How do you make chile? It’s a common question in our capsicum-crazed state, a culinary query that sounds deceptively simple. Reach for a recipe and heat up a pot? Almost, but not. Long before the stove is lit, crucial matters must be probed. Red or green? Mild or hot?
Like the season’s first chile plants, which sprout small flowers shortly after the seedlings emerge, one consideration blooms into another as the chile novice grows into a connoisseur. There are questions of geography: Chimayó, La Mesa, or Hatch? Preferences in pod size, heat, and type: Big Jim? Sandía? Española
