It's all about the flavor. No, really.

Since I'm all about cooking, cooking is all about making stuff, and my blog is all about making I decided that it's time to add a recipe.

(Cross-posted to Cibatarian. My wife's foodie blog)


It's over 100 degrees outside, and that can only mean one thing: Hatch Chile Season! While everyone else in Texas is looking for anything at all to help them cool off foodies in the South are turning up the heat.


I was born in New Mexico, and I grew up in Texas. My mother was born in Arizona, and she grew up all around the American Southwest. To put it mildly I grew up with spicy food. My mother introduced me to the incredibly complex flavor of the green chiles from Hatch, New Mexico in a recipe her mother had taught her when she was young: green chile burritos. I hadn't seen the chiles since I moved away to go to college in 1992 until a few years ago when I happened, much to my surprise, upon a basket of rather sad looking Hatch chiles at a local super market, and my mouth began watering immediately. The smell of the peppers is unmistakable, and I took every pepper they had on the shelf. I roasted them myself once I got home by putting them on my barbeque grill and rotating frequently until the skins were blistered and blackened all the way around. Since then H. E. B. and the Central Market in Houston have begun annual Hatch Chile Festivals at which they fire roast the peppers by the bushel for you at the store and send them home with you piping hot. Temperature-hot, that is. Well also spicy-hot, of course. Why did we have to use the same word for both in English? It's so much easier in Spanish where "caliente" means temperature-hot and "picante" means spicy-hot. Picante sauce therefore just means "hot sauce", and "hot" picante sauce is redundant. Not that I speak Spanish fluently. I don't even have any Latin or Spanish heritage. I just like the food, and growing up in Texas I've learned more than a little Spanish.

The following recipe is the first with which I have ever come up on my own. It's really simple, which is why I chose to lead with it. It takes about forty minutes from prep to table, but about half that time is waiting while the potatoes boil. It's perfect if you happen to be doing other things at the same time.

Ingredients:
- 5 pounds of potatoes cut into 3/4 inch cubes (skins-on is my preference)
- one stick of butter
- one cup plus one shotglass of cream (I didn't say this recipe was diet friendly)
- five to ten minced, roasted Hatch green chiles with the stems and seeds removed (hot or mild, I like hot)
- salt and pepper to taste


Boil the potatoes in a large stock pot with a tablespoon of salt and oil. When the potatoes squish easily between two spoons (about twenty minutes) drain the potatoes and return them still hot to the stock pot. Add the butter, Hatch chiles, and cream and mash with a potato masher or ricer to the desired smoothness.


If you decide to try this recipe at full strength your first time out (10 hot chiles) have the shotglass of cream right next to your plate. If it turns out that you've gotten in over your head with the heat of the chiles take the shot and swish it around in your mouth until the flames are extinguished. The fat in the cream will help dissolve the capsaicin (the naturally occurring chemical that gives peppers their characteristic heat; it just happens to be insoluble in water so no amount of water, soda, or beer will help). I accept no responsibility for the effects you may experience the following day (we've come to call it "afterburners" or "the ring of fire").


I'll be adding more recipes in the future. Especially recipes about Hatch chiles!