Christmas Chowder

One of the difficulties in cooking with chiles is uniformity of heat. Go to any supermarket and buy any number of fresh chiles, whether serranos, habaneros, jalapenos, or, even as here, poblanos and you'll find one that tastes like a green pepper and another, sitting next to it in the bin, will make you scream. The recipe that gave me a little trouble is the one shown further down on this blog. When a recipe calls for a number of chiles, it's sometimes difficult to figure out how much to use, i.e., should I follow the recipe or freelance based on experience and gut feelings on how the quantity or quality of the chiles being used will impact the outcome of the dish. Thus was my dilemma while cooking for Chistmas Eve dinner.

Poblano chiles are not particularly hot as chiles go, but they can add more heat to a dish than you want if you're not careful -- as they did for my chowder. I should've known from the smell of the peppers -- I could smell the oils thru the flesh -- that I used too much. That being said, the Chowder was delicious, just too much punch from the peppers. That's the problem, particular with a soup or other dish where you rely on layering flavors to achieve what you want. It's not always as simple as merely adding the peppers a bit at a time until you hit the right level on the heat-o-meter. Having said that, in the future, I'd rather go too light than too heavy.

As a result, I've amended the recipe downward on the amount of chiles, especially if you double the recipe as I did. That change has already been made on the blog.

The great part about cooking like this is it gives you ideas to create any variety of other dishes and the skills to adapt other dishes so that you can create things based upon taste and not anchoring yourself to a recipe.