By Lisa Golden Schroeder

Okay, before I start singing my praises for chile peppers, I have to settle a personal peeve. How should the word “chile” be spelled? Chile, chillie, chili? It sometimes feels rather random, but I adhere to a style rooted in southwestern cooking. When referring to the actual hot peppers, the spelling is “chile.” When referring to a blend of ingredients that includes chiles—fresh, dried, or ground—the spelling is “chili” with an “I.” Some might think I’m being arbitrary, but it’s the recipe editor in me that sets these boundaries. I’m sure you don’t care, as long as it’s clear what is being referenced. So on to declaring my love and devotion to a class of vegetable (that are actually botanical fruits) that originated in the Americas. Fresh chile peppers were discovered in the Caribbean by European explorers, but they were grown all over central and South America for thousands of years before. Carried back to Spain as a novelty, they were cultivated and spread quickly all over the world. Their spicy flavor mimicked the heat of black peppercorns, which at that time in history were highly sought after and very valuable. The versatility of chiles—sweetly flavored, yet hot in varying degrees—and how easily they grow in global hot zones, engrained them in cuisines all over Asia and India.

But back to the here and now—where a dizzying variety of chiles are easily found in just about any market. I grew up on chiles, mostly mild Anaheims (or California) chiles or dried anchos—the ripened form of the triangular green poblano chile. The value of capsicums in so many cuisines becomes clear in their taxonomy—special names for each form of each cultivar. My early cooking forays included all types of southwestern desert chiles, but in recent years there’s been a rise of varieties that I never played with as a novice cook. Chipotles (smoked and dried ripened jalapenos), the Scotch Bonnet or habanero, a tangled array of tiny Asian chiles…every continent has their favorites. The popularity of chiles as a flavor in products we buy seems to have no bounds, and in our backyard grilling culture they happily live side by side with whatever we throw on an open flame. And never-you-mind the myriad assortment of bottled hot sauces that seem to flood the marketplace (I can’t be without a bottle of Thai sriracha or the Tabasco I grew up on, which are pretty boring these days).

Not everyone likes lots of heat in their food, and that’s the beauty of chiles. You can find just the amount you like, enough to add some spice without being mind blowing. And you can tailor your cooking to everyone’s taste, by offering chile sauces, sliced pickled chiles, or a shaker of those ubiquitous red chile flakes on every pizzeria table. When dealing with fresh chiles, here’s a good rule of thumb: the larger the chile, the milder it will be. The smaller the chile, like the desert scorpion, the worse the sting! The following recipe fuses two cuisines—addictive Asian chili garlic sauce is a fast grilling baste, while the smoky pineapple salsa gets a boost from fresh Serrano chiles.

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Tags: Chicken, Chicken Recipe, Chiles, Colorful, Cooking, Dinner, Fruits, Garden, Grill, Grilling, Just BARE, Just Bare Chicken, Recipe, Tomatoes, Vegetables

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 at 2:21 pm and is filed under Ingredient of the Month, Uncomplicated Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.