Just add Chipotles for an exotic dinner

OK, it’s official. Chipotles chilies are part of the mainstream American diet.

These spicy little devils (properly pronounced shi-pote-la), actually just smoked jalapenos, come dried or canned in a deceptively hot tomato and vinegar mix called adobo sauce. They’ve shown up everywhere in the past couple of years. I’ve seen them in dips, marinades for steak and in the name of a growing chain of Tex/Mex restaurants.

I’ve even seen them in Sheldon.

I learned this in December when I was back home in northwest Iowa and met my old friend, Liesl, for lunch in downtown Sheldon. This lunch is an annual event for us, and I look forward to it for weeks. It’s our one chance to catch up and talk about who’s gotten married, who’s having a baby, who’s in jail, etc. We talk about the books we are reading and the movies we’ve seen. She tells me about her recent trip to Europe. I counter with my trip to Indiana.

In short, our lunch rarely has much to do with food.

Now, I love small town food. One of my favorite things to do on the road is to eat at whatever greasy spoon grabs my eye. I always get the breaded pork tenderloin sandwich, fries and a slice of apple pie. Usually, my bill totals somewhere between $4 and $5, which appeals to my internal cheapskate.

Sadly, the last true greasy spoon in Sheldon, The El Trio Diner, closed several years ago. Now when you go out to eat in Sheldon, you can choose from either, A) pizza; B) burgers and fries; or C) a sub sandwich. It is a place Liesl once referred to as “the land of iceberg lettuce.”

But no more. Liesl’s mom suggested we try a place called The Picket Fence, a gift store with a little restaurant in back serving soups and sandwiches. I was intrigued. My interest grew when I learned that The Picket Fence is located in the building that had housed the Corner Drug Store, one of the oldest stores in town. It closed in the early 1980s, and I hadn’t been in the building since. We agreed to give The Picket Fence a shot.

I’m glad we did. My jaw dropped when I saw the menu, which featured, among other things, French onion soup and a turkey wrap with Romaine lettuce and chipotle mayonnaise. It was delicious. The smoky flavor of the chili complemented turkey while giving the sandwich a little bite.

That’s what I love about chipotles: They make anything they touch taste just a little bit exotic. But chipotles are growing less and less exotic every day. You can find them in almost every grocery store in town, usually in the ethnic foods aisle.

Still, I caution you to go easy. A little chipotle goes a long way. Earlier this winter, I tried substituting a whole chipotle for a jalapeno pepper in a wonderful recipe for black bean chili. I thought, “What’s the difference? They’re both just different types of jalapenos, right?” Wrong. The chili, which had had a pleasant bite with the jalapeno, nearly took my head off when made with the chipotle. I started sweating like it was July and had to drink a second beer to cool off (the sacrifices I make for food).

But don’t be scared of the chipotle. The recipes below feature the canned chilies, but give the dried ones a shot, too. Grind them up in a spice grinder (in our house a spare electric coffee mill does the job nicely) and add a dusting to whatever you think needs a little extra flavor.

Tip

Canned chipotles usually contain about 10 separate chilies as well as a nice thick adobo sauce. I cannot conceive of a recipe that would require the entire can (outside of a recipe for homemade pepper spray), so that leaves the cook with the dilemma of what to do with the rest of the can.

You could just cover it with aluminum foil and freeze the entire can. Or, you can try this little tip. We don’t remember where it came from, but it works nicely.

Open the can of chipotles and pour the chilies onto a plate. Place each chipotle in the separate compartment of an ice cube tray. Cover each chili with the remaining sauce and freeze. Once the chipotles are frozen, pop them out of the tray and seal them in a plastic bag. Return the bag to the freezer and wash the tray well. Simple and very convenient.

ORANGE-CHIPOTLE MAYONNAISE

This recipe shows that chipotles aren’t just for dinner any more. This simple mayonnaise, which is from the September 2002 issue of “Bon Appetit,” makes a tasty complement to any sandwich. It’s a nice combination of the spicy and the sweet, but just make sure to mince those chipotles fine. That way the flavors really are able to blend and balance.

In honor of The Picket Fence in Sheldon, add it to a turkey wrap. Throw in some lettuce and some chopped tomatoes and you’ve got a great lunch.

Ingredients

1 cup real mayonnaise (Do not use Miracle Whip-type dressings; they are not the same thing.)

3 tablespoons orange juice

1 tablespoon minced canned chipotle chilies

Mix all ingredients in a small bowl. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

CHIPOTLE CHICKEN TOSTADAS

This recipe is from the April 2002 “Bon Appetit.” Other than the flavor, what I love most about these tostadas is how easy they are to make. From beginning to end, they take about an hour and 15 minutes and much of that time is just letting the mixture simmer down and thicken.

Moreover, the tostada sauce is wonderfully versatile. Add some rice to the leftover sauce, roll it all together in a tortilla and you have a wonderful soft taco.

If you are concerned about such things, these tostadas are not overly spicy, but they are loaded with flavor.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 large onion, chopped

1 whole boned chicken breast

1¾ cups chicken broth

2 cups chopped tomatoes

6 garlic cloves, chopped

3 teaspoons minced canned chipotle chilies

12 tostada shells

1 cup feta cheese, crumbled

Sour cream

Cilantro, finely chopped

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and sauté until soft, about 5 minutes. Transfer onions to medium bowl. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in the same pot. Add chicken and sauté until beginning to brown on all sides (about 2 minutes). Add chicken broth and bring to a boil. Cover the pot and boil until chicken is cooked through (about 10 minutes). Transfer chicken to a cutting board. When the chicken has cooled slightly, shred it into small pieces. Reserve the broth in the pot.

Combine the tomatoes, garlic, chipotle chilies and ¼ cup of the reserved chicken broth. Process to a smooth puree. Add the puree to the remaining stock in the pot. Add the onions and the shredded chicken. Bring mixture to a simmer over medium heat. Reduce heat to medium and continue to simmer until the sauce has thickened slightly (between 20 and 30 minutes). Season sauce with salt and pepper to taste.

To assemble tostadas, put the shells on a flat surface. Scoop out about 1/3 cup of the sauce mixture and place in the center of each shell. Top with a sprinkle of feta cheese and a dollop of sour cream. Garnish with chopped cilantro.

CHICKEN MOLé WITH CHIPOTLES

This recipe, which is from the December 2001 issue of “Bon Appetit,” introduced us to the chipotle. Back then, when I was reading the list of ingredients, I stumbled over the strange sounding chili and wondered where in the heck we would ever find such a thing. Luckily, they were on the shelf of our grocery store.

Molé sauce is a devious little dish that combines the smoke of the chipotle with the subtle bitterness of unsweetened chocolate. That combination might sound odd at first, but once you try it, you’ll find it irresistible. And really, how could anything with chocolate be bad?

This version of molé is pretty basic. More complicated versions call for several kinds of chilies to be cooked with various spices and, of course, the chocolate. Here, the chipotle takes over for most of those flavors and does a wonderful job of carrying the dish. We serve it over rice, but you could try it wrapped in a tortilla as well.

Ingredients

1 whole boneless chicken breast, chopped

2 tablespoons ground cumin

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large onion, thinly sliced

2 (14½ ounce) cans diced tomatoes

1 cup low-salt chicken broth

2 tablespoons minced canned chipotle chilies, plus 1 tablespoon of adobo sauce

1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, chopped

Coat the chicken on all sides with cumin. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Heat oil in a heavy large pot over medium high heat. Add the chicken; sauté until browned on all sides (about 5 minutes). Add onion and sauté until beginning to brown (about 3 minutes). Add the tomatoes with juice, broth, the chipotle chilies, adobo sauce and chocolate and bring to simmer. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until chicken is cooked through and sauce thickens slightly (about 20 minutes).

Season with salt and pepper. Serve over rice.

Review:
Packaging: A - The bag stands out on the shelf without being obnoxious.
Price: $3.95 - A little high for such a small bag of cookies, but I was willing to pay in order to try them.

Upon opening the bag, the initial smell was a little funky. Honestly they smell like dog food, which makes me worry about the flavor. I checked the date on the bag and they should be good until 4-10-05.

Dogs are really starting to think they are going to be getting a dog biscuit

Size: Cookie size is pretty small. Reminds me of a Nilla Waffer.
Softness: Not soft at all, very dry. Like mini hockey pucks.

Personal Reviews:
Wife: Looks like dog food, smells like dog food & tastes like dog food. Don’t make me try another.

Nick: I like them! I was very scared at first, but once I tasted the chocolate & chipotle together I was pleasently surprised by the good flavor. And the overall texture of the cookie is quite similar to that of a chips-a-hoy cookie. However, because the flavor is so strong, I can’t imagine eating more the 3-4 cookies at a time. I’m still holding out hope that for some reason my bag was old, and that was the reason for the smell.
Heat: Remebering that these are supposed to be “hot” cookies, I timed the heat reaction. At first there was no heat, but then it built to a nice crescendo and lasted about 10 minutes with no water.

Overall:
Split Decision on this one - If your a true chilehead then try them out, I’m pretty sure you’ll like them. If your buying them cause the store is out of Chips Ahoy - save your tastebuds and get some Oreos.

Here’s a review of the Sparx Brand from MSNBC:
Sparx Spicy Cookies
Like chocolate chip cookies? How about chocolate chip cookies with cayenne pepper? That’s the ingredient in these cookies that makes the taste so unusual compared to your regular cookie. And, they are definitely spicy! Be sure to have a tall glass of milk nearby to wash it down. (If you don’t already know, the best way to kill the hotness from peppers is milk!) If you love hot, you’ll love these cookies; if not, don’t even try! Ingredients are all-natural. Comes in five flavors: Chipotle Chocolate Chip, Ancho Oatmeal Raisin, Cayenne Toffee Pecan, Chipotle Double Fudge, and Jalapeno Peanut Butter. Retails for $3.50 for a 4-oz. bag.

You can buy the Sparx Cookies online from their website:
Sparx Foods

Post Follow Up:Since I had also bought the Jalapeno Peanut Butter SPARX cookies I decided to do a follow up post:
The peanut butter jalepeno cookies really intrigued me since, well hey, it’s peanut butter. But, I’m still holding out hope that the cookies I bought were a little old, because these cookies were disgusting! Seriously took me back to the childhood days of eating Duke’s kibble. Trust me, I will eat just about everything and covering these things in hot sauce wouldn’t make them any better.

But I really want to like these cookies. The concept is perfect, heat and sweet cookies. Just don’t let the bag get old. I think I’ll hold out for a free sample.

By Tom Haines, Globe Staff | February 27, 2005

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Beyond the hustle of Interstate 10 and the iron quiet of a railroad track, two greenhouses guarded heat on a dank winter morning at the southwestern edge of the United States.
Inside, grids of planters held sturdy shoots weighted with young chile peppers, some wide and green, others lean and red.

Jit Baral, a scientist at New Mexico State University, stood near plump pods and noted the irony that capsaicin, the crystalline alkaloid that peppers produce to deter mammals from eating them, has become an addictive ingredient for people seeking a kick from enchiladas and tamales, pork ribs and tender steaks.

”That’s the backside for the peppers. It’s good for us,” Baral said.

By ”us,” Baral meant chile pepper-lovers from old Mexico to the dusty flats of East Africa, from the Himalayas to the crooked coasts of the western Pacific’s Savu Sea. Baral is a native of Nepal, where dishes are often flared by potent peppers of the Thai varieties. But his words also take deep root in southern New Mexico, center of chile farming in the state, and the nation.

Here, New Mexico’s long green chiles, a group that includes the mild NM 6-4, as it’s called, on up to the flame-throwing Lumbre, grow thick-skinned through the summer months, roast on the roadside all fall, and flavor food with a decidedly Mexican influence in homes and restaurants even in the short, soggy days of February.

When you first arrive in southern New Mexico, it’s hard to believe anything, anymore, comes from this place. Roadside historical markers give hints of cultural heritage, telling tales of the 1598 expedition northward along the Rio Grande by the Spaniard Juan de Oñate, or the fierce resistance delivered centuries later by the Apache leader Geronimo. Red lettering on a road map marks the exact spot where, on July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated above high, dry earth.

Today, though, Las Cruces is dominated by an all-American sprawl of pavement spiked by Bennigan’s and Applebee’s, Burger King and McDonald’s, Red Lobster and Chili’s, the ubiquitous chain that, New Mexicans will point out, spells ”chile” like a Texan. The desert terrain sweeps from the sharp slopes of the Organ Mountains westward across the Rio Grande, creating the illusion that everything is visible beneath the big sky and reenforcing the sense that, at its peopled center, New Mexico has become just a Wal-Mart world.

But away from central streets, fields frame country highways, and 40 miles north of Las Cruces the two lanes of Route 185, the old valley road, wind into Hatch, population 1,668, self-proclaimed Chile Capital of the World.

On a Saturday afternoon warm enough to soften mud clumped between tidy rows in fallow fields, Pete Atencio, 30, chile grower, wholesaler, and roadside salesman, steered his pickup truck toward a patch of late-harvest New Mexico 6-4s that he had agreed to trade to another wholesaler for a plot of hotter Sandia peppers.

”It used to be that it was a Hispanic thing,” Atencio said. ”But now all you’ve got to be is New Mexican and you eat green chile. And when you leave, you get withdrawals. I have a customer in Alaska who would pay just about anything to have me send him a sack of chiles.”

Atencio returned across the narrow run of the Rio Grande, its low banks thick with head-high mesquite bushes, then eased to a stop in front of Hatch Chile Sales, his roadside stand at the center of the town’s paved grid of streets.

A passing truck driver was trying to negotiate a purchase with Atencio’s mother, Rosa, who speaks limited English. The trucker, with tight Wrangler jeans and stringy blond hair trailing from the back of his baseball cap, called his wife in Texas, who gave him a quick and basic Spanish lesson.

”Muy caliente,” the trucker said several times to himself, practicing, before turning to tell Rosa he wanted the chiles ”very hot.”

She held up two plastic bags of frozen green chiles. Pete Atencio took the trucker’s phone and explained to the wife in English the different kinds of chiles for sale. She ordered a sampling, adding only one condition before hanging up: ”Nothing mild.”

In New Mexico, hanging ”ristras,” or strings, of dried chiles, turned red from green late in the growing season, have decorated doorways for centuries. A bigger market, on supermarket shelves and restaurant tables across the country, has emerged only in the past 50 years or so.

Farmers here complain that the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement has made it hard to compete with chile peppers grown in Mexico. In 2003, New Mexico chile sales dropped below $40 million, down 20 percent from the year before. Still, the chile crop is one of the most important in a state more suited for raising cattle, or rattlesnakes.

So scientists at New Mexico State cross-pollinate peppers from around the world to tinker with heat and taste and find those varieties with the most resistance to phytophthora, a chile-killing fungus. Each fall, roadside stands around Hatch, Deming, Columbus, and other chile-growing areas are flush with green chiles, which can grow as large as cucumbers, and Wal-Mart parking lots across the state become home to flame-roasters, where 40-pound bags of fresh-roasted chiles sell for $7.

Year-round in the town of San Antonio, to the north, the Owl Bar & Cafe sells its famous green chile cheeseburgers for $3.25, and Roberto’s, a Las Cruces cafeteria, serves salsa that makes eyes water and noses drip.

In homes and restaurants, chiles are diced to flavor meat or eggs, for example, or served whole, stuffed with cheese. Often, the taste is subdued, a slight tingle at the edges of an otherwise mild dish. But hard-core chile eaters want more, as pointed out by Atencio.

”Any restaurant in New Mexico will serve you salsa as an appetizer,” he said. ”If the salsa ain’t hot, the restaurant ain’t all that good.”

Eating chiles, of course, is just the end of a long road from seed to sauce. From March planting through September harvest, thousands of migrant farmworkers, mostly Mexican and many illegal immigrants, navigate southern New Mexico’s bobbing highways and fields irrigated with as much as four feet of water per year.

Some workers, particularly those with many children, can turn hard work harvesting lettuce in Texas, chiles in New Mexico, and apples in Washington into a somewhat stable life, renting rooms in Hatch for the season. Many others arrive before dawn to pick chile pods by hand through the day’s hottest hours, then board old school buses each afternoon to return to the flat streets of south El Paso.

It is a one-hour ride past the billboards along Interstate 25 and then Interstate 10 south and east into central El Paso, where buildings inspired by Bhutanese monasteries rise on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso and the shanty slums of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, hug the southern banks of the dry Rio Grande, only a few hundred yards to the south.

Near the base of the Santa Fe Street Bridge, crowded with foot traffic from one country into the other, farmworkers gather for meals and sleep in the offices of the Border Agricultural Workers Project, an advocacy group near Cesar Chavez Border Highway.

On a quiet February Friday, as a few dozen men arranged mattresses in the foyer, Roberto Holiday, 69, a tall, lean native of Mexico’s Chihuahua state, talked about his family in Mexico, those who had welcomed him as an orphaned boy and given him an English name. Holiday, his hair slicked back, his collared cowboy shirt crisp and striped in teal, purple, and black, did not complain about difficult working conditions, about the fact that he had no health insurance, or earned roughly $35 a day, at best, in the fields of southern New Mexico.

He regretted only that a lifetime of farmwork and two decades harvesting chiles could not strengthen him against age.

”My back gets tired,” he said. ”I cannot harvest as much as I used to.”

The kitchen in the border workers’ center that night offered, for $3, a dinner of fried tortillas stuffed with cheese, beans, and rice. There was no prime New Mexico green chile in sight. On a small shelf above the cook’s stove, alongside cumin, onion powder, and oregano, sat a tall plastic bottle of Tone’s ”Red Pepper,” harvested in fields unknown.

Holiday walked past the kitchen to the public rest room. As there was no farmwork on a soggy winter weekend, he hoped to earn money the next day as a ”liebre,” or hare, jumping into the car of someone looking for help with odd jobs around El Paso. He tapped a razor on the sink in preparation for a close shave, then leaned toward a faded mirror.

The very mention of chili peppers might have you reaching for a glass of water, but don’t be afraid, these hot peppers are actually good for you. Chili peppers are loaded with vitamin C (twice the amount found in citrus fruits) and the red ones are full of beta-carotene, even giving carrots a run for their money. As if that isn’t enough, they’re also packed with anti-bacterial properties and antioxidants.

But that’s not all. These veggies contain capsaicin, which is the compound that makes you feel like your tongue is burning and your head is about to explode. Really, that’s a good thing in the long run. That’s because capsaicin helps increase blood circulation and metabolism and lowers your blood pressure and cholesterol. The pain also leads to pleasure - the burning sensation leads to the release of endorphins, which are the body’s natural painkillers and give you a sense of happiness. It’s the same feeling as a runner’s high. Chili peppers also have a history as a powerful weapon- the Mayans threw them at the enemy during battle.

The capsaicin is found on the white ribbed section that runs down the middle and along the sides of the pepper. Because the seeds are in close contact to this ribbed section, they are also very hot. Capsaicin is also found in smaller amounts throughout the flesh of the pepper. If you want to bring the heat down a notch or two, you can remove the white ribbed section of the pepper and the seeds. But remember to wear gloves.
And if you think all these fiery peppers will give you the same burn, think again. Even peppers from the same plant can differ in terms of hotness because of soil, weather and growing conditions.
A word of warning: you may want to steer clear of habeneros - the hottest chili peppers on record. These red peppers are shaped like lanterns and are similar to Scotch bonnets, the only difference being that Scotch bonnets are slightly smaller.

Ancho are heart-shaped, dried peppers that are often ground and used in sauces, while chipotle are medium-hot peppers with a smoky flavour. Cascabel are another favourite. The name means “jingle bell” in Spanish, and it refers to the sound the seeds make when they are dried. Cayenne peppers are one of the hottest of the hot peppers. These long and thin veggies are usually ground and commonly used in Caribbean dishes. Cherry peppers are so named because of their resemblance to the fruit, and are usually sold pickled in jars. And then, perhaps the most famous of them all are the jalapeno peppers. These tapered peppers vary in terms of hotness, and are used in everything from sausages to cheeses.

So, are you still up for the challenge? You’ll need to know, when choosing your prized hot pepper, to look for those that are firm and glossy and without any blemishes or cracks. Make sure their stems are fresh and green. The rule of thumb is: the smaller the pepper, the more lethal it is.
Store fresh chili peppers in a paper towel (a plastic bag will trap moisture) for up to three weeks in the refrigerator. Wear thin rubber gloves when preparing chilis, and avoid touching your face during preparation.

Chili pepper heat is measured in Scoville Units (multiples of 100). The method is named for Wilbur Scoville, who worked for the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company in the U.S. The process measures the amount of capsaicin in parts per million. According to the Scoville method, bell peppers are 0 on the scale while habanero peppers are over 300,000 units.

The great thing about chili peppers is that you don’t have to alter your original recipe, since the heat will only add to your dishes. Spice up your spaghetti sauce by adding a slice of your chili pepper of choice and letting it simmer in the sauce in the last few minutes of cooking. Chili peppers are also great for any dish containing sausages.

Want to add some spice to your next party? Try a dip that’s made from drained and chopped artichoke hearts with grated Parmesan cheese and chopped, green chili peppers (as much as you are willing to stand). Bake for 20 minutes and serve warm with crackers. For a lovely and spicy pasta dish, try fettuccine with red chili peppers.

How hot is your pepper? Check out the Chile Pepper Heat Scale

Okay, so a while back I posted on the Absolut Peppar ads. Well tonight, after a long days of putting together freaking IKEA office furniture we all went to the bar and had a few beers. While waiting at the bar for a refill I saw it: Absolut Peppar Vodka - Like a moth to a flame I was drawn to it. I had to try it and I don’t drink Vodka. I drink whiskey or beer, depending on the amount of manual labor I’ve done that day. But anyways, back to the peppar vodka.

YUCK!!! What the hell are they thinking with this concoction? Tastes like sewage with spice. Too many spices trying to compete for top honors.

I’m going to make up my own pepper vodka and chile whiskey sometime this weekend or next, since this weekend is half over. I want a chile flavored beverage that won’t remind me of my uncles sewage pumping truck. Yuck!

Did you know that today is national Corn Dog Day? How in the hell does a piece of meat on a stick get a national holiday? Who decides this stuff? I want a national Hot Sauce Day - or even a national Salsa day - In fact, did you know that Salsa has replaced ketchup as America’s favorite condiment? I’ve never liked ketchup - too sweet. However my little sister used to drink it out of the bottle. Yuck!

Back to national corn dog day - There’s a blog that celebrates this day - CornDog Day

And there’s a National CornDog Day Site

CornDog Day Posters - Now that’s creative!

damn, now I really want a corndog - looks like there’s two parties happening in Eugene, Oregon to celebrate this meat on a stick. 0 in New York.

Suddenly hot sauce doesn’t seem so odd.

Years ago, when I was a wee lad, I can remeber our dad buying a Mexican beer that had a pepper floating in it. I also remeber my dad jumping around and screaming after his first sip, but after he finished the bottle (40 oz.) he was quite subdued. For the life of me I’ve never been able to find that beer again, and believe me, I’ve searched for it. It was an obscure brand that propbably is not even made anymore, remeber this was 20+ years ago.

But anyways, for some reason this morning I caught myself thinking about that beer again and wondering if I could find anything like it. I’ve got an entire office full of furniture to put together tomorrow and chile beer would be the icing on the cake for such a long laborious day.

So I started out my day today searching for “chile beer” online, trying to find a place where I could buy such beer, either online or locally. Came up with nada, although I did find a plethora of sites that offer reviews of such beers. Beer Advocate has an entire page dedicated to Chile Beer.

If anyone knows of a place that I can get chile beer in NYC, please let me know. There should be a gourmet beer store somewhere in this city, but I have not yet found it. Or any place where I can order it online.

I think I’m going to do some experimenting this weekend and try creating a variety of chile vodka’s - maybe even whiskeys.

Roseville resident Robert Langdon learned the hard way never to play with fire.

Always fascinated with chile peppers, despite a chilly upbringing in a suburb of St. Paul, Minn., Langdon landed in New Mexico several years ago after his ex-wife took a job in Albuquerque.

Seizing the opportunity to grow chile peppers in New Mexico’s ideal climate, Langdon planted several varieties in his garden, including Red Savina habaneros - the hottest chile pepper in the world.

The result was Langdon produced a bumper crop.

“I had way too many habaneros, so I decided to make powder out of them and threw them in a blender,” said Langdon, 37. “I had to leave the house for five hours. It was toxic in there.”

Langdon’s story is probably no exaggeration. On the Scoville scale, a measure of capsaicin - the chemical in hot peppers responsible for their heat - Red Savinas register a fire-breathing 580,000 units.

By comparison, Cayenne chiles - plenty spicy in their own right - are between 30,000-50,000 Scoville units.

“It was a life lesson, for sure,” Langdon said.

It was also the starting point for Langdon’s creation of an award-winning hot barbeque sauce, which captured first place in the 2005 Scovie Awards amateur division. For good measure, Langdon also took second place for his spicy barbeque sauce.

Both sauces will be featured at the Fiery-Foods Show, the biggest spicy food event of its kind in the nation, held in Albuquerque in March.

“I didn’t think I had a chance,” Langdon said. “We’re talking about the best (fiery foods) show in the country. Most people here in California don’t understand the magnitude of that show.”

Francis Gill, who operates Klamath River Barbeque Company in Yreka and has agreed to co-pack Langdon’s sauce for wholesale distribution, understands.

“It’s not a ticket to instant fame and fortune,” said Gill, who won a 2005 Scovie professional award in the fruit-based barbeque division for his apricot glaze. “But it gives you recognition. People in the food industry know what a Scovie award is.”

Langdon, who works as an insurance claim adjuster in Sacramento, believes his tomato-based sauce could make ketchup obsolete.

“It replaces ketchup,” Langdon said. “Once people try it, they will never go back to ketchup again.”

Langdon calls his hot barbeque sauce “Spicy B’s.”

“A lot of my friends call me RB or just B,” he said. “So that’s where the name came from.”

The sauce is a classic mix of sweet (brown sugar) and spicy (five different kinds of chile peppers).

“I like to think of it as the sauce where Midwestern sweet meets Southwestern heat,” he said.

Although Langdon and several of his friends pour the spicy concoction on everything from French fries to pizza, the creator said the sauce’s best use is on the barbeque grill.

“Of course, it’s great on chicken, steaks and hamburger, but I think it’s best on barbequed pork,” Langdon said. “I know one lady on a Weight Watchers diet who pours it on her Smart One entrees.”

Langdon, who moved to Roseville in 1988 before his travels took him to the Southwest, said his trip to Albuquerque changed his perception of spicy foods forever.

“I always made my own barbeque sauce, but there was no heat in the original,” he said. “When I invited some friends over for a barbeque in Albuquerque, they said my sauce tasted like Kool-Aid.”

That’s when Langdon decided to grow his own chile peppers and add some flames to his barbeque sauce.

“I never entered my sauce in the Fiery-Foods Show until this year,” Langdon said. “I’ve been busy tweaking it for the past five years. Now, ask any chile head. They love it.”

Gill, a spicy foods aficionado, is fond of the sauce.

“He’s got a fantastic sauce,” Gill said. “I think his product will do really well in gourmet food shops.”

Spicy B’s barbeque sauce should be ready for distribution to gourmet food shops by April, according to Langdon.

Langdon said he would sell the award-winning sauce from his Web site at www.spicybs.com for $4 a bottle.

- Tim Menicutch can be reached at timm@goldcountrymedia.com

By: PETER BARNES - Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The culinary essence of the Southwest, chili-infused foods and sauces, takes center stage this weekend at the National Fiery Foods and Barbecue Show. The offbeat worlds of spicy condiments displayed here have tingled mouths from small New Mexican restaurants to the office of the president.

“If you can bottle this, you’ve won,” said Jim Garcia as he pulled the skin from the roasted green chili and worked the pepper’s caramelized surface with his hands. “You can just see how those colors are coming out.”

The company Garcia works for, and its almost religious devotion to southwestern food, earned El Pinto Green chili sauce the convention’s top award for spicy sauces.

What started five years ago as a few jars of hand-ladeled salsa at a restaurant here has grown into an operation that turns out 130 jars per minute and consumes 100 tons of chili each year.

Garcia said El Pinto manufactures its own equipment, has worked with a New Mexico university to identify the best strains of chili and chefs can even use GPS coordinates to locate the exact fields that supply the peppers.

The company made its way onto grocery store shelves store by store, Garcia said.

“We literally went in the back door and said ‘please, just try our product,”‘ he said.

All around him, the colorful booths of other small businesses trying to take a stab at the spicy condiment market filled the Albuquerque Convention Center on Friday. Spicy hot chocolate, habanero jam and Liberian fried peppers shared the floor with cook books and propane-fueled home chili roasters.

“There are just so many cottage industries selling these product that they are just untrackable,” said Dave DeWitt, who has organized the show for 17 years.

Some 12,000 people are expected to attend the three-day show. Open only to vendors Friday, the public will get to brave the hot stuff Saturday and Sunday.

Dewitt said it’s hard to tally sales of spicy condiments, but he estimates they total over $2 billion each year, with small companies like El Pinto holding half of the market.

Hot Shots, a hot sauce distributor from North Carolina, showed off over 1,200 sauces with names like “Nuclear Waste,” “Hillary’s Diet Sauce” and “Jacko Juice.”

“If it’s in the news, somebody comes out with a hot sauce with it,” said Mike Cates of Hot Shots.

He pulled out a $300, wax-sealed pepper extract from under a display table. Collectors seek it out because it’s thousands of times hotter than most sauces.

In the next both, the heat was significantly lower as Lisa Bateman served steamed Pedro’s Tamales. She said the traditional Mexican dish has been the best selling food item in the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalogue for the past three years.

Across the aisle, Frog Ranch Salsa representatives handed out peppered pickle slices. In the five years since it opened, the Ohio company has thrived in the spicy-foods niche in the Midwest. It uses Hungarian peppers for its salsa in a nod to the state’s ethnic heritage.

A passion for spicy food that some people reserve for fine wine has even made its way into to the Oval Office.

“It doesn’t matter your political affiliation or how much money you give the campaign, if you feed him, you will meet him,” Garcia said of President Bush.

El Pinto owners Jim and John Thomas and their staff met the president during his 2004 campaign through New Mexico, and they’ve been supplying him with salsa ever since.

“We put 20 cases on Air Force One,” Garcia said.

National Fiery Foods and Barbecue Show: www.fiery-foods.com

I whipped up this recipe in order to try a new sauce I procured at the Fiery Foods Show. Fallen Angel brand sauces are delicious Grill ‘N Sauces that will soon be featured in the Sweat ‘N Spice online store.

Step 1: Fallen Angel Tropical Sauce

Step 2: Chicken

Always buy good chicken.

Step 3: Cook Chicken

Cut the chicken into small pieces, season with salt and pepper, and cook in a large skillet with a little bit of vegetable oil.

Step 4: Adding the Sauce

Fallen Angel Tropical sauce is recommended for use as a finishing sauce. So once your chicken has been thourghly cooked, add your sauce and let simmer for about 5 mintues, or until your sauce is hot and you can’t wait any longer.

Step 5: Time to Eat

I also cooked up a little rice to serve with the chicken, but I’m sure you can figure that one out yourself.

From start to finish, this entire meal took about 15 minutes to make, the rice taking the longest. Enjoy!