Recipes Brewing Outdoors Notebooks About Contact

Archive

  • 2013
    • September
  • 2012
    • December
    • July
    • June
    • February
    • January
  • 2011
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • January
  • 2010
    • January
  • 2009
  • 2008
    • June
    • May
    • March
  • 2007
    • September
  • 2006
    • September
    • July
    • April
  • 2005
    • December
    • November
rss feed Subscribe

Columbus & The Humble Chile - A Meditation

Posted by Bryce 4061 days ago under Notebooks

Originally posted on Chileifre.com 10/5/2007

The chile, it seems to me, is one of the few foods that has its own god.
— Diana Kennedy

4461_web.jpg
See image notes below

Cooking is one of my great pleasures. I enjoy nothing more than creating food that enlivens the palate, invokes strength of flavor, and speaks of refined textures and seductive and sensuous aromas. Spices, herbs and aromatics are to me like pigments to a painter - to be mixed in an endless variety of alchemical compounds, elixirs, and infusions.

But spices, herbs and aromatics go beyond the pleasures of the palate. Historically, in early trade, spices often took the place of currency, they have played important roles in the healing arts, adding properties to medicines, bringing scent to perfume and used to enhance our seductive qualites.

The flavors brought by these botanicals also become synonymous with location - certain foods evoke immediate recongnition of where they originate, and the mythologies and imagination we associate with with these faraway places. Spice has for much of history traveled where we as individuals could not, or have not. I have never been to Shanghai, but if I close my eyes I can vividly imagine salty caramelized roasted pork sticky with a sweet plum, soy and start anise, served from a street vendor surrounded by wafts of fragrant smoke. Cuisine is, in my mind, just as much a medium for expressing culture as is art, literature or music.

Wavery Root suggests that, "every country possess, it seems, the sort of cuisine it deserves, which is to say the sort of cuisine it is appreciative enough to want". American cuisine, unlike our current political climate, is incredibly welcoming and diverse in it's acceptance of foreign tastes; at once the result of our diverse population, and a growing acceptance of foreign flavors and cooking techniques. Americans prize our diverse culinary traditions even when we might not welcome those who introduce them - a fact that I have a very hard time accepting in this time of war and distrust. Anglo America - that culture of the "Founding Fathers" was not what America has become - Our fore bearers preached austerity, blandness and economic practicality at the expense of indulgence and taste. It was over and over again in this country that the lower economic classes and immigrants introduced Americans to the flavors of the world outside it's borders; new and rich flavors which America has thrown, with more relish into it's famous "melting pot" than it ever has any other the cultural products introduced by the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free".

Spices, herbs and aromatics, it seems, travel more freely than those who have mastered their use

 

4460_web.jpg
See image notes below

When I started Chilefire in 2005 I selected the name - to speak to the topic of spice, for exactly that reason. Chiles are an unusual cultural spice in many ways, chiles apparent universal appeal, the fruits wholehearted integration into virtually every cuisine on the planet is in some ways unique. Smithsonian researchers report that across the Americas, chile peppers were cultivated and traded as early as 6,000 years ago and likely were consumed by the native people in the Ecuadorian rainforests even earlier than that.

Recently plant remains which include corn, squash, beans, avocados and chile peppers, were recovered from two caves in southern Mexico and analyzed by a Smithsonian ethnobotanist/archaeologist and a colleague. their finding indicate that as early as 1,500 years ago, Pre-Columbian inhabitants of the region enjoyed a spicy fare very similar to Mexican cuisine today. The two caves yielded 10 different cultivated varieties of chile peppers “What was interesting to me was that we were able to determine that they were using the peppers both dried and fresh,” Perry said. (Chilies broken while fresh had a recognizable breakage pattern.) “It shows us that ancient Mexican food was very much like today. They would have used fresh peppers in salsas or in immediate preparation, and they would have used the dried peppers to toss into stews or to grind up into sauces like moles.”

Today, chiles have managed to integrate themselves into the diet and cuisine of very nearly every continent on the planet. I have been told by a colleague at National Geographic that cultivated chiles have been found being grown by "un-contacted" tribes deep in the Congo, proof to the contrary that these remote tribes are truly un-contacted, as ultimately this spice had its heredity in the equally deep jungles of ancient Ecuador.

That Famous European, Columbus, brought chile peppers in several forms back to Europe; from there, Portuguese traders spread them along the coasts of present-day Africa, India, Asia, China, the Middle East, Central Europe and Italy. Areas which already consumed a diet rich in highly spiced foods — such as present-day Asia and India — very quickly incorporated chile peppers into their local cuisines; so quickly, in fact, that until the 1900s chile peppers were widely believed to be indigenous to Asia and India — they were not.

So on this Columbus day I thought it worth a meditation on the history of the chile, this skilled culinary ambassador, who was set upon the world by another whose legacy is both celebrated and despised.

 

These chili peppers from the Guila Naquitz cave in Oaxaca Mexico date to between A.D. 490 and 780, and represent two cultivars or cultivated types. A Smithsonian scientist analyzed the chili pepper remains and determined that Pre-Columbian inhabitants of the region hundreds of years ago enjoyed a spicy fare similar to Mexican cuisine today.

Credit: Linda Perry, Smithsonian Institution

 

Diamonds of The Desert - Medjool Dates

Posted by Bryce 4061 days ago under Notebooks
There are very few desert foods that are as universally loved as fresh Medjool dates. I used to consider dates as little more than another barely edible dried fruit added to American Christmas cakes, which I don't care for much. I didn't really appreciate them fully until in the summer of 1987 on a road trip with a small group of high school friends I was forced to pull into a roadside farm market on route 86, 50 or so miles north of the Mexican border with an overheating engine.

The market was associated with a date ranch that we had been driving by - unnoticed as our attention was focused on the wavering engine heat indicator which was only being kept from a boil over by our willingness to run the heater all out on this 104° day.

Date-Chutney   035
Once reserved exclusively for Moroccan royalty and their most important guests, Medjool dates were considered a precious confection and for many remain so today.

We pulled into the market to give the car some time to cool off, while we wandered down the market aisles and pondered the idea of a "Date Shake". The heat may have helped me decide that day to go ahead and order that five or six dollar date shake, and I remember well waiting in anticipation as the girl with the long brown hair put it together, three or four scoops of french vanilla ice cream, a good sized scoop of a date paste (I was later to learn it was Medjool date paste) and a splash of milk. I imagine now the buzz of the burr inside the frosted stainless shake cup, before she half poured, half scooped my date shake, now a rich carmel brown into a paper cup.

It was even more thick and smooth than I'd anticipated, with chewy bits of date skin and an intense carmel and honey flavor. The cold made the pieces of date in the shake chewier, somehow even more satisfying as they softened under my bite - I was quite literally smitten with this first real taste of fresh dates, and before I left the market I had spent twenty five dollars on soft, fat Medjool dates, some wrapped like truffles in thin colored foil, others pressed together in transparent plastic cartons.

Our road trip sent us north - away from the fertile date plantations of the south, so there were to be no further forays into date shakes on that trip, and before we made it home - the dates I had purchased, even the fancy foil wrapped delicacies, were long since gone; eaten around fires at campsites, or warmed on the dashboard with morning coffee in San Luis Obispo.

date-seller.jpg
Date seller in the old souq in Kuwait City, surrounded by dates from Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
Image credit: Trammell Hudson

A Thousand Uses

The origin of the date palm is lost in antiquity. Dates have been a staple food of the Middle East for thousands of years. They are believed to have originated in the Persian Gulf area, and have been cultivated for thousands of years in the Middle East. Known cultivation range from Mesopotamia to prehistoric Egypt. There is archaeological evidence of date cultivation in eastern Arabia in 6000 BC. Dates and date cultivation gave a means of existence to thousands of people. It was said to offer man a thousand uses including thread, needles, baskets, lumber, mattresses, rope, numerous other household items and an integral part of their diet.

In culinary terms dates are equally versatile and Medjool dates are particularly wonderful, deep amber to almost red in color, with a slightly wrinkled skin. The flesh of the fruit is immensely satisfying, sticky and thick, they are rich with flavors of wild honey, carmel, and cinnamon. Cooled they are slightly harder to the tooth, warmed they are like some decadent pastry, almost cloying in their sweetness.

date-palm.jpg
Dates hang from the crown on a date palm.
Image Credit: Stan Shebs

Dates, while wonderful by themselves (and in shakes) are used in a huge variety of culinary preparations. While commonly eaten out-of hand dates are also stoned, or pitted and stuffed with a variety of fillings, such as almonds, walnuts, candied orange and lemon peel, marzipan or cream cheese. Dates are used as an additive in beer and fermented into wine. Dates are also chopped and used in a wide range of sweet and savoury dishes, from tagines in Moroccan dishes to traditional puddings, bread, cakes and other dessert items

In today's recipe I offer a wonderful (and spicy) smoky date chutney. Dates make a wonderful base for many chutneys adding a thick body and great base sweetness. Many date based chutneys work well with yogurt, and are wonderful with eggplant and pork dishes.

A Fiery Quest! (Part 2 of 2) Chimayo Chile Powders #1 and #2 from The Santa Fe School of Cooking

Posted by Bryce 5573 days ago under The Rogue's Blog

I received the last order of chile powder in the mail yesterday before I went to work. I have decided that to introduce the first two of the chile powders today: Hot and mild Chimayó Chile Powders from The Santa Fe School of Cooking

So I am starting with the Santa Fe School of Cooking powders because they come in stainless steel resealable tins. Really it is more like a small paint can, but it's nice. I have been ordering this chile powder from the school's store for 2 years now, and each time I finish a can it is months before I can bring myself to toss out the tin. The tins are really nice.

SFSOC-Mild.jpg

 

read full post
© 2021 The Rogue Gourmet.    All rights reserved.