i heart chile!

i am beginning to realize i am a bit of a freak when it comes to chile. my grama has been buying me chile-themed things for years, (that little wreath was a present from her!) so she must have noticed way sooner than i did!

they are pretty much all over the house, and yesterday, when i went to make dinner and was looking for a particular ingredient for an idea i had been wanting to try, it really hit me how much chile we have in stock! in the refrigerator, i have sriracha hot chilli sauce for when we get teriyaki. (that would be quite often!) and blair's after death sauce...xxx hot, it has a disclaimer on it and a little skull keychain! then, there are the jalapenos en escabeche, (i have to have them with fried chicken!) and the little yellow chile peppers, very hot, but oh-so-good with hamburgers and hot dogs! these are everywhere in L.A. places...that is one of the great things about L.A.!

then, in the cupboard, i found all these various chiles: dried pasilla negro chile pods, (3 bags!) dried chipotle chiles, dried habanero chiles, chile pequin, and 3 more bags of pasilla ancho chiles!

then, on the 'spice rack' (really just a big section of the cabinet!) i found ground chiles: habanero, chile de arbol,spiced chile powder, california chile, new mexico chile, crushed red chile flakes (two bottles!) and cayenne pepper!

but that is not all...on the table there is a plate of condiments and it has more: there is tabasco, regular and chipotle, bufalo chipotle (very hot) cholula, bulliard's pepper sauce, crystal louisiana hot sauce (my favorite for eggs...won't eat them without it!) and MORE crushed red pepper flakes and hot shot black and red pepper mix. oh yeah, and the salsa en polvo, the mexican chile salt with lime....mmm, so good on popcorn and fruit!

i did not even look in the freezer...most times i have homemade salsa in the freezer, this kind that is in the molcajete here at left, and also the green kind with tomatillos in it.

there was actually a point to this! i was looking for a particular ingredient for this dish i have been wanting to re-create. it is my favorite dish at the moment, at the restaurant 'claim jumper', called jamaican sweet potato. the descripion is this:

tender chicken roasted with a blend of jamaican spices and herbs. tossed with scallions, cilantro leaves, minced red pepper, tropical papaya relish and drizzed with a clover honey. does that sound good? i love it! i was going to make the jerk sauce for the chicken out of my cookbook "morgan freeman and friends: caribbean cooking for a cause", and i did not have the chile i was looking for! it needed a fresh habanero pepper...they are not that widely available here, i see them in the market when i go to the international district in seattle, but not in our albertson's market, or my neighborhood mexican market.

actually, i did not have several of the ingredients i needed for the jerk sauce, so i decided to just use it as 'inspiration' and make up something anyway. i baked the sweet potatoes, and while they were cooking, i made some 'mango-melon salsa' for the dish, but i made this one from one of my favorite foodie sites, 'jaden's steamy kitchen'. i have have her site in the sidebar as well, she makes awesomely delicious-sounding dishes!

i think i am incapable of following a recipe to the letter! i changed the recipe up a little bit, for one because i did not have the same onion...i substituted the red onion with green onions, and the 'big pinch of red chile powder', i used the ground habanero powder i have. i should have used a teensy pinch, it came out fairly warm! it was the perfect heat for me, but for hubby it was just no-way-i'm-gonna-eat-that hot! i made another fresh salsa as well just cause i hade stuff for it in the refrigerator! that is what they came out to look like above.

so, i broiled the chicken with a simple soy-based marinade, and then when it was done, i made my not-so-jamaican sweet potato like this: i split the potato open, and put on a bit of butter, and a drizzle of honey, and then my mango-melon salsa. i chopped up a bit of the broiled chicken and piled that on top. i had a rice pilaf to go with it and put some of the regular salsa fresca on that. (i need salsa on my rice!) it was good! i'm having the left-over for lunch later!