A Brisk Shop

The weather finally started turning to fall, let alone winter, on Saturday and my shop reflected a bit of holiday prep:

The Shop
Unsweetened strawberry spread - Beth's Farm Kitchen
2 Dozen Eggs - Quatros Game Farm
Mixed mustard greens - Gorzynski Farms
Mixed apples - Terhune orchards
Radicchio - Northshire Farms (boar sausage guy)
Mixed chiles and Rye flour- Oak Grove Plantation
White mushrooms - ??

Most of these are the bases for standard fall and holiday fare.

First preserve of the season

Frozen Diced Chiles

A mixture of different chiles brings a lot of depth to the flavor of spicy, especially Mexican or Tex-Mex, fare. However, one generally doesn't need much of each variety to provide sufficient heat to a dish--so either one uses a single type (striking only one flavor note) or uses several types and wastes a lot of time in preparation and/or flesh.

There's a way around this. Chiles freeze incredibly well. If you're willing to invest a couple of hours and a little freezer space, you can have chiles for seasoning throughout the year.

I generally buy about a pound of mixed chiles. This year I went with fairly mild fruits: pasilla, jalapeno, hungarian wax, poblano and added about a dozen super hots from my own plants, Peter and Fish. After washing and drying them well, I stemmed and seeded them, cut them into tiny dice (think confetti) and mixed them together in a large bowl.

*Prep for this is very important, especially if using really hot varietals such as thai, fatalis or habaneros. Wearing rubber or latex gloves is a must. Plastic food prep shields will not work. Just as important is good ventilation. I've learned that it's best to do the dicing outside because the capsaicin fumes can be choking when dealing with a large number of fruits. If serranos, habaneros and fatalis are the mainstays of your mixture, you may want to go a step further and use a bandana or dust mask over your nose and mouth. Whatever you do, once you start working, do NOT touch your face nor anything else that comes in contact with it. (E.g., don't answer the phone unless you can do it completely hands free.) You will be unbelievably sorry. Oh, and don't touch anyone else either.

Once they're mixed, they can be put into mason jars (no salt, sugar or any other preservative is necessary) and frozen. Each time you want a little chile flavor in a dish, you just chip out some of the mixed dice and add it in. My pound or so of peppers resulted in 2 quarts of very fine dice which should last until next fall.