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Don't Call It CHILI!!
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Here's all you need to know
about the wonders of chiles
of TheColumnists.com
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First, it is not spelled “chili.” The proper Spanish spelling is “chile,” just like the South American nation, Chile. How chile was morphed into chili is beyond me. It was obviously a mispronunciation and spelling that stuck.
In any event, chiles and salsas, are used in almost all levels of Mexican dishes, from tacos and enchiladas to fine dining in which dishes take hours to prepare.
These include “calabazitas,” (translated zucchini squash) a delicious mixture of chopped pork, zucchini squash and corn kernels cooked slowly in oregano, garlic, salt and pepper with only a hint of chile, or “carne con macaron,” a large cut of chuck roast, oven cooked in a covered terra cotta pot with heaps of oregano, garlic, salt, pepper and tomato sauce in which small sea shell pasta is added as a final touch to be cooked with the meat and its broth. It is served, sprinkled with parmesan cheese and eaten with “tortillas de maiz” (corn tortillas).
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There is also, of course, the classic Mexican dish, “gallina con mole,” chicken with mole, pronounced moh-leh. And, by the way, chile is pronounced chee-leh, not chilly as in “it’s a chilly day.”
Getting back to mole, it is an extremely
complex mixture of spices—almost 19 of them.
I will not name all of them because I don’t make it. I buy
“Doña Maria’s” mole in glass jars
at the supermarket where, at least in California, it is found
in the Mexican foods section. Mole includes pumpkin seeds,
Mexican bitter chocolate, dried chiles of a specific variety,
cooking oil and a host of other spices all ground into a very
fine mixture.
Mole requires
hours of preparation and using chicken broth to first parboil
the chicken, then removing it and carefully adding the resulting
richer broth to the mole until it has the consistency
of molten chocolate. The next step involves returning the chicken
to the now prepared mole and letting it cook slowly until
it reaches an
incredible flavor.
These dishes all have one thing in common:
none of them are what are called in Mexico “picante,”
pronounced pee-kan-teh, which means very hot, chile wise. They
are not even a little hot. In fact the richer the Mexican dish,
the less heat it has. Naturally, some in Mexico like all their
dishes flame thrower hot, but these are sordid and masochistic
creatures whose taste buds have become useless from eating everything
picante. There is simply no place in fine Mexican dining
for anything that has a blow torch
effect inside your mouth. It should always be just a hint of chile or a great salsa served on the
side as a condiment.
Those condiments include pickled chiles
that contain the dreaded “jalapenos,” haw-law-peños,
and small yellow peppers. On one occasion when I first began
working for the Associated Press as a capitol correspondent in
Olympia, Wash., my roommate, Steve Ponder, a fellow correspondent,
and I, threw a party to introduce various capitol
newsies and some state officials to a variety of traditional Mexican dishes. Among them were mole,
enchiladas, tacos and chiles rellenos, which
I had laboriously prepared. I also had a small bowl of pickled
jalapeños.
One of the first things I did after our friends had arrived was to warn everyone of the agonizing throes that could result from biting off a big chunk of a jalapeño. It was all to no avail for the charming lady friend of my boss, Leroy Hittle, a magnificent newsman. In her very own words, she brushed past me with what was almost her last words, “Oh, I don’t believe that they’re that hot.”
Bear in mind that I had said the proper way to eat them was to just take a nibble, half the size of a peppercorn. In other words, a very tiny bite is enough to add an exciting savory taste to whatever you are eating, emphasizing that anything bigger than a tiny bite would be deadly.
I thus stood aghast as she took an entire jalapeño, popped it in her mouth and began chewing it. I could only yell “no!,” but it was too late.
For a moment, just a minisecond, she smiled
and said, “This is really good.” Then it hit
her. The ball of fire, as if conjured from the depths of hell,
engulfed her. Her face turned red and, her mouth snapped open
as she began gasping. She was helpless. I quickly opened a bottle
of beer and told her to drink it. Gasping, she grabbed for it
and emptied it desperately. Leroy and all the others looked on,
helpless to do anything for her. I opened another beer, as her
hands flapped up and down like a crippled
bird trying to fly, her mouth wide open, sucking in air to try
and cool her mouth.
Somebody handed her a napkin to spit out what can surely be likened
to an oil well spouting a 200-foot length of fire.
The party stood still for almost 15 minutes before the burning subsided and, while tears streamed down her face, she eventually recovered.
It was a painful lesson, that eating Mexican chiles must be done carefully.
They come in all varieties. Some are the very mild, long green peppers that are used for chiles rellenos, which are stuffed with Monterey jack cheese, rolled two or three times in beaten eggs, then floured and fried. Then there are “chile pipin,” pee-peen, that pack a wallop comparable to a hydrogen bomb. Avoid these. They are round and slightly larger than a peppercorn, but their size belies the terrible havoc they create.
A deception of chiles is that small means less burning. Actually, it is the smaller peppers that are the more dangerous, especially green, red and yellow colored ones. Avoid them all. Well prepared Mexican food should be enjoyed, not suffered through.
My favorite chiles are pickled jalapeños
in “en escabeche,” a mixture that includes carrots,
onions, oregano and other non-chile spices. They're always eaten
with great respect and used only as a condiment. There are also
pickled “güerito” peppers made by “Embasa,”
milder than jalapeños, but still hot enough that
they should be eaten in tiny bites. These are the only chiles
worth savoring and are my choice resulting from a
lifetime of eating others that are simply too hot even when taking
small bites.
Try them with all fowl and meats, including stews. They are especially fine with beef, pork and chicken barbecue. I obviously do not use them when dining on French or Italian cuisine.
Then there are the salsas, delicious mild mixtures of finely chopped onions, tomatoes, fresh cilantro, and pickled or raw jalapeños or parboiled chiles, also finely chopped. I used to make my own salsas but I stopped doing that when supermarkets began carrying fresh salsas in the refrigerated cheese or deli sections.
There's a difference between a salsa and
a sauce. Tabasco, for instance, is the most commonly known of
the sauces. My favorite chile sauce, surprisingly, is Vietnamese.
It is named simply “chili garlic sauce” and must be
handled with caution but in tiny
portions has a magnificent, wonderful flavor.
Although some prepared salsas and sauces
are well made, still there are occasions that call for an absolutely
fresh salsa. One such occasion is when I make my special barbecued
pork ribs, prepared with a dry rub of six different spices, including
the
very mild “chili” powder to impart just a slight taste
of chile in combination with the flavor created by the combination
of all the other spices.
A word of caution, never confuse “chili”
powder with cayenne pepper. Cayenne will overpower all other
spices. However, if you do use it, add it only in small pinches
at a time until the desired flavor is reached. Cayenne pepper
has actually very little flavor but does impart a very, very
hot taste. In contrast, “Chili” powder, composed of
a variety of mild chiles, does have a desirous flavor and is
very mild.
Chiles, both fresh and dried, are used in the very best of Mexican cooking that requires a fine touch that more and more cooks and chefs in the United States, both domestic and in restaurants are discovering. Chipotle, a very mild dried chile, has a delicious nutty flavor that already graces the dishes of many avant garde restaurants with adventurous chefs, especially in California and across the Southwest.
For those who would delve into the sumptuous world of Mexican gourmet dishes, I can recommend no other better cook book than Diana Kennedy’s "The Art of Mexican Cooking: Traditional Mexican Cooking for Aficionados," published by Bantam in 1989. It is replete with the very best instructions for preparing those magnificent dishes that are virtually unknown in the United States.
For avante garde Latin American cuisine,
much of it Mexican based, use chef Douglas Rodriguez’s "Nuevo
Latino" cookbook by Ten Speed press, published in 1995.
It contains a plethora of exciting new dishes created by Rodriguez
with a foundation
of the traditional spices used in Mexico and Central and South
America. Rodriguez is a renowned Miami chef.
The unique dishes infused with a proper use of chiles and salsas and produced by Mexico’s best restaurants and homes are just being discovered in America. Far too many diners cling to the belief that Mexican cooking consists only of badly made enchiladas, tacos, paper thin grilled meats, and refried beans that are sadly prepared by too many Mexican restaurants.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, I know of only one restaurant, El Sol in Palo Alto, that has chefs with the skills to prepare traditional Mexican dishes at their best. Alas, however, their menu is limited.
Hopefully, what I have written will introduce many to the wonders and dangers of tasteful salsas and chiles that enhance the complex and savory flavors of Mexican cooking. Personally, I always taste any salsa or chile gingerly, to determine how much to use. For the adventurous diner, it’s an opening to a brand new world of delightful flavors.
©2011 by Elias Castillo. The caricature of Elias Castillo is ©2000 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted Dec. 5, 2011.
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