shizzling - (mis)adventures in food

Home Made Pickled Serenade Chilli Taste Test

Back in July 2011 I pickled some Serenade Chillies that I had picked from a plant in my garden. I used a cider vinegar & salt mix as the pickling liquid. 

The idea was to find out whether I could produce pickled chillies that are comparable in quality to the pickled jalapenos that are sold by Discovery Foods, Old El Paso and others. I was also interested in determining the shelf life of the pickled chillies and whether they lost any colour, flavour or texture over time. 

So, here are the fresh Serenade chillies, before I washed them and cut slits in them to allow the pickling liquid to penetrate.  

And here they are immediately after I pickled them:

They looked very vibrant and fresh immediately after pickling. Then, over the course of the first couple of weeks that vibrancy diminished. After a month I opened the jar and tried one - it had a  crispness to it that you don't get with the shop bought pickled chillies.

Then I sealed the jar back up and stuck it in the fridge to see how long they would keep.

I just took one out today, after they have been in the jar for 6 months, and sliced it up to do a taste test.

The colour, taste and texture are all stable compared to how they were when I did my first taste test. 

This makes me confident that I can pickle a load of jalapenos and serrano chillies in the same way this year.

Fresh Jalapeno Chiles from Edible Ornamentals

Over the weekend I bought 3 kilos of jalapeno peppers from my friends at Edible Ornamentals.

This is on top of the 6kg of jalapenos and poblanos I bought off them a month ago, which were variously roasted, frozen, smoked and dried. 

Most of this batch will be smoked tomorrow to make chipotles, but I may well slice and freeze some too. 

How to cut a mango into cubes

Here's a quick tip to show you how to cut a mango into cubes. 

The big problem with a mango is that it has a large, flat stone that can be difficult to cut around. Also, the fruit is slippery and juicy, so it's not easy to just peel it and chop away the mango into cubes. 

The picture above shows the technique pretty clearly. 

1. Hold the mango so that it is standing on it's narrower side. 
2. Cut away the 2 'cheeks' as per the picture - this leaves the stone in the central chunk. 
3. Score the mango flesh in the cheeks and then hold the mango cheek with the flesh facing away from you and push the centre of the back part so that the scored flesh pops out. 
4. Carefully cut the exposed mango into cubes. 
5. Now peel the remaining central part of the mango and graduclly chop off long slices and cut them into mango cubes. You should be left with the stone and very little wasted flesh. 

Making Chipotle Chiles at home - Bullet smoker method

Strictly speaking, a chipotle is a dried, smoked red jalapeno but I had a load of green jalapeno available and I thought I'd see if I could make 'green chipotles' from them. 

The result, as can be seen above, was excellent. The green jalapenos have been turned into deeply smoked chipotles that are properly dried and have that 'crinkly' look of proper chipotle. 

Read on to see how I made these green chipotles. 

Making Chipotle Chiles at home - Barbecue method

Smoking and drying red jalapeno chiles turns them into chipotles - a wonderful ingredient used in Mexican cooking to add spicy heat and a lovely smoky depth of flavour.

You can buy bottles and jars of chipotle sauces in most UK supermarkets and you might even find whole chipotles in the specialist ingredients sections. However, when I was able to get my hands on a large amount of jalapenos recently, I thought I'd have a go at turning them into chipotles. 

Read on to see how I made the chipotle chiles in a barbecue. 

Drying Poblano chilies to make Anchos

In Mexico, a dried Poblano is known as a chile Ancho. Anchos are used in many recipes, usually being toasted in a dry pan and then soaked in boiling water to rehydrate them. 

I dried my Poblanos in a dehydrator - a useful piece of kit for preserving ingredients. 

Charring and freezing Poblano peppers for use over the winter.

Poblano chillies are used widely in Mexican cookery but they're difficult to track down in UK shops, even when they are in season. They are mildly hot and add a distinctive flavour to recipes.

When you can find them it's a good idea to buy in bulk and preserve them for use throughout the year. This article tells you how.

Drying chillies in a dehydrator - part 2

Yesterday I posted an article showing how to prepare chillies for dehydration. It was the first time I had tried to dry chillies in a food dehydrator and I'm glad to say it was a success. 

There was a mix of chillies: habanero, serenade, jalapeno and a long 'mystery chilli'. The varying sizes of fruit resulted in different drying times. 

Preserving tomatillos in jars

Last year I planted my tomatillos in window boxes and the harvest was tiny - I don't think they had enough space to root properly and the location of the boxes led to the wind snapping a lot of branches. 

This year I planted the tomatillos out in a raised bed and they have really thrived. I've already picked about 10lbs of fruit and there's about the same on there. 

Rather than have this bumper tomatillo crop go to waste I thought I'd have a go at preserving them in jars so that they can be used throughout the winter.  

Drying chillies in a dehydrator - part 1

In the short time I have been growing my own ingredients I have experienced a glut of produce in the summer, much of which can go to waste.  To stretch the use of my harvest into the winter months I decided to buy a dehydrator in order to dry the excess and eat it later.