1,001 Best Hot and Spicy Recipes (5 page)

 

The Fiery Cuisines
(1984), with Nancy Gerlach

The Whole Chile Pepper Book
(1990), with Nancy Gerlach

The Pepper Garden
(1993), with Paul W. Bosland

A World of Curries
(1994), with Arthur Pais

The Habanero Cookbook
(1995), with Nancy Gerlach

The Hot Sauce Bible
(1996), with Chuck Evans

Hot & Spicy Caribbean
(1996), with Mary Jane Wilan and Melissa T. Stock

Great Bowls of Fire
(1997), with W. C. Longacre

The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia
(1999)

Barbecue Inferno
(2001), with Nancy Gerlach

The Spicy Food Lover’s Bible
(2005), with Nancy Gerlach

Da Vinci’s Kitchen
(2006)

Cuisines of the Southwest
(2007)

The Complete Chile Pepper Book
(2009), with Paul W. Bosland

Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Foodies
(2010)

This book is for all the chileheads who have supported and encouraged me all these years by buying my books, reading and subscribing to the magazines I’ve edited, visiting the SuperSite, coming to the Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show, and sharing their houses and kitchens when Mary Jane and I visit.

Thanks to the cooks who contributed recipes to this collection: Peter Aiken, Michael Baim, Peggy Barnes, Chel Beeson, Deborah Berlin, Lula Bertrán, Thomas Brown, Ellen Burr, Cindy Castillo, Pat Chapman, Michelle Cox, Suzy Dayton, Jeanette DeAnda, Jasmine DeLuisa, Alois Dogue, Rebecca Chastenet de Gry, Jeff Corydon, Robert Dixon, Binh Duong, Rudolfo de Garay, Tim Fex, Stella Fong, Winifred Galarza, Kathy Gallantine, Linda Gant, Nancy and Jeff Gerlach, Janet Go, John Gray, Jeff Gustie, Antonio Heras-Duran, Sharon Hudgins, Shirley Jordan, David Karp, Mary Kinnunen, Judy Knapp, Arnold Krochmal, W. C. Longacre, Leyla Loued-Khenissime, Tita Libin, Donald and Sue Louie, Linda Lynton, Daryl Malloy, Neil and Sandy Mann, André Niederhauser, Rosemary Ann Ogilvie, Jim Peyton, Rosa Rajkovic, Judith Ritter, Loretta Salazar, Todd Sanson, Chris Schlesinger, Devagi Shanmugan, Bud Spillar, Richard Sterling, Mike Stines, Melissa T. Stock, Foo Swasdee, David Tucker, Mary Jane Wilan, Charles Wiley, Martin Yan, and Gloria Zimmerman.

For the past three decades, my life and career have been consumed by chile peppers and fiery foods. That’s why I’m called “The Pope of Peppers” in the media. I’ve edited two magazines on the subject, Chile Pepper from 1987 to 1996 and Fiery Foods & BBQ from 1997 to 2008. I publish the huge Fiery Foods & Barbecue SuperSite (
www.fiery-foods.com
), which includes hundreds of articles and thousands of recipes that has been online since 1996. With various coauthors—especially Nancy Gerlach and my wife, Mary Jane Wilan—I have written more than thirty books featuring chile peppers, on subjects ranging from gardening, to health aspects, to food history, to cooking. This is number thirty-seven.

This book is composed of the best dishes from my collection of chile pepper-laden recipes from around the world that I collected on site, from freelance contributors to the magazines and the SuperSite, from coauthors, and by researching the authentic, obscure, and out-of-print cookbooks from all over the world that I collected for my library. That library now resides in Special Collections at the New Mexico State University Library, in an archive that I endowed, along with my chile pepper-related papers, clippings, manuscripts, photographs, and digital material.

In some chapters in this book, the recipes are grouped by type of dish; in the others, they are organized to reflect the order of chile peppers’ spread around the globe: South and Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, the United States, Europe, the Mediterranean and Middle East, Africa, the Indian Subcontinent, and Asia and the Pacific. There is little doubt that this book is the largest and most comprehensive cookbook ever published on this subject. I certainly hope it heats up your life!

There are literally thousands of varieties of chile peppers grown around the world, but only a few dozen are commonly used for cooking, and all those used in the recipes in this book have substitutions. The heat of any chile depends on two factors: its genetic makeup and the environment in which it’s grown—the soil, the nutrients applied to the plant, the weather, and the amount of water. I believe that both factors contribute equally to the heat level. Often, chiles that are stressed from a lack of water or extreme environmental temperatures have a higher heat level than they otherwise would.

Generally speaking, the smaller the pod, the hotter the chile. The one exception is the habanero, which is larger and hotter than the smaller hot chiles called bird peppers—the piquins, chiltepins, and the smaller Asian and African varieties.

Available from the garden or the market, fresh peppers are increasing in popularity as they become more commonly available. The most ubiquitous peppers are, of course, the familiar bells, which have no heat unless they are a variety called “Mexi-Bell,” which has a mild bite. The poblano, similar in size to a bell, is a Mexican pepper with moderate to mild heat which is often stuffed with cheese and baked.

The most readily available hot peppers in the produce sections of supermarkets these days are jalapeños, serranos, habaneros, and yellow wax peppers. Jalapeños and serranos—either green or fresh red—have similar uses. They are often floated whole in soups or stews to provide a little extra bite and removed before serving. The serranos—smaller, thinner, and hotter than jalapeños—are the classic chiles of the Mexican pico de gallo fresh salsas. Habaneros (they are not spelled “habañero”) and their relatives in the same species are the world’s hottest peppers, lantern-shaped orange or red devils that have a unique, fruity aroma in addition to their powerful punch. Use them with caution. Generally speaking, any of the small fresh peppers may be substituted for one another; however, they are not an acceptable substitute for poblanos or New Mexican varieties. The yellow
wax peppers are usually mild and are often stuffed or chopped for use in salsas and salads.

Several varieties of the long, green New Mexican chiles are available fresh in the Southwest and occasionally in other locations. The “NuMex 6-4” variety is the most common and is available from August through early November. Its hotter cousin, “Sandia,” is usually not seen in the green, or immature, form. The mildest New Mexican variety is the “Anaheim,” a California variety that is available most of the year. Occasionally, New Mexican chiles are identified by their original grower (such as “Barker”) or by a regional appellation (“Chimayo,” “Hatch,” or “Luna County”), which further confuses the issue. I should point out that Hatch is not a chile variety, and not enough chiles are grown in the vicinity of that little town to supply all the roadside vendors that call their chiles by that name. The Hatch chile is a marketing myth, and vendors in that town regularly import them from other locations and call them “Hatch.”

All of the long green chiles must be roasted and peeled before they can be used in a recipe. Blistering or roasting the chile is the process of heating the chile over flames to the point that the tough, transparent skin separates from the meat of the chile so it can be removed. The method is quite simple. While working with the chiles, be sure to wear rubber or latex gloves to protect yourself from the capsaicin (the chemical that gives chiles their heat) that can burn your hands and any other part of your body that you touch. Before roasting, cut a small slit close to the stem in each chile so that the steam can escape. The chiles can then be placed on a baking sheet and put directly under the broiler or on a screen on the top of the stove.

My favorite method is to place the pods on a charcoal grill about 5 to 6 inches from the coals. Blisters will soon indicate that the skin is separating, but be sure that the chiles are blistered all over, or they will not peel properly. Immediately wrap the roasted chiles in damp towels or place them in a plastic bag for ten to fifteen minutes—this steams them and loosens the skins. For crisper, less tender chiles, plunge them into ice water to stop the cooking process.

Green chile is a low-acid fruit, and for that reason I do not recommend home canning. It can be done, but only with a pressure canner and only by carefully following all the manufacturer’s specific instructions. I find freezing to be a much easier and more flavor-retaining method of preservation.

After roasting the chiles, freeze them in the form in which you plan to use them—whole, in strips, or chopped. If you are storing them in strips or chopped, peel the pods first. If they are to be frozen whole (rather than
chopped), the pods should be roasted, but they do not have to be peeled first. In fact, they are easier to peel after they have been frozen. A handy way to put up chopped or diced chiles is to freeze them in plastic ice cube trays with sections. When they’re completely frozen, they can be popped out of the trays and stored in a bag in the freezer. When making a soup or a stew, just drop in a cube! This eliminates the need to hack apart a large slab of frozen chiles when you just need a couple of ounces. Do not buy canned chiles except for chipotles in adobo sauce. The canned green chiles are not spicy, and the packers use steam or a lye bath to remove the skins, which results in an off taste.

The smaller chiles—habaneros, serranos, and jalapeños—can be frozen without processing. Wash the chiles, dry them, arrange them in a single layer on a cookie sheet, and freeze. After they are frozen solid, double-bag them in freezer bags with the air forced out. Their texture holds up surprisingly well in the freezer.

Substitutions for fresh chiles include hot sauces and dried pods of a similar size that have been soaked in water to rehydrate them. You will have to experiment to discover precisely how much hot sauce to use as a substitute because of varying heat levels, but a rule of thumb is that a teaspoon or two of habanero hot sauce will substitute for one whole pod.

As is true of fresh peppers, the smaller the chile, the hotter it will be. The large dried peppers, such as ancho (a dried poblano) and the New Mexican varieties, are mild enough to be the principal ingredients of sauces. However, when a lot of these chiles are concentrated in a sauce, they become a food rather than a spice, and the resulting heat level can be surprisingly high. (The same is true when the larger peppers are in their green, immature form.) The smaller varieties, such as piquin, are too hot for this purpose and are generally used as a spice in cooking, especially in stir-frying. All dried peppers can be ground into powders (see the next section).

Four main large peppers are used as the base for sauces: ancho, pasilla, New Mexican, and guajillo (a smaller ancestor of the New Mexican chiles). The ancho is a wide, dark pepper with a raisiny aroma. It is the only pepper that is commonly stuffed in its dried form (the pod is softened in water first). The pasilla is a long, thin, dark pepper that also has a raisiny or nutty aroma. Along with the ancho, it commonly appears in Mexican mole sauces.

The red New Mexican chiles are commonly hung in long strings, or
ristras, until they are ready to be used in cooking. Then, they are most often rehydrated and combined with onions, garlic, oil, spices, and water to make the classic New Mexican red chile sauce, a common topping for enchiladas in the Southwest. The guajillos, a shorter and hotter version of the New Mexican chiles, are commonly used in sauces in northern Mexico.

Another favorite dried chile pepper is the chipotle, a smoke-dried red jalapeño that has a fiery, smoky flavor. It is available loose in its dried form or canned in adobo sauce. The latter is easier to use because it’s already rehydrated. To rehydrate the dried chipotles, simply soak them in hot water for an hour or more. If you can’t find chipotles, substitute a hot red chile powder with a little liquid smoke. It’s not perfect, but it will work.