The Hot Sauce Cookbook (4 page)

What stayed the same through the years is a line-up of world-class musical acts on stage from noon to five and an orderly array of tents and booths where the beer and hot sauce flow nonstop. The whole scene is framed by plumes of sweet-smelling smoke rising from barbecue rigs, fajita grills, and green chile roasters, putting a lovely blue haze on the proceedings.

In the first few years of the competition, nearly all of the entries were Mexican table sauces—a few green, but mostly red. We also got a few moles and other specialties. So early on, we established categories for red, green, and special variety hot sauces. Commercial pepper sauces that were marketed in shaker bottles (like Tabasco) were judged by attendees on the festival grounds. The winner was awarded the “People’s Choice” Award.

In organizing the judging, we tried to establish parameters for the various styles of hot sauces, but we found that a consensus was impossible. Anyone is free to call their hot sauce anything they like. But for the sake of clarity in this book, I’ve compiled a short glossary of hot sauce–related terms, based on the definitions we use at the Hot Sauce Festival. You can find the glossary on the inside back cover of this book.

ROASTED GREEN CHILES

———
Yields 5 or 6 roasted chiles
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In late August and early September, chile sellers set up their giant propane-fired rolling drum roasters at grocery stores and farmers’ markets in New Mexico. Many people buy a whole year’s supply of roasted chiles at this time of the year and freeze them. If you don’t have a supply of roasted chiles in your freezer, it’s easy enough to roast your own. You can use this technique for roasted poblanos, bell peppers, and Padrón peppers, too.

5 or 6 fresh green chiles

Vegetable oil (optional)

Place the whole fresh chiles over a high gas flame and turn them as needed to blister the skin on all sides. Don’t allow the flame to burn too long in one place or you’ll burn through the chiles. After most of the skin has been well blistered, wrap the warm chiles in wet paper towels, place them inside a plastic bag, and set them aside to steam gently for 10 to 15 minutes. When you remove the towel, most of the skins should come off easily. Scrape off the rest of the skins with a butter knife. If you are making chiles rellnos, remove the seeds carefully and try to keep the peppers intact (it’s not easy). Otherwise, remove the stems and cut the peppers into strips or chop them up, depending on the recipe.

If you don’t have a gas range, put the chiles in a skillet with a little vegetable oil and blister them over high heat. Proceed as directed above.

ESCABECHE

(Pickled Peppers)

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Makes about 2 quarts or 1½ pounds (drained)
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This blend of pickled chile peppers, carrots, and onions with seasonings is a favorite condiment. You can use the pickling liquid as a pepper sauce.

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small onion, thickly sliced

5 cloves garlic, peeled and quartered

8 cups water

15 jalapeño chiles (about 1 pound)

1 pound carrots, peeled and sliced ½ inch thick (about 2 cups)

1¼ cups cider vinegar

Pickling salt

1 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano

4 bay leaves

White vinegar

Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion and sauté for 3 minutes, then add the garlic. Continue cooking until the onions are soft, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the water and bring to a boil. Add the jalapeños and carrots and cook for 5 minutes, or until slightly softened. Add the cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon pickling salt, oregano, and bay leaves and simmer for another minute. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Transfer the jalapeños, carrots, and onions with a slotted spoon or tongs into sterilized glass quart-size jars (you may need several). When the cooking liquid has cooled, cover the vegetables with liquid until the jars are three-quarters full. Add 1 tablespoon pickling salt to each jar and fill to the top with white vinegar. Cap each jar tightly and store in the refrigerator for up to several months.

Fried Chiles

FRIED CHILES

(Chiles Toreados)

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Serves 4 to 6
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In the taverns of Galicia, they serve lightly salted, fried Padrón peppers for a snack. At the hundred-year-old bar called El Indio Azteca in Monterrey, Mexico, they serve fried serranos the same way. The serranos are a lot hotter. Jalapeños are also served fried in Mexico, sometimes topped with a little cheese. Serve with beer or cocktails.

8 ounces green Padrón peppers, Fresno chiles, serrano chiles, or jalapeño chiles

½ cup olive oil

Salt (preferably good-quality sea salt)

Arrange the chiles in a single layer in a frying pan and drizzle with the olive oil. Place over a medium flame and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until the chiles sizzle. Turn the heat to low and cook, turning often, until the chiles are soft and the skin is loose, 10 to 15 minutes, or to the desired texture. Drain on paper towels. Lightly salt the warm chiles and serve them, skins and all, on a small plate.

Sikil Pak

———CHAPTER 2———

MESOAMERICAN CHILMOLES

Archaeological research suggests
that some Mexican-style hot sauces we eat today are similar to those eaten by ancient Mesoamericans. Chile peppers, along with corn, beans, and squash, were the first plants cultivated in the New World. Excavations in Tamaulipas, in Northern Mexico, and in Tehuacán, in Puebla, both revealed pepper remains at the very earliest levels, dating chile pepper consumption back to at least 7000 BC.

In Oaxaca, modern Zapotec cooking is so close to its roots that archaeologists are studying the food of remote villages in the mountains in order to make sense of pottery shards they have found at Monte Albán dating from thousands of years ago. On a visit to the lab of Dr.
Marcus Winter, a researcher in the archaeology section of the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and
History (INAH), he explained that the rough mountainous countryside of Oaxaca provides the isolation that has allowed Zapotec culture to remain largely unaffected by outside influences.

The Zapotec tribe was never conquered by the Aztecs or the Spanish, which is why the Zapotec language is still spoken in rural Oaxaca today. But that’s not the only explanation for the unchanging nature of the food. “A lot of the reason is economic,” says Winter. “The food hasn’t changed because of autoproduction—people here still eat what they grow.”

According to Dr. Winter, two ancient pottery vessels in particular influenced Mexican cooking thousands of years ago. One is a piece of a curved pottery tortilla griddle, or
comal
. During the early urban stage of Monte Albán, the
comal
became common in households all over the valley of Oaxaca and probably elsewhere in Mexico.

He showed me a fragment of a clay
comal
, which is flat in the middle, with a curved edge that rises away from the center. It is identical in size and shape to the metal
comals
that are set over open fires to make Oaxacan tortillas and the toasted bean-coated tortillas called
tlayudas
today. By observing the use of the modern-day
comal
, archaeologists have deduced the reason for its shape. Then, as now, the tortilla is formed and placed in the hot center of the
comal
to cook, then it is moved to the higher edge to turn the cooked tortilla into another familiar food—the
tostada.

While modern-day Americans may value the tostada for its unique ability to stand up to salsa, in ancient Mesoamerica, its most important attribute was its long shelf life. While a regular tortilla would become moldy after a few days, a tostada would last unspoiled for weeks. “The tostada was one of the first portable foods,” Dr. Winter observed. “Mobility was a key factor in development at that time, and the tostada was the key to mobility.” Portable food made it possible to trade with distant lands, to tend fields in other places, and to attend a festival that lasted several days, Winter said.

Another vessel that Winter showed me had an equally impressive effect on Mexican cooking. The Suchilquitongo bowl, named after a Oaxacan village where several complete examples were discovered, is a round vessel with thick, ridged walls. Winter points to a fragment from the inside of the bowl that shows heavy wear. While the flat stone on legs called a
metate
was used for corn and heavier grinding, the Suchilquitongo bowls were used to mash relatively soft foods.

Like a modern food processor, the grinding bowl made it possible to mash things together to form a sauce. “We know they had avocados, because we have found fossilized avocado pits,” Winter tells me. “And we assume they had
miltomates
(husked tomatoes) and chiles.” Residue studies on the pottery fragments will someday yield a more exact ingredient list for Mesoamerican salsas and guacamoles.

“The innovations that took place at Monte Albán during the early urban stage were extraordinary,” Winter says. Monumental architecture, astronomy, carved glyphs, and new methods of food preparation all appear to have originated by the second century BC and to have spread from Monte Albán, which is the oldest known city in Mesoamerica, to other civilizations. “Monte Albán was the ancient Greece to Teotihuacan’s Rome,” Winters says.

The Aztecs get most of the attention in any discussion of pre-Columbian cooking, but they didn’t even arrive in the Valley of Mexico until the thirteenth century, just a few hundred years ahead of the Spanish. The food innovations of the Zapotecs and other ancient Mesoamericans, on the other hand, date back to long before the time of Christ. But what’s really amazing is that we are still eating the same Mesoamerican tostadas and salsa five hundred years after the Conquest.