Still inventing - New Mexico chili pepper casserole

I recognize that not too many people are loaded with their own garden-fresh New Mexico type peppers. If you are, drop to your knees and do the wave. If you aren't, hie on down to the farmer's market, where it is pepper season to the max. Peppers are the last to go in our southern Oregon summer garden. They outlast the tomatoes, cukes, melons, and zukes. Even if their leaves blacken, the peppers themselves are A-OK.  Frost has taken a couple of big bites, but our bedsheet cover-ups have saved the day. So I've fired up the grill and have been roasting like crazy. The freezer exudes the faintest whiff of roasted peppers, and the house tonight is redolent with rich pepper essence. I swoon. Here's a simple  way to use 25-30 mild green chili peppers, say Big Jim or Anaheim.

Chipotle, Southern Oregon Style

If the above looks like a pile of sun-dried dog do, skip on over to another blog. But if you recognize these units as amazingly flavorful freshly smoked dead-ripe jalapeno peppers— better known as chipotle— you've come to the right place. What you see is the result of about 70 days of Rogue Valley, Oregon sun and soil and 15-20 hours in a little Chief Smoker loaded with smoldering cherry wood. Ohmigod! Chipotles can be purchased, but according to Dave DeWitt's Chile Pepper Encyclopedia, they will be inferior to the genuine article, which in all humility, is what you see here. You gotta start with RED RIPE jalapenos, which I have never seen in grocery stores, but then I've always lived in Podunk, USA, beginning with Minot, North Dakota, and ending, happily, with small acreage outside of Rogue River, Oregon.

Green jalapenos are great, especially in pico de gallo and other salsas, when you can't wait for red ones, but they don't have the deep flavor and sweetness necessary for the quintessential chipotle. Some farmers' markets sell red jalapenos, or you can make a special request to a grower, as a friend did, to let the peppers ripen before picking. Best yet is to grow them yourself. If you have a climate comparable to the Rogue Valley (or Southern New Mexico), no problem!

PK is a pepper addict whose passion I've come by through osmosis. I use chipotle —and about a dozen other peppers—year-round in my own kitchen, and love giving chipotle peppers as a special gift to friends and family. Here's what a smoker load of about-to-be chipotle peppers looks like. The stems are removed, but that's it for prep. So pretty!

Once the peppers come out of the smoker, they are anywhere from brittle to slightly pliable. If they're still tacky, they should be stored in the freezer. I put most in glass jars. This year, the first batch wasn't out of the smoker for 10 seconds—we had a pent-up demand for chipotle, nerves were frayed—before I snared enough to stuff a pint jar, fill it with scalding water, and wait a few hours for those babies to rehydrate so I could make chipotle cubes.