Some Like it Hot
“It’s like a sparkler, spraying embers in the air,” Benito Treviño says excitedly, as he strolls through the grounds of his sprawling ranch in the Rio Grande Valley. “That’s what it’s like when you bite into a chile pequin.”
The 75-year-old botanist from Rio Grande City, a town of around 15,000 people about an hour west of McAllen, delights in caring for each of the hundreds of plants that thrive at his Rancho Lomitas Native Plant Nursery. There are the bougain-villeas and scarlet sage, both saturated in color; the sturdy and fragrant lantana; the rare star cactus; and the sprouting seeds he takes methodical notes on. But only the pequin, in all its tiny glory, is part of his weekly ritual. “When my wife calls me for dinner, I’ll walk 75 yards from the kitchen over to my nursery to pick some chile pequin,” he says, grinning. “I do that almost every day because they’re that good.”
The pepper—which was declared the official state (a name used by Nahuas, descendants of the Aztecs, that means “flea pepper”). But whatever you call it, the minuscule pepper is beloved across the state, particularly in Mexican American households where it’s a key ingredient in a number of culinary staples and home remedies.
