Chilies

Needless to say, these beauties came from the east side of the mountains, Royal City, Washington, to be exact, where it has not been soggy and sunless for the past few weeks. The Tonnemakers Farm booth was brimming with hot weather crops recently, including peaches, nectarines, and impressive mounds of chilies. Not only did they have most of them categorized into mild, sweet, or hot, but many of the signs even included their often creative monikers.

From top to bottom, you are looking at two "mild" Mariatchi chilies, two"sweet" Godfathers chilies, and the small ones on the end came from the "Very Hot" bin. Should I be worried?

My favorite way of enjoying most chilies requires roasting them first. If the grill is going, we will char them over the coals. But in light of our recent sorry-excuse-for-August weather, these chilies went into the oven, under the broiler. I put them directly on the oven rack, fairly close to the broiler element. I also left the oven door ajar just a tad so that the heat would stay on continually. When charring chilies this way, the smell of burning chili flesh will usually remind you that they are in the oven. Don't panic; they're supposed to burn. I prefer to use tongs to turn them until they are nicely blackened on all sides, then slide them into a plastic bag where they will "sweat". The longer they can cool down in this bag, the better. But it probably takes at least 15 minutes of sweating before the skins will just slide right off.

After they were out of their skins we set up a taste test. Here are the results.

Left: "Sweet" Godfathers--fruity, good medium spice
These would be great stuffed or even used for chile rellenos.

Middle: "Mild" Mariatchi--no spice, grassy, and a bit fibrous
Good for salads, soups, or in a quesadilla.

Right: "Very Hot"--fruity (citrus flavors?), smokey, definitely hot
Good for anything you want to add spice to.

I then proceeded to cut off the ends, scrape out the seeds, and chop all of the chilies up to create a salsa for our grilled flank steak. The thing I loved the most about this salsa? The chilies retained so much flavor even though they had spice. The spice was certainly there, but it didn't overwhelm any of the food. I could taste the grassy, fruity nuances that we picked up on in the taste test and I enjoyed every bite!