[CH] Sangre del Chile Grande

Tom Greaves (tomg@airmail.net)
Sun, 5 Sep 2010 17:40:50 -0500

I appologize in advance for continuing to talk about all the Hatch Chiles I 
got today.  My back is killing me.  I was peeling and deseeding for about 10 
chiles.  Then I took a nap and began just peeling and freezing 4/bag.  They 
were perfectly roasted, I could hold one by the stem and pull my fingers 
down and remove the peel in one or two pieces.  I'll deseed then when I need 
to use them.

But now, the subject of this post.  They roasted a "crate" of chiles at a 
time then dumped them into a large zip-lock bag.  They were still hot when I 
got home and started cleaning them up.  Then I noticed the juice at the 
bottom of the bag.  Since the chiles were dry when they put them in the 
roaster and certainly dry when they dumped them into the bag, that had to be 
pure chile juice - Sangre del Chile Grande (blood of the great chile).  I 
had to taste it and dream of uses for it.  If I had seen the movie 
"Twilight", I can only imagine their first taste.  It is very sweet and full 
of chile flavor.  The color is almost black (from the charred skins I'd 
guess).  WOW! What to do with it now.  I have it chilling and tomorrow will 
try it in place of vermouth in my martini.

I only have about 1/2 cup, but I can try some experiments if anyone has an 
idea.  This might be able to be comercially produced if someone has the 
equipment and desire.  If you char roasted chiles, destemmed them, put 
through a blender and filtered, it might work.

Tom Greaves