Restaurant sign in a remote area of the Mexican desert across the Rio Grande from Big Bend National Park
In a departure from the standard spellings used in Merriam-Webster, this book uses chile or chile pepper to refer to the pods, and chili or chili con carne to refer to the dish. • Unfortunately, the names used for specific chiles vary across the United States. The big green poblano chile, and its dried form, the ancho, are essential to the Tex-Mex cooking style. Poblano and ancho are well-known names in Central Mexico, Texas, and most of the United States, and are also the names used in such standard reference materials as Mark Miller’s Great Chile Poster and in nearly all Mexican cookbooks.
But the poblano is confusingly called a pasilla or ancho in both the fresh and dried form on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. Since most of the Mexican Americans in Southern California come from Oaxaca and the Pacific states, their nomenclature is used in Los Angeles.
Grocers on the Eastern Seaboard, however, buy their chiles from the L.A. Produce Terminal. So, in an odd migration of misunderstanding, food stores in New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C. often use the Oaxacan nomenclature for chile peppers.
Fresh chile peppers are usu-ally harvested in the green stage. Fully ripened red chiles are most often used for drying, but they also turn up fresh in the supermarket for a brief period in the fall. The following fresh chile peppers, listed from mildest to hottest, appear in this book.
Also known as the Long Green Chile by New Mexicans and West Texans (until it turns red and becomes the Long Red Chile), the Anaheim has a pleasant vegetable flavor and ranges from slightly warm to medium-hot. Anaheims are generally roasted and peeled before they are used. The name comes from a chile cannery opened in Anaheim, California, in 1900 by a farmer named Emilio Ortega, who brought the pepper seeds to California from New Mexico.
In New Mexico, the Long Green Chile is further subdivided by region of origin. The two most common names encountered are Hatch and Chimayó. Hatch chiles are grown in the southern part of New Mexico (around the town of Hatch) from certified seed sources and are graded according to heat. Mild green Hatch chiles are often roasted and peeled, then eaten like a vegetable.
Chimayó chiles are the older, more traditional chiles grown in the northern part of the state (around the town of Chimayó) from seeds that have been saved from the previous harvest. Chimayó chiles are treasured for their superior flavor and unpredictable heat, but they are becoming increasingly rare.
Dried chiles and corn shucks for tamales at the Monterrey tianguis
Fatter and wider than the Ana-heim, the poblano is a darker green and has a richer flavor. It is one of the most commonly used chiles in Central Mexican cooking, both in its fresh and dried forms (see “Ancho”). Poblanos are named after the Mexican city of Puebla, where they probably originated. They are generally slightly hot and are usually roasted and peeled before use.
Hot, green, and bullet-shaped, the jalapeño is the classic Tex-Mex hot pepper and one of the world’s best-known chiles. Originally grown in Mexico, it is named for Jalapa, a town in the state of Veracruz. The fresh jalapeño has a strong, vegetal flavor to go with the heat. We prefer to cook with fresh jalapeños, but the jalapeño is most widely consumed in its pickled form. Besides hot sauce, a bowl of pickled jalapeños is the most popular condiment on the Tex-Mex table.
Similar to the jalapeño, the serrano is hotter and smaller. Most Mexicans claim that serranos have a fuller, more herbaceous flavor. Since the vast majority of jalapeños are pickled, the serrano is actually the most widely used fresh chile pepper in Mexico and Texas.
Also known as piquín, chilipiquín, or chiltepín, this tiny chile grows wild throughout southern Texas and northern Mexico. Although pequín seems to be a corruption of the Spanish pequeño, meaning “small,” the Spanish name itself is probably a corruption of chiltecpín, a Nahuatl word meaning “flea chile,” a reference to both its size and sting. Because its seeds were spread by birds rather than by cultivation, pequíns are considered the oldest chiles in North America. In northern Mexico, they are collected in the wild and sold in markets, where they fetch more than almost any other kind of chile. They are sometimes dried and preserved for year-round use. A pequín bush can be found in almost any backyard or vacant lot in southern Texas, and pequíns are very common in Tex-Mex home cooking. Because they are not grown commercially, they are seldom found in restaurant cooking or in grocery stores. If you find some, you can substitute three or four fresh pequíns for one serrano or half a jalapeño.
The world’s hottest pepper, the habanero should be treated with respect. It has a wonderful apricot-like flavor and aroma, but it must be used in small quantities and handled with care. The habanero was introduced to Mexico from the Caribbean and is named after Havana, Cuba (habanero means “someone from Havana”).
Roasted peppers that have been seeded, peeled, and cut into strips are called rajas. They’re used as an ingredient in some recipes and as a condiment for fajitas.
The following dried chile peppers, listed from mildest to hottest, are used in this book.
(found in powdered form only)
The dried form of the poblano chile, the ancho is very dark brown and wide (in fact, the word ancho means “wide” in Spanish). Anchos are the fleshiest of the dried chiles, and their pulp combines a mildly bitter flavor with a sweetness reminiscent of raisins. They are usually mild, although occasionally one will surprise you with its heat. Mulattos are closely related and are a suitable substitute.
Literally “tree chile,” the chile de árbol is a small, red, shiny chile about three inches long with a thin tapering body. It has a high heat level and is often chopped and simmered with tomatoes to make a hot table sauce.
Tapered with a smooth, shiny, reddish skin, the guajillo has a tart, medium-hot flavor. When soaked and pureed, it gives foods an orange color. Dried Anaheims are also sometimes called guajillos, but they are much milder.
Long and skinny with a black, slightly wrinkled skin, the pasilla has a strong, satisfying flavor and can range from medium-hot to hot. The name comes from the Spanish pasa, meaning “raisin,” a reference to the appearance of the skin. On the West Coast of Mexico, and hence in Los Angeles, they also call fresh green poblanos “pasillas.”
This is the smoke-dried jalapeño. Small, wrinkled, and light brown, chipotles have an incredibly rich, smoky flavor and are usually very hot. Smoking jalapeños to preserve them has been common in Mexico since long before the Spanish arrived. The original Nahuatl spelling, chilpotle, is also sometimes seen.
We prefer to use dry chipotles, but you can also buy them canned, and canned chipotles are acceptable in most recipes. Obviously, you can’t make chile powder from canned chipotles, but you can use them for purees. Canned chipotles are already soaked in some kind of sauce, usually a vinegary adobo. Just stem and seed them and puree them with some of the sauce from the can.
CAUTION: HANDLING CHILE PEPPERS
It’s wise to wear rubber gloves when handling jalapeños, serranos, and, especially, habaneros. Get a little juice from the cut-up pepper on your face or in your eyes, and you can count on ten minutes of sheer agony. If you don’t have rubber gloves, use a piece of plastic wrap to hold the pepper while you cut it. Clean the knife and the cutting board immediately with hot soapy water. If you get pepper juice on your hands, try soaking them for a few minutes in a mild bleach solution.
To prepare peppers: Lightly oil the surface of the peppers. Roast peppers over a flame or under a broiler until charred on all sides. Set aside in a plastic bag for ten minutes to allow the steam to loosen the skin from the pepper. Peel off the charred skin and discard. Slit one side of the pepper down the middle, remove and discard the seeds, and set the peppers aside until serving time. Peeled, roasted peppers can be stored in the refrigerator for two or three days or for up to three months in a resealable plastic bag in the freezer.
You won’t believe what a differ-ence it makes to use your own fresh powdered chile instead of commercial chile powder. You can blend a combination of dried chiles for a more rounded flavor. Or you can grind various chiles and keep them separate. Start with five dried chiles such as anchos, guajillos, or pasillas. Prepare the chiles by removing the stem and seeds. Toast the peppers in a dry skillet over medium heat for five minutes, turning frequently, until dry and crisp but not burned. Process the pepper in a coffee grinder until it becomes a fine powder. Store in sealed spice bottles or baby-food jars.
