Red Poblanos: The Perfect Heat

It’s late fall, when the end of the growing season often brings some nice surprises, especially after a disappointing summer of rain and sorry produce. One discovery a few weeks ago was these beautiful red poblanos, brilliant and shiny. Poblanos are already a favorite of mine, in frequent use around my house for a staple in my house, chiles rellenos (recipe to come, I promise), or for making one of my favorite burgers or this simple first course of cornmeal-dusted sautéed peppers.

The red poblano is both a little sweeter and a little hotter than the green, which among all the chiles is relatively mild. It retains a distinctive poblano taste, however, and was satisfying and very pretty for chiles rellenos. Once roasted, however, they looked so much like any other roasted red pepper that I began thinking about what else to do with them.

As many of you know, I spend the academic year in Nashville. The South is a generation behind; this is not a criticism, just a fact. What is available here, and what people like, is reminiscent of the East Coast in the early 1960s. One of those things that people like is pimiento cheese. Now, we didn’t have that growing up, but we did have various kinds of cheese spreads, like WisPride®. Pimento cheese is a little bit like that, and everybody here just loves it. They sell it in the supermarkets—which are, regrettably, like ours were 30 years ago—in big tubs. Of course you don’t want that. But a homemade pimento cheese can be a very nice, even addictive, thing.

When friends from Rhode Island were visiting last month, I made some pimento cheese and some roasted pecans to give them a taste of the South. My girlfriend said, with a note of horror and shock that I would serve such a thing, “it looks like CheezWhiz®.”I told her it was good and, out of politeness or hunger, she tried it. She ate it right up.

Anyway, I used some of these peppers to make a batch of pimento cheese. Their natural heat negated the need for Tabasco and cayenne, standard ingredient when using regular roasted peppers. I can be quite content eating pimento cheese and crackers, accompanied by a cold beer, for my dinner when I get back late from teaching an evening class. A little Southern comfort, far from home.

Poblano Pimento Cheese

Pimento cheese is a subject of fierce debate in the South, like jonnycakes (thick or thin?) or chowder in Rhode Island. Serve only with 60s-era crackers: Ritz™, or my personal favorite, Club™. Or in celery, also very 60s. Southerners eat pimento cheese sandwiches, on white bread. Makes about 1 ½ cups.

Since red ripe poblanos may be difficult to find, I provide alternate instructions for using roasted red bell peppers. This is a loose interpretation of a recipe from a nice Southern cookbook, Martha Hall Foose’s Screen Doors and Sweet Tea. You may be tempted to use a food processor. Don’t.

8 oz. very sharp yellow cheddar
1/3 cup, scant, mayonnaise (Hellman’s or homemade)
1 ½ medium red ripe poblanos, roasted and peeled (or 2-3 oz. jarred or home-prepared roasted peppers/pimientos)
½ tea dry mustard
¼ tea dried sage
½ tea Worcestershire sauce
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

If using regular peppers, also add:

1/8 tea ground cayenne pepper
Tabasco to taste

In a small bowl, mix the mayo, mustard, sage, Worcestershire and, if using standard peppers, the cayenne. Grate the cheese on the largest holes of a box grater and add, mixing.

Using the tines of a good fork, mash the peppers on a board until they are a small, dicey mush. Add them to the cheese/mayo mixture and whisk around with the fork. Season with salt, pepper (and if needed, Tabasco) to taste. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours to let the flavors meld. Take out about 10 minutes before serving.

      

Relishing Fall: Late Cukes and Peppers

       

There is no one, and I mean no one, who is more sorry than I to see summer, and the growing season, fade away. I am a warm weather, beachy kind of girl. While the worst childhood memories of most people I know involve some sort of adolescent embarrassment, mine is of being bundled into a snowsuit and turned out into a yard three-feet deep in snow. I remember standing stock still, chest-high and crying in the cold white torture chamber, while my siblings, all of whom had the measles, pressed their faces jealously up against the window pane. My mother considered me ungrateful: after all, I seemed to be immune to childhood diseases, and could go outside while my sisters and brother were trapped indoors. Ah, but we are not all alike, are we? Winter, for me, was and still is something to survive, a time of counting days (and months) until the snow cover is gone and crocuses appear again.

But even though fall is to me a warning to steel myself for cold toes, ears screaming with pain from the wind, and that ultimate dread, stingy daylight and long, dark nights, I have to admit it contains some remarkable reminders, and harbingers, of exactly what winter is to me: survival. Fall is, counter-intuitively, full of surprising life. Despite quite cold nights and shorter days, the ground keeps pouring forth its amazing gifts: bigger, rounder, more bumptious, as if code for “put me by because this can’t last forever, you know.” So of course, we do. Because alas, we know.

Cool weather crops like cucumbers have grown, in many cases, to the size of salamis, but something about the weather has allowed the plants to continue to bloom with fetching new offspring while their ancestors continue to grow fat and undesirable. I found some baby cukes, many literally gherkin-size, at the farmers market. Perhaps also because of the warm, sunny days, the red peppers are beautiful too. Feeling lazy, I put them together in a quick relish, a little different from the red pepper relish I posted here late last summer.

Lazy Fall Day Relish

Although I usually chop by hand for relish, I simply threw everything into the food processor and went for a finer texture than usual. This makes it suitable not only for hot dogs, sausages, and burgers, but also as a spread for ham and grilled chicken sandwiches, or for a crostini-based appetizer. Makes about 3 cups.

5 small cucumbers, about 4” long and 1” thick (about 10 oz)       
2 large very red peppers (about 18 oz)
1 medium large sweet onion (about 10 oz)
½ cup white balsamic vinegar or cider vinegar
¾ cup white sugar
¼ cup dark brown sugar
¾ tea kosher salt
1 small Serrano pepper, seeded
¼ tea dry mustard
¼ tea celery seed
½ tea dried orange peel 

Trim the unpeeled cukes and cut them into thirds. Core the peppers and cut each into about eight pieces. Cut the onion into quarters. Put all the vegetables and the vinegar into a food processor with the metal blade and pulse repeatedly, about 30 times, until finely chopped but not mushy.

Transfer the chopped vegetables and vinegar to a 3-qt saucepan, preferably a chef’s pan with sloped sides. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat somewhat so it is still boiling but not wildly, and cook for about 30-40 minutes, until it is lightly gelled and excess liquid has evaporated.

         

Chouriço: Another Portuguese Gift

In Rhode Island, where the Portuguese are second only to the Italians for largest immigrant population, Portuguese food (like Italian food), is truly part of traditional Rhode Island cuisine. In addition to loving our Portuguese pao de milho and sweet bread, we eat Portuguese chouriço alongside eggs as readily as bacon or ham. Outsiders sometimes think our chouriço is like Spanish chorizo, or even Mexican, but it is not. As you know by now, I adore Mexican chorizo, but it is a different animal. Actually, it’s the same animal, the pig, but a different item altogether, despite surface similarities. All three are distinct in taste, with the Mexican being more finely ground and vinegary, as well as seasoned with chili pepper, and the Spanish containing more paprika and smoked to a harder, drier, finish.
Portuguese chouriço is a lightly smoked sausage made with coarsely ground pork shoulder, garlic, paprika, vinegar, pepper, salt, and sometimes red wine, and stuffed into natural casings. Most come in mild, which is standard, or hot versions. “Gourmet” versions, including lower-fat and chicken sausages, are now available (and they are very good), as are finely ground and skinless sausages, and ground meat and patties. Several area sources with different offerings are Sardinha’s, which is carried primarily at upscale stores and which you may need to order online, and Amaral’s, Gaspar’s, Furtado’s, and Michael’s, which are widely available in stores locally as well as online. If you live in Rhode Island or the part of Southeastern Massachusetts that injects itself between Rhode Island towns, you can make a pilgrimage to Chaves Market on Columbia Street in Fall River for the store’s own chouriço—mild,  hot, or extra fat, and so good that they don’t bother to carry any packaged brand. Chave’s chouriço is a true artisan product, and well worth the trip. In case you’re wondering, the extra-fat chouriço is preferred by some Portuguese cooks for the richness it gives to soups and stews.
Chouriço is a common ingredient in Portuguese dishes, from feijoado to kale and clam soup, clam and chorizo stew, chorizo with beans (especially favas), and egg preparations of all kinds. Sometimes it is just set on fire to cook (“flamed”) and sent to the table. Here is a recipe for a familiar Rhode Island classic.
LCM Portuguese Chouriço and Pepper Sandwich
The Portuguese dish Chouriço and Peppers is commonly a stewed dish of crumbled choriço with red wine and tomatoes served over rice, and used also as a sandwich filling. In college, my Portuguese suite-mates referred to it as “shittiesandpeppers,” its popular moniker. It is a favorite of all Rhode Islanders. My version is closer to a sauté of sliced rather than crumbled sausage, without sauce, and I serve it on a Portuguese sweet bread roll, which I have come to love for hamburgers and deli sandwiches as well. You could serve yours more traditionally with tomato sauce and on a soft torpedo-shaped plain roll, if you wish. And you can also prepare the entire thing on the charcoal grill, omitting the wine. Makes 3 good-sized sandwiches.
½ lb, generous, hot, mild, or mixed chouriço
1 small red pepper
1 small green pepper
½ medium onion
1 fat clove garlic
Salt, pepper
1 tea-1 T olive oil (see NOTE)
Big splash (about 2 T) red wine
Portuguese sweet bread rolls
Slice the garlic into thin slivers. Cut the peppers in half horizontally and slice them vertically into ¼” slices. Slice the onion into ¼” slices, and slice the chouriço into ¼” rounds, leaving the skin on. (You can also remove the skin after cooking sausages whole; see below).
Put about a teaspoon of olive oil into a large heavy skillet and heat it to medium-high, rotating the pan so that the oil coats the surface. When the pan begins to smoke, turn the heat down a little and toss in the choriço; cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, until the fat renders; do not over-brown. Remove from the pan and set aside. (If you want your chouriço skinless, cook it whole before cutting; remove it from the pan and pierce the skin with a sharp knife; draw the knife down lengthwise; remove the skin; and slice into ¼” rounds).
Restore the heat to medium-high and toss in the peppers. Cook for about a minute, stirring, then toss in the onions; cook another minute, then toss in the garlic, salt, and pepper to taste. Cook another minute, return the chouriço to the pan, splash with the wine, toss around, and cover loosely, letting steam escape, to let the vegetables soften a bit—about 5 minutes cooking time total from when you throw in the peppers. (NOTE: If you are using a commercial brand like Michael’s or Gaspar’s, the sausages will yield enough fat and you will need only a little oil; if an artisanal or lower-fat brand, you will need to add more oil to cook the peppers.)
Toast Portuguese sweet bread rolls lightly, pile with the chouriço and peppers, and enjoy a taste of Rhode Island.
                     
                                             
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