SO...i present my rooftop urban garden!

Here are some picks of the peppers I'm growing this season"09. The plants got started at my house about a month ago and the re-potted last Wednesday 17 , 2009 and placed in their final home the rooftop urban garden on top of the Salon dinning room.

On the right a pick from the pepper row and on the bottom Aji Cobincho from Guatemala.

the capsicum project, intro.

The Capsicum project (tcp) aka in my head
"proyecto chile", since i plan a Spanish version of the final project. As a cook by heart and an explorer by nature I will embark in this project with the purpose of giving us (cooks and chefs alike) a better understanding of this magical product. Here are some of my goals, as I know some more will come to mind as the project takes shape:

* I'm currently growing 28 varietals that belong to the 5 domesticated species of peppers. My goal is to observe the plants through is growing cycle to learn more about them, catalog information and study it's possibilities beyond the eye or I may say the mouth. Also to come up with new ideas for the use of the fruit, leaves or maybe even their flowers.

* we must be able to “tame the heat” or control with precision the scoviles (SHU) we use in a dish. This is our biggest challenge! and one of the strongest reasons why I started the project. While i love heat on my food am not the kind of person that likes to burn furiously from inside out, I love the flavor of the peppers per se and I think that the ta sties ones then the be the hottest too. So I figure I had to do something about it so I can control the pepper not the pepper control me.

*“Concentrating the heat” this is a technique we already use and the easiest part of the project. Watch out chili heads! I plan to make different and new hot sauces with our crops including a
"Diablo's BJ Juice" (Bhut Jolokia), if my 3 plants of bhuts give me some love.

* “Balancing the heat” this is a technique we also use and my favorite way to approach any dish I make “it’s all about balance”. By using other flavors like sweet or salty we can balance the heat of a pepper and distract our palate from the heat thus giving us an amazing dish.


Peppers have a great variety of flavors from grassy serranos, poblanos and jalapenos or deep flavor anchos, new Mexico and pancas or fruity aji amarillos, cachucas and habaneros there are also bittersweet guajillos and piquillos or slightly sour pasillas. Many flavors to work with and different heat levels to play with and that’s just for starters.

beginnings of TCP, back in 2005!

I have been working on and off in this concept i call "the capsicum project" since 2005. Inspired by the works of various chefs specially in Spain which took the "knowing your ingredients" concept to streams. Books written about foie grass, wild plants, bacalao, rice, cacao and others in witch the chefs attempt to understand the product to the fullest, it's traditional ways of cooking and experiment with new ones...this made me look harder into my cooking world and ask myself which products define my cooking(Latino-American)? Peppers came immediately to mind specially hot peppers, the sweet ones form the base of our beloved sofritos and the hot ones make up our aji picante. There where so many questions that popped up in my mind, from how many kinds of peppers were there? to how to cook them to avoid the burn? can we get the burn(capsaicin)out? how by cooking it or with perhaps a "chemical"...oupsss so many questions! this is why started this project, to better understand the Genus Capsicum.