Dear Dave:I have an excess of fresh, small green chillis and have been told that I can make a chilli paste to store for future use, but have been unable to find a recipe. Thank you,Sue in OZ Hello Sue:Simply remove the seeds and stems, grind the chillis in a food processor with a little salt and freeze the resulting …
First Steps to Becoming a Pro
Hi Dave!Not sure if you can help me, but I am helping my mother in getting her salsa marketed. She and her two sisters are excellent cooks and have a very vintage flare. Anyways, she makes an excellent salsa, which everyone loves, and I would like her to try selling it. We have a product name and that’s about it. …
’Facing Heaven’ Chile Substitution
Dear Dave,You recommend piquin chilies as a substitite for the Sichuan "facing-heaven" chilies that people who’ve read Fuchsia Dunlop’s excellent Sichuan cookbook Land of Plenty frequently seek. However, based on her description of the "facing heaven" varietypopular in Sichuan Province, the piquin is not a good choice. She specifically says that authentic "facing heaven chilies" (chao tian jiao) are not …
Bugs in Chiles
Hi Dave:Have you ever heard/ seen insects getting into commercially dried chiles? I thought the dried chiles would inhibit any bugs but I just opened a commercially sealed package of dried chiles and there were what looked like webs attached to the chile pods and weird "stuff" in the package. I’ve never seen such a thing before. I know pasta …
Growing in the N.C. Mountains
Hi Dave,I live in the mountains of Western North Carolina where the summer daytime temps are usually in the 80’s (90’s in August) with the evening temps being in the 60s. My harvest this first year has not been great considering I had over 30 plants. I got fewer peppers than I did last year when I lived in South …