The search for flavour

baronrenfrew · Post by **baronrenfrew** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 10:32 pm

At my ripe old age of 43, I find that things don't taste as they did. I appreciate good beer, good sausage (hard to find today as all the old European butchers have retired in Ottawa...oh how I miss Alfred's meats), and I don't cook often enough so my spices are too old.

I made a chilli...the cayenne was good (heat), the Ancho chilli powder was tasteless, the cumin smelled good but was from 2014 and added no flavour. The beef was purchased from a "decent" butcher (but nowhere as flavourful as our own beef), and I kept adding spices to no avail.

I cursed at my spice drawer and vowed to get some better stuff and if that's not good enough than I'll buckle down and get the best stuff from Silk Road in Alberta www.silkroadspices.ca/products

I search for Poblano chillies or the dried Ancho powder from the same peppers. I saw it on a cooking show (Chef Michael Smith) making a pot of chilli....hmmm..gotta get me some of that. I found dried whole Anchos at a Caribbean grocery store....Mugena... (Now a restaurant named Fumi www.fumi.ca looks awesome...i'll have to check it out again!) but they were likely ancient as they snapped when broken (they should have been leathery like sun dried tomatoes). I found dried whole and dried ancho powder at a store in Manotick chilly-chiles.com (oh look they moved to Bayshore Mall in Ottawa!)
No flavour (of course I still didn't know what they should taste like) and then I found some at "Grace in the Kitchen" in Kanata (west Ottawa)...the first bag was great....the second bag tasteless...the store has no volume of sales in chiles (lots of cheese though!). They also had some deArbols and other chilies but I didn't get any.
I found some whole Poblanos at Sobeys grocery in Stittsville!
Next stop Mid-East food store on St. Laurent: I've bought other spices there (no ancho powder on the shelf though :-( ) and they are cheap and sell in huge volumes (i always see embassy cars there as they have red license plates) so thats a good sign.

But I'll have to get ancho and powders and spices (de Arbols? I'll have to get some).

baronrenfrew · Post by **baronrenfrew** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 11:10 pm

http://www.fumi.ca, So I read a bit more..they still have a grocery store so I'll check it out soon.
They have fresh bread fruit! I've never tried that!

windwalkingwolf · Post by **windwalkingwolf** » Thu Dec 29, 2016 2:44 am

Chili de Arbol's are what I *used* to grow and use...2 plants gave me enough chilis for ten bloody years, so I dried a whack of them and didn't plant again for, you guessed it, ten years. None of the seeds sprouted

I found their flavour very delicate to begin with, and it had disappeared after a year. I suppose the oils degrade with time. Still lots of heat, though, that did NOT degrade, so I didn't bother to plant new the following spring, I stubbornly determined not to throw out my now flavourless chilis. Like you, I've bought powdered peppers and also "crushed" chilis from various places once I finally gave up on my own store, but they all disappointed--no flavour, just heat, and sometimes not even much of that--so they end up seasoning the pig food.
This year I finally got some cayenne seeds, but too late to plant. I will DEFINITELY be planting them in the Spring.
I really like the de Arbols, because I found their heat and flavour fairly consistant between plants, years (amount of heat in a pepper can be affected by weather), soil types, etc., so not a lot of guesswork needed when cooking with them.

windwalkingwolf · Post by **windwalkingwolf** » Thu Dec 29, 2016 2:46 am

I've never tried poblano peppers.

Post by **WLLady** » Thu Dec 29, 2016 11:25 am

seeds of change carries seed from all over the world and i got my hands on some chilian peppers that are used to make some absolutely wonderful chili paste. so i grew my own. they grew like crazy, i had lots of peppers and they were so amazing. fresh is always better i think, and the heat on these wasn't crazy or obnoxious, just nice.

G Williams · Post by **G Williams** » Thu Dec 29, 2016 12:24 pm

We grow our own Herbs. Nothing beats the flavour of fresh home grown.

baronrenfrew · Post by **baronrenfrew** » Thu Jan 05, 2017 9:25 pm

So Sobeys in Stittsville (west Ottawa) had some Poblanos (size in between green pepper and a jalapeno) and heat of 1,000 to 3,500 units

Jalapeno's have 3,500 to 10,000 units
Serranos 10,000 to 30,000

The poblanos were near expiry date but the serranos were beautiful so I bought a mittful of those.

Jaye · Post by **Jaye** » Thu Jan 05, 2017 9:59 pm

So, what do you plan to do with your mitt full, baron?

windwalkingwolf · Post by **windwalkingwolf** » Thu Jan 05, 2017 11:42 pm

Oooooh, I have to find me some of those Bert, would be great for stuffed peppers, and wouldn't burn the throat out of my tender-tongued hubby! He finds jalapenos too hot. Speaking of jalapenos, silkroad has powdered jalapeno. I'm tempted to order some, but I'd hate to find out there's no flavour.

baronrenfrew · Post by **baronrenfrew** » Fri Jan 06, 2017 6:56 am

http://www.oscseeds.com/ecommerce/-vege ... oblano.htm

OSC has poblano seeds