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Taste By Matthew Amster-Burton

Dried But Not Dull

Stir things up with the smoky, spicy, snappy dash of chiles

THE USUAL ROSTER of stuffed animals wasn't doing the trick. I was desperate for something to entertain my toddler daughter, Iris, so I poked around in a cupboard and found some cellophane bags of dried chiles. I dumped anchos, chipotles and cascabels into a pot and let Iris have at it.

She held a chipotle to her nose. "Smoky," she declared. She picked up a cascabel and shook it, then made me open it to show her what was inside. Even I was surprised at the sheer number of seeds, and we each tasted one. "Spicy!" said Iris, slightly shocked. Then she ate three more. Finally, she stirred the chilies in the pot and said, "Making chile soup." (Later I would learn that "cascabel" is Spanish for "little rattle.")

While Iris played with the chiles (for hours), I realized how little I knew about dried chiles. I'm always using fresh chiles — jalapeņos, serranos, poblanos — but when it comes to dried chiles, I'm a gringo.

Here's what I wanted to know:

How do you select the best dried chilies?

What's a good dried chile recipe for a novice? Iris had no good answers, so I called Mexican food expert Rick Bayless. I talked to Bayless because Mexico is the world capital of dried chiles. Sure, chilies are dried in Italy (peperoncino), Hungary (paprika) and most of Asia. But chilies are native to Central and South America, so Mexico had a several-thousand-year head start.

What makes for a great dried chile? "The things you're looking for are good color, cleanliness and the pliable quality that you'll get out of a good chile," Bayless says. "If it hangs around someplace for too long, it will lose both suppleness and color."

Given modern refrigeration, why use dried chiles at all? For the same reason we still enjoy salami, yogurt, hard cider and other preserved foods: taste. A chile undergoes so many delectable chemical and physical changes during the drying process that most dried chiles are christened with new names. A smoked, dried jalapeņo tastes nothing like a green fresh one, so we call it a chipotle.

Most of the dried chiles you see in stores, such as the impressive selection at El Mercado Latino in the Pike Place Market, come from commercial dehydrating plants in Mexico. But some Washington farmers are producing them as well. Alvarez Farm, in Mabton, Yakima County, grows more than 75 different peppers, dries many of them, and sells them at Seattle farmers markets.

I asked Bayless what recipe he'd suggest for a dried-chile novice and was pleased to hear "a simple roasted chipotle-tomatillo salsa." You can't go wrong with such a salsa, and several of Bayless' books have great chipotle salsa recipes. But I wanted to go a slightly different direction, one that would lead me to Ballard.

I feel a little guilty whenever I go to La Carta de Oaxaca, because I take way more than my share from the salsa bar. There, a classic pico de gallo is flanked by four table salsas: smooth, not chunky, and loaded with flavor. One is greenish and flecked with bits of chile de arbol, a slender and spicy dried red chile, another is a smooth, brick-red puree with even more chile de arbol.

"My favorite is this one right here," said La Carta's Roberto Dominguez, indicating the tomatillo salsa. He points to another. "This is pretty much simple dried chile, chile de arbol. They're just roasted with garlic, salt and pepper, onion. Pretty simple."

I asked if he could be more specific, and he just smiled; the recipe is a family secret.

I learned one other thing about dried chiles: They aren't the world's safest toy. One day I found Iris with a cayenne pepper in her hand and a horrified look on her face. "Iris' chin is spicy," she moaned. But soon she forgot about the trauma as she tossed some chilies into a pot with a toy mushroom and said, "Making chipotle-mushroom stew." The recipe is a new family secret.

Matthew Amster-Burton is a Seattle freelance writer. Barry Wong is a Seattle-based freelance photographer. He can be reached at barrywongphoto@earthlink.net.