I was asked to make green chicken chili which I love and is totally simple to make but it requires mild green chiles as I may have mentioned. Failing that (but not without trying, not available here in Berlin: Mild green chiles, white beans, gotta have those) I decided on red chicken chili and for a real lustrous chili I planned on using red pepper couli with the other chili ingredients. Roasted red peppers are just absolutely one of my favorite things.
Roasted red pepper soup was one of the mainstays of my restaurant. I’ve made it hundred of times. And I’d seen these luxurious jars of peppers on my first recognizance tour of Edeka, our local grocer, and knew I was gonna buy a jar sooner or later and make something. I just could not pass these glorious things up. I didn’t know what I was going to make but, you know, there’s always something. And then here was that something.
So chicken chili. I got out one of the myriad cutting and grinding devices that sit along side the 100s of pounds of copper in the home of our local mounted policeman and processed up a cup or two of them and slopped them into the pan with the chicken. I added chili powder and, you know, whatever. An hour later I tasted it to adjust the seasoning and WTF?
They were pickled peppers. This might have tasted good if I hadn’t dumped a half cup of chili powder and 4 TB of ground cumin into it. We ate it and I have to say he wasn’t grudging about it. But, ugh. Edible is as far as I could go in describing it. I did eat the leftovers for break fast but, you know, I’ll eat anything. Well, not anchovies.
