Amateur Chile-Growing (Day 14): chile knowledge

Since my last chile post, all my varieties have sprouted. So far, so good.

In fact, the chinenses are no longer in the lead. The Peruvian Purple has totally overtaken them.

Peruvian Purple in the back row, güeros up front. I'm totally risking cross-breeding.

The güeros aren't doing too badly either. And the jalapeños are bringing up the rear.

Well, one of them is doing all right.

I actually need to start thinking about "potting on" (transferring these little compost plugs to a larger pot) soon.

I never got that far last year, but these babies won't keep growing unless I give them more room.

I'll need good-sized pots and more compost by the time these sprouts get a couple sets of leaves each.

As predicted, my malaguetas have totally slowed down, though there are some fairly big green ones that will taste nice of I can get them to ripen.

So in the meantime I'm going to drop a little chile knowledge on you. I've written previous posts called "The Truth about Chiles", but they didn't have much specialist information about chiles.

Of course, I'm nowhere near a chile expert. But I work with them a lot, and I have a tendency to remember everything I read. So here are some things I know about chiles.

The first thing I want to mention is that the genus name for all true chiles is capsicum. "Capsicum" is also what Australians call bell peppers. Because bell peppers are a chile too.

Freaky!

But one of the weirdest things about chiles is that there are only a handful of distinct species. The exact number is up for debate, but it's probably around five:

• C. baccatum (the ají pepper family)
• C. pubescens (the rocoto pepper family)
• C. frutescens (the tabasco family)
• C. chinense (the habanero family)
• C. annuum (the big family that includes jalapeños, poblanos, and most other chiles you'll have heard of. Also bell peppers.)

But how can this be? There are meant to be over 200 varieties of chile in Mexico alone.

The explanation is there are three ways of categorizing chiles: the botanical, the horticultural, and the culinary.

Botany is a hardcore science, and as such it uses the strict scientific definition of "species", which states that two organisms are members of the same species if they can produce healthy, fertile offspring.

Since chile plants are really good at interbreeding and crossbreeding, this approach greatly limits the number of actual chile species.

A horticulturalist, by contrast, will determine species by examining the physical characteristics of the plants. Unfortunately for chileheads, they are interested in the leaves and flowers, not the fruit (the chiles themselves).

Since a lot of chile plants have the same leaf and flower shape, this once again limits the number of species.

But in the kitchen none of that matters, just like it doesn't matter that tomatoes are technically fruit.

For example, the poblano plant yields three different chiles, from a culinary perspective.

Chiles poblanos are the large, fresh green chiles used for rajas and chiles rellenos among other things. As with pretty much all green chiles, they are the immature or underripe state of the fruit.

They usually ripen to red, at which point they are dried (in order to preserve them) and they become chiles anchos ("wide chiles"), used in more chile sauces, moles, and other dishes than I can name in one blog post.

But some poblanos ripen to brown instead of red. When these are picked and dried they are called chiles mulatos. And though they would have been interchangeable in their fresh green state, you cannot substitute mulatos for anchos. They just don't taste the same.

In fact, the famous mole poblano requires you two have both kinds; not one or the other: both. Or it ain't mole poblano.

And of course don't even think about substituting anchos or mulatos for fresh green poblanos.

But all three chiles come from the same plant (which just happens to be the same species as a jalapeño and a bell pepper).

Horticulture isn't blind to these variations. The many different chile-pod types of a given species are called "cultivars". (Of course, poblanos and anchos are the same cultivar.)

So when you read about the 200+ varieties of chile used in Mexico, it's because cooks and chefs are interested in how the chiles taste and how best to cook (with) them. If two cultivars of the same species have different uses in the kitchen, they are de facto different chiles to us.

Amateur Chile-Growing (day 7)

MexiGeek is many things. "Gardener" is not one of them.

But I love chiles so much I'm actually attempting to grow my own.

I tried this last year too. I eventually got some green shoots in my propagator. But then I went on holiday for two weeks and when I came back they were nearly dead.

I managed to revive them, sort of, but they never flowered and certainly never set fruit.

Then a few weeks ago I came home to find that Mrs MexiGeek had bought me a chile plant already setting fruit. I don't know exactly which kind of chile because the label typically doesn't say.

(This is a common problem with commercially-bought fresh chiles in the UK.)

They are definitely a kind of capsicum frutescens, possibly malaguetas, a Brazilian relative of the tabasco chile.

The chile pods have the long, thin, tapered look of tabascos, and they remain upright rather than hanging (pendant), which is apparently typical of capsicum frutescens.

However, true tabascos are meant to ripen first to yellow or orange before turning red, while these go straight from green to red.

The other reason I think they might be a tabasco relative is that they are pretty fucking hot.

I don't know how much longer this plant will continue setting fruit, but in the meantime it inspired me to plant more chiles of my own.

Last year I planted jalapeños, güeros (Hungarian wax peppers), and something I've never heard of called the "Peruvian Purple". I'm trying all three again this year, but I've got a new chile as well.

A friend of my mother-in-law's grows her own chiles and gave me some; I saved the seeds and planted them along with the other varieties.

These chiles were yellow, but very hot, and clearly a kind of capsicum chinense (the habanero family).

They had the characteristic "chinese lantern" shape you get from habaneros and Scotch Bonnets except that they were longer, like a Naga (which is a chinense/frutescens hybrid), but even more so.

They also had the fruity sweetness you often get with ripe C. chinense chiles.

(Of course, these chiles tend to be so hot many people don't notice they actually have a flavour. But you should really try tasting past the heat. You'd be very impressed.)

At Day 7 after planting, the chinenses are the only chiles to have begun sprouting.

Look hard. There's definitely a green shoot in there.

If they continue to do well I'm curious to find out a couple more things about them.

• Is yellow their fully ripe colour or do they turn orange and red?

• Do they taste better when fully ripe or immature (green)?

While the new baby keeps me from having time to cook elaborate food, I'll be periodically updating you on my chiles and writing about other Mexican food topics.

Before I sign off for this week, though, here's my chile wish-list (chiles I'd like to grow at home in an ideal world):

True habaneros: when I need fresh habaneros I usually get Scotch Bonnets. Some books say they're the same thing; some say they're not. Just in case, I'd like to have my own supply of the real McCoy.

Chocolate habaneros: they don't taste of chocolate, but I want them anyway.

Chiles de árbol: the second-hottest chile in Mexico. If I had these on tap I'd make salsa picante every week!

Chiles serranos: the jalapeño is the one fresh Mexican chile you can usually buy from a UK supermarket, but god help you if you need serranos.

Oddly, there a few chiles I don't want to grow:

Jalapeños: I know I am trying to grow them right now, but that's just because they're there. These are too readily available to need to grow your own.

Poblanos: one of my favourites, and very hard to get in Britain. So why don't I want to grow them?
Because making chiles rellenos or even rajas is such a faff, I actually like having their limited availability as an excuse not to make them more frequently.

Pasillas de Oaxaca: This is my new favourite chile, but it's a smoked chile, and don't see myself smoking chiles at home. So there's no point in growing them.

Hasta luego!