Three Thumbs Up

Do you shop with a list? We do. Lately the Admiral and I have been making grocery lists and trying to stick with them at the store. It helps me stay with my new “food lifestyle” (I’m NOT on a diet, I’ve changed my food lifestyle!) and keeps us from filling the pantry with things we’ll never use.

So Saturday was shopping day, and we arrived at Wegman’s, list at the ready. And were promptly completely derailed.

Turns out it was the Hatch Chile Festival. Not chili, that oh-so-sumtpuous bowl of red stuff, but chile peppers from Hatch, New Mexico. Did I mention that I crave anything food-wise that smacks of Tex-Mex, Mexican, and Southwest? Ooooohhhh!

So we wander up to the big display tent out front, and I am gobsmacked by the tantalizing odor of roasting chiles. It is not a burnt smell, not spicy, but sweet and deep and rich. I am transfixed and need a moment to refocus.

A Hatch chile, according experts, is simply a New Mexico varietal grown in or around the town of Hatch, New Mexico. New Mexico chilis are known for being mild and flavorful, and are prized by lovers of chiles who don’t want too much heat.

Don’t get me wrong, however: I like the burn. The Admiral, on the other hand, does not. She likes southwestern cuisine with flavor but not the heat. These peppers, then, were ideal.

The nice woman out front was selling already roasted chilis for a pretty penny, but I was told the fresh ones were inside, so it was that direction that we headed.

The inside of Wegmans is arranged with the produce right up front, with hot bars, meats, and seafood to the right, and grocery items and the pharmacy to the left. Front and center was a large Hatch chili display with bushel baskets of peppers aplenty. On the way in I had started talking salsa and rellenos, so we began picking out the freshest large straight peppers we could find.

As we are doing so, one of the Hatch crew comes up and starts asking us what we’re going to fix. I mumbled relleno, and before I could resist he handed me a recipe card purported to be directly from his mother’s kitchen and a DVD to boot. Bonus!

The Admiral and I began discussing stuffing for the rellenos. I mentioned crab and her eyes lit up! Crab it was to be. The rest of the trip was a blur, but some key purchases included some premade crab dips, lemon cake mix, and a block of cream cheese.

Later that evening a conversation with our good friend, “The Lynnster”, brought us another surprise – about 18 leftover cooked blue crabs! We brought them home with glee and spent about 40 minutes pickin’ crab. We got about two pounds of meat for our efforts – these were going to be some damn fine rellenos!

Sunday morning rolls around and the menu is shaping up: the aforementioned crab stuffed rellenos, my homemade salsa with roasted Hatch chilis, hot crab dip, and lemon cake with fresh whipped cream and a homemade blueberry sauce. Yummy!

The Admiral starts with sugar, some water, and about a cup of fresh blueberries left from the previous week. These soon become deliciously gooey, and the immersion blender finishes the trick. We strain the skin and other bits and put the sauce into a squeezy bottle and place it the fridge.

Meanwhile, we start roasting some peppers over a low flame on the stovetop. This is slow and tedious, but we get a couple done. I chop them fine for the salsa, along with about 9 roma tomatoes. Also into the salsa goes red onion, cumin, garlic, salt, lime juice, red wine vinegar, the strained liquid from some rehydrated and pureed Anaheim and Ancho chilis, fresh chopped cilantro, Tiger Sauce, a bit of sugar, and then parboiled and chopped tomatillas. Into the refrigerator to sit and let the flavors develop.

I decide that the stovetop roasting method is not going so well, so a quick Google search reveals that roasting can be done with ease in a 450 degree oven. We only have seven peppers left, and as it happens, they all fit on a toaster-oven sized baking pan, so into the convection toaster oven they go.

Regardless of the convection effect, they finish at somewhat different times, so I open the oven, pop a couple out and into a plastic bag to finish steaming, rearrange the remainders, and given them some more time to roast. After about fifteen minutes they all seem done, and I place the last few into the plastic bag for another ten minutes. The house now smells amazing – roasted chiles! I am in heaven!

Now for the peeling, and it’s surprisingly simple. The steaming in their own heat in the plastic bag has done the trick, and the skins peel off with ease. All we need now is the stuffing.

I’ve softened a brick of cream cheese along with the contents of a store bought roasted red pepper crab dip. To it all, I add cumin, salt, pepper, Tiger Sauce, and some of the strained pureed dried Anaheim and Poblano peppers, and then the prize – about 8 ounces of the blue crab meat from last night. I mix it thoroughly and spoon it into a zip lock bag to use in piping.

The Admiral and I pipe the mixture into the now-skinless peppers. Our technique is not perfect, but we manage. As it turns out, the classic relleno recipe uses cut sticks of hard cheese inserted through a slit into the pepper body – no gooey mess required. Regardless, we refrigerate our now-stuffed chiles so they’ll set up.

We also have a problem – leftover mixture. Not only that, but we made two different versions of the stuffing, the other using a fine herbs version of the store bought crab dip and more cream cheese and crab meat. We decide to do two things: Borrow a couple of tomatoes from a good friend and neighbor with a garden (shout out to Todd!), and use the herb-spiced mixture as a hot crab dip by placing it into a small glass dish topped with panko and grated parmesan. Meanwhile, we hollow out the two tomatoes and stuff them with the last of the crab and red pepper mixture and set them into the toaster oven at 350.

Our guest on the way, we start the actual final cooking process. The Hatch guy’s recipe calls for separating four eggs and whipping the whites to stiff peaks. The Admiral is a whiz with a mixer and starts that going. Meanwhile, I misread the recipe and try to combine the four yolks with a half cup of flour. This does not work. Really. I dump the yuckey mess in the trash. After re-reading the recipe four times, I figure out that the half cup of flour is for rolling the rellenos, and I should mix one tablespoon of flour into the yolks. I finally get it right, and then fold the whites into the yolks. Before fiddling about with the eggs I have poured about a half inch of oil into a skillet over medium high heat on the stove.

We take our rellenos out of the refrigerator and roll a nice big one in the flour and then dip it into the egg mixture. It comes out about three times its original size! I suddenly see the light – these will fry up VERY fluffy and light. I place it into the oil and let it cook on one side. As the smell of the frying relleno fills the kitchen, I am likewise filled with confidence.

Time to plate. Each of us get two rellenos and part of the stuffed tomato. Blue corn chips go with both the salsa and the crab dip, and we each fix our drink.

I start with the chips and salsa: good flavor and depth, chunky but with some sauce – nice! The hot crab dip is utterly delicious – a hint of crab spice, creamy with lumps of backfin, nice crab flavor. Now for the stuffed tomatoes – I was a bit worried because they weren’t overly ripe, but they were amazing! The flavor in the tomato itself was full and rich, and the reb pepper spiced crab mixture really came through.

Now for the star, the relleno itself. I cut a bite from the end of one of the rellenos. It’s tender and the batter nicely fluffy, with the crab mixture oozing nicely. The taste? Out of this world good! The roasted pepper has developed a rich smokiness, the filling has great crab and southwestern flavor, and the light batter provides the perfect balance. P-p-perfect!

Dessert time: The Admiral has done her baking magic yet again: lemon cakes in mini-bundt molds, and they’ve been cooling on a rack. A couple of years ago one of my brother gave me a Liszt CO2-powered whipped cream dispenser which is now full of heavy cream. Bundt on plate, a shot of whipped cream, and remember that blueberry sauce we made earlier? A drizzle over the cake and around the plate. Voila! Dessert – simple and light, but with great flavor: the sweet berry sauce is the perfect foil to the tartness of the lemon cake!

So what did our guest think? Why, three thumbs up, of course!