"chiles" news and stories

I love working in a kitchen. One of the fringe benefits is that I get to work with people from all different backgrounds. One of my co-workers from Mexico one day made chilaquiles, and I've been a fan ever since.

Chilaquiles is a breakfast dish made from stale tortillas, Mexican-style tomato sauce, and chiles that sometimes also includes cheese and eggs. My co-worker sprinkled on diced onions and Monterey jack cheese and placed a poached eg on top. It was heaven. I tend to prefer foods with softer textures, and the softened tortillas just melted in my mouth. The combination of chiles, onions, cheese, spicy tomato, and egg were just so wonderful and very filling, it's no wonder that this is such a popular breakfast dish.

Gourmet Sleuth.com has this page with a great recipe for chilequiles, as well as some history and background on the dish. It's popular throughout Mexico, and that means there are plenty of variations. A few of the variations are freatured here, along with links to recipes. I haven't made chilequiles at home yet, but now that I have some recipes to work with (my co-worker refused to tell me how to make it) it is definitely on the menu.

Most trade shows are the stuff of, if not nightmares, then at least a sleepwalk from one charmless kiosk to the next. Not so at the 54th Summer Fancy Food Show, where 20,000+ gourmet retailers, restaurateurs, chefs, media folks and plain ol' food fans spend three days chomping their way through a fever dream of some 180,000 specialty foods. The throwback "Fancy" is a bit of a misnomer by now, as there's a very wide slice of products on offer, ranging from swankity wines, oils, cheeses and caviar to humble chewing gums, ketchups, chili seasonings and snack mixes.

Here are my first day favorites from the more wallet-friendly end of the spectrum. More thorough reviews will follow, but I've gotta recover from hauling around a 21lb* shoulder bag of collected samples and press releases first.

Guajillo chiles, common in Mexican recipes, are a moderately spicy chile, usually found dried in Hispanic markets. Brick red guajillos have an interesting smoke-and-spices flavor, which some liken to burnt chocolate. I personally think they smell a bit like fresh tobacco (I grew up in Durham, North Carolina, where I could smell the brightleaf from cigarette factories downtown), and love the way they add complexity to the simplest of dishes.

The best way to cook with the guajillo is to toast it lightly to draw out and deepen the flavors. Lay a few chiles at a time in a cast iron pan over medium-high heat, toasting for a few seconds on each side, until the chile begins to inflate and gives off a strong scent. Remove the stems and seeds before using.

I like to put the toasted guajillos in the blender with cooked tomatillos and a bit of salt for an easy, striking sauce for roast pork or chicken.

Chipotle chiles are not a unique chile, but are actually dried, smoked jalapeno chiles. They are dark brown and wrinkly, in sharp contrast to the glossy look of fresh chiles, but have a wonderfully rich flavor. Most of the heat of the jalapeno is retained when the chile is dried, so chipotles are fairly spicy, falling in the middle ranges of the heat scale. They have smoky overtones, but the real flavor of the chiles is complex and earthy. Instead of causing a sharp and immediate heat, the heat grows gradually as you eat it and takes time to fade away.

In truth, most kinds of chilies can be smoke-dried and sometimes they are all called "chipotle" no matter what they started out as, but the vast majority of the chipotle chiles on the market were originally jalapenos.

It's almost some form of culinary masochism - but in the summer when it's really hot, I love to punish myself by eating supremely spicy foods that make me sweat even more than I already am. My friends and family think I'm psycho. Of course, there is a completely logical, physiological reason why spicy foods are eaten when it's hot, but there are also other health and preventative reasons why spicy foods are good for you. Let's just take a look at those reasons so we can use them when we go for the Korean yook-gae-jahng in 100% humidity.

• Cancer-fighting and cancer-prevention - A recent study shows that capsaicin can be used to fight pancreatic cancer. It slowed the growth of cancer cells and in some cases, even caused cancer cells to die off.
• Alleviate inflammation - Arthritis and psoriasis are cause by nerve damage and cause pain on joints. Capsaicin supposedly helps to ease that pain.
• Relieve chronic pain - In some cases, spicy foods containing capsaicin greatly reduced pain caused by headaches or osteoporosis.
• Heart-health - Cayenne and chili peppers can help to reduce cholesterol. Additionally statistics show that cultures that eat spicy foods (e.g. some Asian countries) frequently have a much lower rate of heart attack and stroke.

So break out those jalapenos!