Doesn't it look delicious? When William got home we pulled out the grill and started roasting it. The smell of roasting chiles just screams out fall to me. In Albuquerque, where I grew up, every grocery store has a chile roaster out in front of the store and the smell permeates the air just as summer is finally over and the days are getting cooler.
When we moved away from Albuquerque, we had to figure out how to roast it ourselves. I think the first year, we did it over the gas burner of our stove. This works great if you only have a few chiles, but can be rather tedious if you have more than a pound or so. We usually get between 10 and 20 pounds, so we had to come up with something better. Hence the grill. A batch of charcoal will do about 5 pounds of chile.
When you roast it, you want the skins to get nicely burnt, but don't want to cook the chiles.
We then put it in foil packets. The chiles will steam in there until they are cool. At this point they are really easy to peel. Since this is our year's supply, we freeze them on sheet trays at this point and then put them into bags. Since they were on the trays first, they don't become an indistinguishable mass, but retain some individuality and you can then pull out as many as you want. Run them under hot water and the skins come right off.
I made tortillas and a salsa cruda with the last tomato in the garden, fresh garlic and the chiles. What a difference fresh ingredients make to humble bean burritos!
1 comment:
I love all the pictures and all of your writing. A great way to communicate happenings in your lives. Love you all, Mom & Dad
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