Soaking dried chiles in Spain
I’m always interested in the diffusion of chiles and chile-preparation techniques so this nice post by Janet Mendel on Spanish pimentón caught my eye.
I had not realized that the Spanish still soak chiles Mexican-style. Then they scrape out the flesh. This is not quite the same as grinding the whole soaked chile, but a it’s a lot closer to the Mexican technique than using a dried powder.
To use dried choricero or ñora peppers instead of pimentón, remove stems and seeds from the peppers, then soak them in boiling water until softened. Open the peppers and scrape the pulp from the inside.
via MY KITCHEN IN SPAIN: PIMENTÓN, IN TRANSLATION.
So the question is: when did the Spanish start grinding dried chiles to a powder? It could have been earlier given that many families had rotary querns.
They presumably did not grind their soaked chiles because they would have been difficult to extract from the rotary quern. The Mexican-style simple quern (metate) was used in Spain for chocolate but I have not found evidence of it being used for other purposes.
Hello Rachel, I see you returned home safely.
Thanks for introducing us to Janet’s blog, very interesting, I’ll start following it.
I suggest for the dry milling of pimentón a Levantine or Maghreb origin. Harissa, outside the pastelike product form in squeeze-tubes (“Le cap Bon” e.a.), is sold often as a more or less coarse powder which has the same intense smell of smoke, just like Spanish pimentón. I knew harissa for longer, but when a neighbour introduced me to Spanish pimentón (see my art. http://www.brusselnieuws.be/artikel/pimenton ) I recognized the harissa parallel immediately. It might, of course, as well be a Spanish invention which spread Eastward. As I never traveled to Extramadura, my only knowledge of the smoking technique is through Rick Stein’s TV series on the kitchen of Spain (Youtube)
Traditional “Balkan/Hungarian” paprika is, like the Turkish “biber”, not smokey. But most often sold milled.
Contrary to Janet’s CharlesV-Mary of Hungary link, József Venesz’s booklet “l’Art culinaire hongrois” from 1958, claims the word paprika only appears in Hungarian texts in 1775 (Allan Davidson’s “Oxford Companion to Food” puts it a decade or so earlier). These sources state the powder was introduced in Hungary from Turkey through Bulgaria.
As for the spread of the word paprika over pimentón through the Western World, I blame the pre-WWII musical fashion of Hungarian themed Operettes, (Franz Léhar, Emerich Kalmann, Fritz Raymond…) which led to a kind of “Magyaromania” in the ’30ies.
Hi Nick, Yes safely back. It was good to meet. And thanks for the link to your article on pimentón which I can just about make out.
I am sympathetic to the Levantine/Mahgreb story just because they seem to have been so important in so many many ways in the reception of new plants and techniques. On the other hand, the smoking could be Mexican. There are many smoked chiles in Mexico. The problem is that we don’t know how long they go back.
Thanks, Rachel, for citing my posting about pimentón. The history of pimentón, as “assembled” by the La Vera pimentón denomination board, states that those monks were the first (early in 16th century) to dry and grind up the chiles, making a powdered spice. The current milling procedure is similar to that used for flour. But, I don’t know what the monks in the 16th C used. Yes, the pulp of soaked dried peppers is still widely used in home cooking and in the making of chorizo (instead of pimentón).
I imagine that they ground dried chilli to a powder as soon as they got their hands on them as that is the normal european treatment of a spice, which is how the is often used, rather then a thickening agent.
In 17th century England they ground them in a motar:
“Take the Pods, and dry them well in a Pan; and when they are become sufficiently hard, cut them into small pieces, and stamp them in a Mortar to dust: To each Ounce of which add a Pound of Wheat-flour fermented with a little Levain: Kneed and make them into Cakes or Loaves cut long.wise, in shape of Naples Biscuit. These Re-bake a second time, till they are Stone hard: Pound them again as before, and serce through a fine Sieve, for a very proper Seasoning, instead of vulgar Peper.”
Would be interesting to know when it developed from use as a spice like pepper to a flavour and colouring agent.
Now that is serious work to make a fine powder like pepper. Fascinating. And it is very telling that the chiles have to be dried first. Brittle chiles that can be pounded in a mortar are not used in Mexico because cooks want to make a paste. Flexibility is a virtue.
And I think color and texture have always been important in Mexico.
Hi Rachel,
Two comments, I have found in the USA ñora peppers labeled as cascabel…they look similar, but cascabel chiles are very spicy, and ñora are really fruity and mild.
I have some information on the oldest trace of smoked chiles in Mexico, let me dig into the reliability of it to be shared.
And yes texture and color are really important for Mexican cooks
Thanks Iliana. As you’d be the first to recognize, there’s not much understanding of chiles north of the border. If you find the reference to smoking I would love to have it. Janet Long has nothing.