately 2 oz. Maybe it comes in a decorative tin or some other packaging more appealing than a sealed generic plastic bag, but the price disparity was pretty shocking. Nestled between Urfa and Aleppo was a third pepper that I had never heard of; Kirmizi Biber. This was described as "hot Turkish pepper." The different hue of each pepper is striking ... from fairly black to a vibrant red.

My questions:

1. How different is Aleppo from Maras? Are they actually the same pepper, just grown in a different region?

2. As I said, I've never heard of Kirmizi. Is this used interchangeably with Aleppo when one wants more heat?

3. Are their other varieties that I'm unaware of? Sure, there's a whole range of Paprika's, but I'm thinking of peppers that are used specifically in the Middle East.

4. Is there a cookbook that covers these in greater detail than, say, Claudia Roden's?

5. Kalustyan's on-line store seems like a great resource for spices. Does anyone have an opinion of their quality compare to other on-line sources? Penzey's? Does Sahadi's sell spices on-line? Their physical store has a nice selection but it doesn't look like you can buy spices on-line.

Many thanks,

Rien

[ravum]

I found a bag of Ancho chiles at a mexican grocery and made "Angel Hair Pasta with Ancho Chile Sauce".This is a recipe by Diana Kennedy which appeared in food&Wine.

It calls for soaking the chiles and grinding them with garlic and cumin to make a sauce in which the pasta cooks.The sauce turned out terribly bitter.

I have read that burning the chile can make it bitter,but there was no toasting involved in this recipe.Boil chiles in water,drain and grind.

What could have caused this?

[KatieLoeb]

Were they too old and could the oils have turned rancid?

[ravum]

I made them within a few days of buying the chiles but I have no idea how long they sat on the shelf.

Can old chiles actually taste bitter?

[ellencho]

I once ended up with a bitter chili sauce because I didn't squeeze out enough of the soaking liquid from my anchos. I decided next time I try the sauce maybe I'll give them a good soaking, then wash them under running water, and then dry them out.

[Really Nice!]

I once ended up with a bitter chili sauce because I didn't squeeze out enough of the soaking liquid from my anchos.  I decided next time I try the sauce maybe I'll give them a good soaking, then wash them under running water, and then dry them out.

←

Yup! Too much soaking liquid in the sauce. It probably tasted a little tannic too.

[ravum]

It definitely tasted tannic.Will rinsing under running water and squeezing dry solve the problem?

[Really Nice!]

It definitely tasted tannic.Will rinsing under running water and squeezing dry solve the problem?

←

Yup, and after that pat it dry with paper towels.

[ravum]

I will try that.

Some recipes call for toasting and grinding the chile,how is the bitterness taken care of in that case?

[ryanj]

To take away the bitter taste, roast them until they puff, scrape out all the seeds and soak in hot water for ten minutes. If you didn't take out the seeds, this is probably the cause of your bitterness. I use the water it soaks in often and never have the bitter problem.

[shelora]

I'd like to help figure this out. Did the recipe actually say "grind" the chiles? What did you use to grind the chiles? How did you cook the mixture before you added the pasta. Was the recipe called a sopa seca in Spanish?

There are a few factors that could contribute to bitter tasting chiles.

Can you reprint part of the recipe? Which issue from Food and Wine, I might have it.

Ohh, I love a good mystery.

Shelora

[ravum]

I did try to take out the seeds but was not very fussy about it.Some of them were stuck to the chile and I left those on,but these were few.

There is no mention of what this might be called in Spanish.It is from the April 1996 issue of F&W.I got it off their website.

Here is the recipe:

Angel Hair Pasta with Ancho Chile Sauce

4 ancho chiles--stems, seeds, and veins removed

2 1/2 cups chicken stock or water

2 whole cloves

1 garlic clove, coarsely chopped

1/8 teaspoon cumin seeds

Salt

1/4 cup vegetable oil

4 ounces angel hair pasta or very fine vermicelli, preferably in nests or skeins

1/3 cup finely grated queso añejo or Romano cheese, avocado slices and quartered limes

1. Cover chiles with water and simmer 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let soak 5 more minutes. Drain.

2. in a blender, add the cloves, garlic and cumin seeds and blend until smooth. Add 1 more cup of the stock and drained chiles, a few at a time, and blend until smooth,

3. Heat oil . Add the pasta and fry, turning, until golden.

4. Add the blended sauce to the pasta in the skillet and fry in medium heat .Cover and cook over low heat, until the pasta is just cooked through .

5. Transfer to a serving dish, sprinkle with the cheese and serve with the avocado and limes.

I used water and omitted the cloves.Otherwise,followed the recipe to the letter.It tasted bitter even before frying and frying didnt change anything.

[shelora]

A few seeds never hurt. I would definitely say that, that is a sopa seca recipe.

And an odd one at that. Chile Ancho in that raw state is bitter or tannic, like strong black tea. Only with frying and simmering, reducing, then adding stock or water, does it take on a smoother flavour and picks up the other components of cloves, cumin and garlic. Don't forget the salt. Of course, you did fry the sauce for a bit when you poured it into the 1/4 cup of oil and pasta. This is an important step, but you wouldn't be able to fry it long before the angel hair pasta was cooked.

If you are motivated to try it again, I would first blend the sauce with only enough stock to loosen the blades and make the whole thing smooth. Then cook the sauce, frying, reducing, then adding the rest of the stock until it is right. Then add the pasta.

My deduction is that the recipe has been edited for the magazine and possibly for the website. Something is missing. D.K's style is for lots of details. For example, what size anchos or approx. weight and more descriptives on the soaking method of the chiles - like, soak until soft but not falling apart.

The recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups of stock or water but the procedure text only asks for "one more cup of the stock". Where did the rest go?

The addition of the lime, cheese and avacado at the end would help counterbalance bitterness.

Hope this helps a bit.

S

[ravum]

Shelora,thank you very much for tthe trouble shooting.I did fry it a bit but not much.As you pointed out,the pasta was cooked thru before it could fry properly.Maybe frying the sauce separately first and then adding the pasta and some water might work?

I didnt type out the instructions verbatim and that explains the short directions in the recipe.The actual text of the recipe can be found here

[http://www.pepperfool.com/recipes/mex_classics.html#Angel_Hair_Pasta]

I am a little wary of cooking with anchos now.Do you have a recipe using anchos that you could share?

Now that I know it is called sopa seca,I have found another recipe for it on food network and plan to try that.That calls for chipotles in adobo,though.

Edited December 9, 2004 by ravum (log)

[shelora]

I was looking through D.K.'s books yesterday and did not find a recipe for a sopa seca using anchos, but there is one using chipotles en adobo - Mexican Regional Cooking, pg.35. Maybe it is the same one you found. It also has tomatoes in it.

The pasta is cooked separately and drained of the oil, then, the sauce which is blended is fried and scraped, reducing and then broth or water is added until it is the right consistency, then the pasta finishes cooking in the sauce.

Makes more sense.

Anchos are an essential chile in Mexican cuisine. If I'm not making a mole, I love using anchos for chilies rellenos (stuffed with cheese, dipped in batter and fried) or stuffing them with a picadillo - lately, my favourite dish to make. You just hydrate the chilie in hot water, remove seeds and veins, pat dry and stuff away.

Don't let that one dish turn you away from the ancho.

Check out the Mexico forum from time to time, a great place to pose a question about chilies. There are some very experienced Mexican cooks and food scholars on board.

Cheers,

Shelora

[ravum]

Shelora,this recipe appears in her book "My mexico" pg.519.

I will check out the mexico forum and use the anchos agin....have a big bag of them lying around.I will try the recipe from regional cooking too.

[shelora]

Well, there it is. I was looking at her older books. I'm glad you are going to try it a second time. Let me know how it turns out. You know, with all due respect to D.K., I would be tempted to cook off that sauce a wee bit longer if need be, to mellow out the ancho. Taste as you go and see what you think.

s

[chefzadi]

No responses? I'm curious.