Manzano and other less common chiles

Manzano and other less common chiles

I’ve gotten a few chiles recently which I hadn’t seen for sale around here before.

Chile manzano/chile perón

La Casa del Pueblo has fresh chile perón, also known as chile manzano, right now. This chile forms the basis for a bottled salsa that zim recommends, but this is the first time I remember seeing fresh ones for sale. The ones at Casa de Pueblo are fully red, some really very similar to apple shapes (hence the manzano name), or pear (perón). On a per pound basis they may be the most expensive item at Casa del Pueblo, at $9.99/lb.

Here’s a picture of them and other chiles discussed below. The chiles manzano are the three largish red ones at the top.



The produce guy at Casa del Pueblo claimed that the chile manzano was the equal of the habanero in hotness: judging just from this batch I’d say they are hot but not that hot. Biting a piece of one gives a pretty good kick – minced up in a simple salsa with minced onion and lime juice it mellows out a bit. That salsa was an excellent accompaniment to flank steak which Antonius grilled on Sunday.

I googled chile manzano (chile + peron gives you recent South American history more than it does gastronomy…) and found a very impressive site, UK Chile-Head which contains a database of chile varieties, of which there are more than I had ever dreamed. From this site I learned that the chile manzano has been fairly recently introduced to Mexico from Andean South America and that it belongs to a different species from either the habanero or the other familiar Mexican chiles, namely Capsicum pubescens, allegedly named for the hairiness of the plants. An unusual feature of these chiles is that the seeds inside are black – quite striking against the ripe red flesh. These chiles grow well at colder high elevations; within Mexico they are cultivated in the states of Mexico, Queretaro, Chiapas and Guerrero. They don’t cross-pollinate with other chile species, and according to UK Chile-Head the production in Mexico is limited and for local consumption. How cool to see these chiles for sale in Chicago!


Chile pasado and chile morita – Maxwell Street Market

A few Sundays ago I met up with several food enthusiasts at Maxwell Street. After sampling the delicious tacos at Manolo’s stand (pork in mole rojo estilo Teloloapan, costilla de puerco en salsa verde, chicharrón, lengua, hongos, all on fabulous handmade tortillas), RST took a subset of us south to visit a very knowledgeable vendor of chiles. This guy sets up his table under the viaduct on the east side, displaying boxes of many different types of dried chiles along with other bulk items, such as jamaica flowers. I wanted to ask him about the availability of chiltepines (see below), and RST was inquiring about certain Oaxacan chiles – which, he learned, are sometimes available but which sell out almost immediately. The chile vendor generously gave us samples of a couple of his chiles: chile pasado and chile morita. He also has a wholesale grocery business in Bridgeport, address below.

The chile pasado is strange looking indeed. It’s a chile poblano which has been dried when still green, as opposed to letting the poblano get to the red stage before drying it to produce the familiar chile ancho. In the picture above I placed it next to a fresh poblano for comparison’s sake: you can see there’s considerable shrinkage, with the skin becoming a dark gray-green and splitting, revealing the seeds inside. The chiles pasado I got at Maxwell Street were from the state of Durango; Diana Kennedy, in My Mexico, discusses this chile in the chapter on Chihuahua, saying that it is typical of the hot, dry areas in which carne seca, dried beef, is also produced. She gives a recipe for dried beef stewed with chile pasado – we’re planning to try it with cecina (which is probably a bit different than the Chihuahua style carne seca, but which is readily available here), and will report back when we do.

The chile morita is a smoked, dried serrano; in the photo above it’s lying between the two groups of tiny chiles. Of course everyone these days is familiar with the chile chipotle, which is a smoked, dried jalapeño, most commonly available canned in an adobo sauce. More and more places, it seems, are also offering dried chipotles, sometimes called chile mora for the smaller size. The diminutive form morita, though, refers to the same smoking/drying process being applied to the chile serrano, and I believe these are less common around Chicago than the various chipotles. The moritas from Maxwell Street are incredibly smoky! Even through a ziploc bag the handful of moritas perfumed the whole kitchen with their aroma.


Chiltepín vs. chile pequín

As mentioned above, what I had wanted to ask the Maxwell St. chile guy about was the availability of chiltepín, or chile tepín, in Chicago. This tiny, spherical chile grows wild in the state of Sonora, is quite hot, and has a great flavor. (In the photo above, the chiltepines are on the right of the chile morita.) Antonius and I are addicted to them – in fact, for years now Antonius has been using chiltepines as his basic peperoncino in piccante Italian dishes. But we’ve only seen them for sale in packages under the “Don Enrique” subsidiary of Melissa’s Produce (link). We get them at the Hyde Park Co-op where a half ounce package costs $4, as I recall, and I’m sure there are other stores carrying the Melissa product as well. As Antonius and I explore the shops of Pilsen and La Villita we’ve looked for a local source for these chiles, to no avail. That’s why I wanted to talk to the Maxwell St. chile specialist. But he said, no – no one in Chicago is bringing in those chiles. They are just too expensive, since they have to be gathered in the wild.

Available in many places, however, is the chile pequín, the small chiles to the left of the morita in the photo above. I’ve seen it claimed in various places that the pequín is the domesticated variant of the tepín. Whether that is true or whether the pequín is a separate type of tiny chile I don’t know; in any event its shape is quite different – elongated rather than spherical – and, while almost as hot, it lacks the full, fruity, complex flavor that we particularly like in the chiltepín.

Chile chilaca and chile güero

These last two chiles are easy to find in Mexican groceries and are surely familiar to many but perhaps not to all. The long skinny dark green one is chilaca, and the light yellow-green one is güero. The chilaca is the fresh form of the chile called pasilla when dried. The chile güero is medium-hot, hotter than similarly colored chiles called banana or Hungarian or Cubanelle (or, at Andy’s Fruit Ranch, ‘Cuban “L”’). We grilled these chiles, along with some poblanos, at the same time as the flank steak already mentioned for a great summertime meal last Sunday. Kennedy gives a couple recipes for chilacas – one where the roasted, peeled, and shredded chiles are combined with crumbled queso fresco as a snack with drinks, another where roasted and peeled chilacas are stuffed and served with a chile cream sauce. Both of those sound pretty damn good too.

Amata


La Casa del Pueblo
1810 S. Blue Island
Chicago, IL 60608
312 421-4640

Andy’s Fruit Ranch
4725 N. Kedzie
Chicago, IL 60625
773 583-2322

Hyde Park Co-op
1526 E. 55th St.
Chicago, 60615
773 667-1444

El Caporal, Inc. Wholesale Grocer
3405 S. Lituanica
Chicago, IL 60608
773 869-0204
(Sundays at Maxwell Street Market: under the viaduct, east side)

Of course, it's hard to describe well in simple terms the relative piquancy of chiles and so I would have to say that Amata's assessment of chiles güeros as "medium hot" is by no means wrong: they are certainly not the hottest peppers around but definitely hotter than some others, including the chilacas mentioned above. I'm especially fond of chiles güeros, in part on account of the flavour, in part on account of the thin skin (which need not be peeled off in my estimation) but also in part on account of their piquancy. Some individual chiles güeros aren't all that hot but most -- at least of the ones we buy in the Mexican grocery stores -- are pretty darn hot; eating three or four large chiles güeros along side some grilled flesh, perhaps with a little hot salsa in the mix (the fresh manzano salsa, for example, or else El Yucateco's bottled green habanero salsa), will certainly satisfy the average chile-addict's needs.

Incidentally, the pickled baby chiles güeros from Mexico I like to keep in the fridge are also quite hot and a tasty garnish for a simple taco.

Antonius

Great resource!

Dried chipotles, according to Bayless, come in two varieties: he calls the brick-red ones colorados, moras or moritas in slight conflict with your terminology for dried serranos. These he says are usually preferable to the more tan-colored mecos which he says have interesting, although not as deep flavors.

I'm fond of his black-as-tar "essential" chipotle seasoning from the Mexican Kitchen cookbook, which is made with piloncillo, twice fried to give a couple cups of what would be added to make probably 500 gallons of commercial chipotle mayo.

My source for growing chiles is http://www.thechilewoman.com . She's got hundreds of varieties, some of which she's made her own names for when she doesn't have the origins -- people send her seeds all the time.

Another note about shopping for chiles: The dried varieties are probably fine on the Jewel/Dominicks shelves, although depending on your neighborhood they may have been on the shelves for a long time, but visit any local hispanic market and you'll get better jalapeños and poblanos -- they may be more likely to be blemished, but at least they'll have more heat and flavor than a bottle ketchup.

JoelF wrote:Another note about shopping for chiles: The dried varieties are probably fine on the Jewel/Dominicks shelves, although depending on your neighborhood they may have been on the shelves for a long time, but visit any local hispanic market and you'll get better jalapeños and poblanos -- they may be more likely to be blemished, but at least they'll have more heat and flavor than a bottle ketchup.

Jalapeños in particular seem generally to be strikingly mild in the major chain groceries. The "hot banana peppers" or whatever they call them -- that is, the ones that look like chiles güeros -- are also generally more or less wimpy when compared to the chiles güeros from a grocery in the barrio. With poblanos I don't detect much difference (they're always mild) in flavour, though of course price is another matter altogether. And serranos seem to have resisted to a better degree than jalapeños the 'dumbing down'.

Antonius

Thanks, Joel. I definitely agree that the Mexican markets are better places to shop for the fresh chiles -- and probably for dried chiles too, since they undoubtedly have more turnover of the dried product than Jewel or Dominicks do.

Regarding the use of the word morita, I'm sure that that diminutive gets used for jalapenos as well, given the wide variety of terminology, regional and otherwise, out there for chile varieties. The ones from the Maxwell St. guy, though, are clearly smoked serranos -- they have the long thin shape of a serrano, not the thicker stubby shape of a jalapeno.

Antonius's comment about the relative heat levels inspired me to go back to that database I linked to and check the rankings there for heat level. Here's what I found, for the ones I mentioned in the original post:

Banana pepper: 3
Hungarian pepper: 4
Pasilla (=chilaca): 3-5
Jalapeno: 5
Caribe guero: 6
Serrano: 6-7
Manzano: 8
Tepin: 8
Habanero: 10

Now, this guy lists chile pequin as 8.5, slightly hotter than the tepin. That's not been my experience. But again, a lot of factors can affect the hotness of a specific batch of chiles.

Amata wrote:Antonius's comment about the relative heat levels inspired me to go back to that database I linked to and check the rankings there for heat level. Here's what I found, for the ones I mentioned in the original post:

Banana pepper: 3
Hungarian pepper: 4
Pasilla (=chilaca): 3-5
Jalapeno: 5
Caribe guero: 6
Serrano: 6-7
Manzano: 8
Tepin: 8
Habanero: 10

Now, this guy lists chile pequin as 8.5, slightly hotter than the tepin. That's not been my experience. But again, a lot of factors can affect the hotness of a specific batch of chiles.

Amata:

Muchas gracias... I'm happy to see my impressions seem to match very well the ratings you cite. I presume then that the chiles güeros of the barrio stores (El Güero, Casa del Pueblo, etc.) are the Caribe güeros which do pack a more serious punch than the other similar looking peppers ('hot banana', 'Hungarian'). And with regard to jalapeños, I think there's a range: 4 at Jewel and Dominick's to 6 at the Mexican stores.

I agree with you and emphatically disagree with the suggestion that pequins are hotter than tepins, at least from the evidence of the several dozen batches we've bought over the years. Generally speaking, I think the tepins are significantly hotter (as well as being much more flavourful).

Antonius

I'd heard that the morita is the smoked jalepeño, although the dried (not smoked) ones are now more commonly associated with that name. It's good to know that the smoked peppers (not just dried) are at Maxwell.

IIRC cross pollination can affect heat levels in chiles. So if a mild variety is grown near a hot one, the mild can get hot (and vice versa).
Maybe six months or so ago, we made some batter fried banana peppers for a snack - these particular ones were hotter than some jalapeños! Tasty with the sweetish banana pepper flavour, so tasty we couldn't stop - but the heat, it had us in tears!

I also like the long red peppers (fresno?)- of the size and approximate shape of the banana peppers, but slightly less fleshy. Nice heat and great color. I've gotten them from the Hyde Park Coop, but never seen them at hispanic stores.

There are many varieties of banana peppers, which range from sweet (essentially zero heat) to moderately hot. Both the plants and fruits have no outward sign of the heat. The only way to be almost sure of what you are dealing with is to grow your own plants from seed from a reliable source and then hope that their weren't a few seeds from a previous batch in the processing and packaging machinery.

Peppers are known for their propensity to cross pollinate. However, any effects in the first generation fruits would be confined to the seeds. Since seeds have a lot of the heat in peppers, this could produce fruits with hot seeds but mild ribs and flesh. I have some plants growing from seed I saved from Thai Hots, a variety with small (3/8 to 1/2 inch long) but quite hot peppers, which I had saved for several generations without problems. Judging from the leaves, the source peppers I saved had cross pollinated with some other peppers I grew. I am quite curious about what the fruit will be like.

In my experience peppers' heat level is sensitive to both temperatures during development and amount of water. Mild water stress coupled with hot weather increases the heat.

Antonius wrote:With poblanos I don't detect much difference (they're always mild) in flavour, though of course price is another matter altogether. And serranos seem to have resisted to a better degree than jalapeños the 'dumbing down'.

I agree about the serranos: they're a good bet when you want a little heat with a known quantity (my general opinion is that pepper-for-pepper, a serrano has as much heat as an 'undomesticated' jala, but is of course smaller).

On the other hand, I've had Poblanos that have a fair amount of bite -- not just store-bought-raw but occasional rellenos too. Sometimes it's just a hot spot on one side (cross-polinated seeds from several sources?). Still, the small markets tend to have a much more flavorful pod, compared to the shiny smooth green ones at Jewel.

Amata,

Thanks for this excellent rundown of some of the available Maxwell St. Market chiles. I get such heat (as it were) from my kids for cooking with peppers that I've almost stopped trying, but your post is inspiring.

I spoke with the "guy under the viaduct" a few months ago -- he had a very impressive collection of cinnamon sticks, some very large ones, as wide around as the small end of a baseball bat.

Another big advantage of shopping at Maxwell is that one can purchase peppers and other spices in small quantities -- I find that buying from other sources sometimes requires me to go home with much larger quantities than I can realistically use.

Hammond

Amata wrote:The chile morita is a smoked, dried serrano; in the photo above it’s lying between the two groups of tiny chiles. Of course everyone these days is familiar with the chile chipotle, which is a smoked, dried jalapeño, most commonly available canned in an adobo sauce. More and more places, it seems, are also offering dried chipotles, sometimes called chile mora for the smaller size. The diminutive form morita, though, refers to the same smoking/drying process being applied to the chile serrano, and I believe these are less common around Chicago than the various chipotles.

Amata,

Thank you for both the interesting, informative post and for clearing up my confusion between chipotle, morita and mora.

I purchased the (pictured) chilies from the pepper lady under the Southern viaduct/Maxwell Street last year. I thought/was told/misunderstood them to be morita, a premium/harder to find subset of chipotle, though it seems they are actually mora.



Enjoy,
Gary