Chile Pepper Snack
I hesitate to call this a recipe (it's more of a
technique), but it's a snack of goodly fun best served at BBQ's right before the meats get thrown on.
-1-2 dozen fresh, washed Anaheim chiles, about 3 per person (
not all from the same stock/plant, you want to pick em out of a big foodstore bin to ensure variety in levels of hotness. Why? Cause it's a
surprise, that's why) If you're growing them, likewise don't take them all from the same plant - if one chile on the plant is hot, all the chiles on the plant are hot, etc.
These are Anaheim chiles, they are long and green, 6-8 inches in length, but size isn't everything
Accept no substitutes.
-An open outdoor grill (see below for indoor alternative), whatever you're comfortable with as long as there's an open flame and a grate
-Brown paper lunch bags
-A stapler
Dipping sauce:
1 head of garlic, whole
4 oz salted butter
A broiler pan or otherwise ovensafe dish large enough for the garlic head
Steps:
Sauce
1 - Have the dipping sauce prepared and kept somewhere warm when you begin the chile steps. You're roasting the garlic head, which means keeping it in a greased vessel OR you can make a bowl out of aluminum foil for it, cover the head, and keep the foil slightly open at the top. If you use foil, do not grease it. Either method though,
do spread some olive oil over the top of the head, if in a ceramic vessel, you can do this liberally. 20-30 mins 350 degrees F.
2 - Remove the encapsulated garlic from its oiled crystalline prison. This will take some pushing out and they can be slippery. You only need 4-5 cloves, but its hard to roast only part of a head.
3 - Heat the butter in a sauce pan until melted, add the garlic and mash it up with a spoon. Add a bit of kosher salt and set aside/keep warm. Add more garlic/butter if you're adding more chiles, of course. Adding lemon juice to the sauce isn't too odd a variation.
Chiles
1 - Fire up the grill. Throw the chiles on, evenly spaced out, you might need to cook them in a couple batches. Use long metal tongs to keep them turned all around once the bottoms get blackened. Too black, and they burn, so check frequently, it should take about 4-6 mins to blacken a whole chile all the way over. When you pull the skin away later, the finished chile will not be charred (it'll be 95% green, if you did it right).
(NB: In the event you can't use a grill, you can hold them one at a time over the open flame of your stovetop and blacken that way. Or, arrange them on a baking sheet and stick them under the broiler turning them every minute so all sides get blackened.)
2 - When roasted through, and without cutting into them, retire the chiles to a brown paper bag, fold over the top and staple shut (4-5 to a bag). Here they will steam for about 5-10 minutes, depending on how much of a hurry you're in. The bag itself should be steaming and look like...well I'm sure you've seen your share of steaming paper bags in your time, only this one's got delicious chiles inside! But the point is do not use plastic, or they will
taste like Crayola.
3 - Open the bags and remove the steamed chiles one at a time. You can very gently remove the outer skin with one brave finger and a scraping implement (butter knife or dessert fork), or you can roll the chile in between a few layers of paper towels and then just pick off any skin that might remain (preferred). Do not cut, unless you don't trust your guests to know not to eat the stem (but you need the stem to hold onto them as you eat them).
4 - Plate with a bit of the dipping sauce either spread over the chiles or leave it in small containers for your guests to use at their leisure. One in three Anaheims is typically quite quite hot, while the others will be significantly sweeter. Make fun of people when they get the hot chile! Unless they like them. I like them...
Begin the protein when everybody else is eating the chiles. You can substitute the Anaheims only for specific specialty chiles you happen to already be familiar with and that are roughly the same shape size and temp as the Anaheim - small chiles are too small (and too hot), Long Hot's are never going to be sweet, and well those Italian frying peppers just aren't as tasty. Most of the capsaicin (the hot-inducing chemical) in chile peppers is located in the membrane, and this is typically removed when they get chopped up (unless you're doing it wrong), however when you roast something, it's whole, and you're eating all of the chile innards here, so you can't use very very hot chiles or the results will not be very nice. The membrane and seeds are also present in whole dried chiles, which is why powders will be quite potent (at least if you powder them yourself, the stores dilute with paprika).
[quote="Pthug"]oh shit you just called black people in britain "african-americans"
my
god[/quote]