Raised in an Armenian household in Santa Clara, California, Levon Minassian recalls trips to the Middle Eastern spice shop where his parents bought Aleppo pepper, the mild, fruity red-chille flakes named after the Syrian city, to use in all manner of dishes at home. Culled from big bins and decanted into bags dragged home, the crimson powder was sprinkled over labneh, baba ghanoush and soups, each pinch a burst of sunlight.
Now, as a founder of Fire Tongue Farms, about 30 miles south in Santa Cruz, Minassian, 34, grows fresh Aleppo peppers and many other chille varieties, dries them and processes them into flakes. At the moment, his Aleppos are green, but soon they will be red, sun-dried and milled, fragrant with the sweetness of time.
Like Aleppos (also known as Halaby peppers), many of the world’s most delicious dried red-chille powders and flakes belong to the Capsicum annuum species, a plant with many varietals and what the chef and food historian Maricel Presilla calls, in her book 'Peppers of the Americas,' “both the greatest world traveler of all peppers and the one found in the most incredibly diverse forms.” These include jalapeños, cayenne and bell peppers.
You know what else is part of this pepper group? Gochugaru, the sweet, fragrant Korean chille flakes that dye kimchi red; togarashi, a bright-orange powdered chille from Japan; fruity, moderately spiced Espelette pepper, named for a French commune and prevalent in Basque cooking; ground chipotle, jalapeños that have been dried and smoked; paprika, which comes in many styles but especially sweet, hot and smoked; and more.
By viewing chilles not just by heat level but by flavour, we the curious — home cooks who like to linger in the kitchen — can wander a world of culinary possibilities. So my question to you is: What’s in your pepper pantry?
There’s nothing wrong with the shaker of pizza shop red-pepper flakes — the one next to the oregano and Parmesan — but it’s just one color in a spectrum of chille possibilities. The joy of cooking with dried chilles is mixing and matching. Why paint in gray when you can access a full palette of brilliant colours?
It all comes down to preference, in the end. “Do you want it sweet or do you want it hot or do you want it red or do you want it yellow?” said Ethan Frisch, a founder and CEO of Burlap & Barrel, a company that sells single-origin spices.
For Frisch, 37, who has bought various red peppers from Minassian’s farm for Burlap & Barrel, each dried chile flake has a story: As with coffee and wine, terroir is a key determinant in the ultimate flavor of a chille. “It doesn’t take long for the chile to start evolving, to meet the demands of its local climate,” he said. “And that, of course, changes the flavor and also is, of course, shaped by human interest.”
As an example: An old friend from high school, James Dong, recently gave me a plastic resealable sandwich bag of Korean red chiles he had grown in Georgia (from seeds he bought on Etsy), smoked and crushed himself to make gochugaru.
His chille flakes had the same red glint and jammy savoriness of those grown in Asia, but through the smoking process, they had taken on the fragrance of Mexican chipotles. The blazing perfume was so strong, it felt like I was carrying around a flame. I reached into that bag to sprinkle over all kinds of meals throughout the month, but the most delicious use of it was in this tomato sauce.
Whichever pepper you choose to stock, this recipe takes full advantage of Capsicum annuum’s flavour and heat, and celebrates its journey. Using a mix of dried chille flakes, and accepting that it’s all right to have more than one in your pantry (they all taste so different!), leads to exciting results.
A homage to Marcella Hazan’s famous tomato sauce, this recipe has you switch the order: First, the butter is melted, so it can bloom a heaping tablespoon or two of your favorite mix of chile powders and flakes to bring out their fruity heat. In lieu of red-pepper flakes made by a childhood friend, you can use regular gochugaru, Aleppo pepper or even togarashi, among others, along with a little smoked paprika to replicate the explosive flavor that smoking gives beautiful red chilles.
At the end of the day, dried chilles have so much to offer, beyond just their spiciness. All it takes is a little playful tinkering in the kitchen to bring out those coveted qualities. - The New York Times
BY ERIC KIM
The writer is a food and cooking columnist for The Times
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