Thursday Gourmet

I like spicy foods.   Especially chili pepper-based spicy food.  I’m not all that fond of horseradish or mustard heat, just the chili peppers.  My family (and (((Wife)))’s family) know that I like spicy food.  Which can create a minor problem. Sometimes I receive a gift consisting of a jar of dried chilis.  Some of these I love — crumbled cascabel, mulatto, or jalapeno I can and do use.  Chipotle peppers, dried and smoked jalapeno, are pretty good, but their flavour is so strong, so overpowering, that I find them hard to use.  Which means that I have a couple of jars of minced chipotle sitting in my cupboards. 

What to do, what to do.

Wait, I’ll make a chipotle sauce.  And here it is:

God Probably Does Not Exist

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Thursday Gourmet

Even in Arizona, finding different kinds of chili peppers was difficult.  Hell, finding any peppers was tough:  green bell peppers were about the only thing in a Northern Arizona grocery store.  All Mom’s Mexican cooking was based on McCormick Chili Powder.  And it was good.

Then, in the mid-1980s, grocery stores (by this time we were in Western Maryland) discovered that there is more than one kind of pepper.  Red bells and even fresh jalapenos showed up in the vegetable bins.  We began using the fresh peppers.  And it was good.

A few years after we moved to Northeastern Pennsylvania, Wegmans opened.  And they carried (and still carry) lots and lots of different peppers.  And they carry dried chili peppers.  I quickly began experiment with neat things like ancho, pasilla, cascabel, and anaheim chilis.  And it was really good.

Anyway, here is a recipe for some of those dried chili peppers:

Black Bean Chili Mole with Pork

Thursday Gourmet

As I kid, I always loved Mexican night at our house.  It generally followed a day or two after a big pot of chili con carne ((((Mom))) made it with kidney beans and mushrooms (she called it ‘Polish Chile’ to avoid all those damn arguments about what should (or should not) be in chili)) and was a great way to use up the leftovers.  Sometimes, if the budget allowed, we had actual ground beef tacos.

In Flagstaff, we occasionally ate at one of the Mexican or Tex-Mex places.  The first time I hit food that was too spicy was at a little Tex-Mex place in Kanab, Utah.  I loved Mexican food, whether traditional or anglo-cized.

When I hit college, there was a great little Mexican restaurant in Keene (when they brought the plates, they always warned the diner to be careful — hot plate;  the food was sometimes cold).  One of their specialties was shredded beef or shredded pork tacos:  gently seasoned, tender, salty, and delicious.  And for the life of me, I could never figure out how to make the damn stuff at home.

I did some research, and found that the traditional method (for the beef, at least) was to smoke it, grind it dry, and add the moisture later.  Which helped me not at all.

Finally, though, I learned how to do it right.  Here, then, are two recipes:  one for shredded beef and one for shredded pork.