The Sweet Side of Potent Peppers
Read it here, and listen to a clip.
In the Southwest, hot has two meanings. There’s temperature hot, like the dry desert summers. And then there’s spicy hot, the kind you find in food.
New Mexico is famous for the second kind of hot thanks to the state’s homegrown chile peppers.
In fact, New Mexicans can get a little carried away with their chile. There’s chile beer, chile pizza, chile ice cream. It’s everywhere.
To beat the summer heat, Luis Hernandez, owner of Las Cruces Candy Company, gets up at 3 a.m. to prepare his chile specialty.
In his commercial kitchen located in a strip mall in Las Cruces, Hernandez hunches over the mouth a large copper kettle stirring a gooey mixture of sugar and water.
“What we’re making here is green chile pecan brittle,” he said.
[…]
Luis Hernandez, owner of Las Cruces Candy Company, pours hot green chile pecan brittle on a table for cooling. Photo by Marybeth Pyle
Within two blocks of where I am, there are jalapeno fudge and chipotle cupcakes, but they aren’t made with New Mexico green chile. I hear there’s some ice cream around the corner that is. I’ll report back…