Chili Rellenos

Last week some neighbors and I got together and we learned how to make chili rellenos. One of our neighbors owns a home way up here here on Eden Bench with her husband and she used to run a restaurant in Guadalajara. She makes wonderful  Mexican food.

Your own, homemade Chili Rellenos

Ingredients:

• Poblano peppers (the dark green ones that are quite big and shaped like a jalapeno)
• Pepper jack cheese, sharp cheese, cream cheese (you choose) - sliced in finger-length, skinny slices
• 6 eggs
• Flour
• Salt
• Olive oil

A chili relleno is a large, mildly spicy pepper stuffed with cheese (and whatever else you can come up with), battered in eggy batter and fried.

Start with big poblano peppers. Wash them and dry them well. Figure one pepper for each person.

Oil the peppers well with olive oil. Then roast them. We roasted ours on the top of a gas range, two peppers on the big burners, one pepper on the small burners. Roast them until all of the green is black, even where the stem is, as best you can. The blacker you get the skins, the easier the peppers peel…

Remove the peppers from the gas burners (or BBQ, or broiler -- wherever you decide to roast them). Place them inside a dry dish towel and wrap them up; three or four to a towel. Then place the towel inside a plastic bag. The idea here is to make a warm environment for the peppers so the blackened skin peels off easily. Leave the peppers wrapped for at least half an hour.

Remove the peppers from the towel. Coat your hands with olive oil (it helps keep the peppers from burning your hands if the peppers are spicy hot) and peel all of the skin carefully from the peppers. Leave the stem. If a pepper starts to split, don‘t worry, but do keep the pepper intact. Once the pepper is peeled, create an opening down one of the sides to remove all of the seeds (this is a good way to use the split that happened earlier). This is also the opening where you‘ll put the cheese.

Use cheeses you like. We used finger-length, skinny slices of sharp cheddar and pepper jack. The reason the cheese is skinny is because you want it to melt. If you use a big chunk, it will most likely stay a big chunk. You could use cream cheese or even a combination of meat and cheese. Place slices of cheese inside the pepper. Fill that puppy up. Then coat the pepper carefully with flour. The flour is meant to absorb any water that remains on the pepper, so don’t skimp. The flour will help the egg adhere to the pepper.

Next separate 6 eggs; yolks in one bowl, whites in another. Beat the whites until they’re stiff. Add the yolks, a teaspoon of sea or kosher salt and two tablespoons flour. Beat until smooth. Get the frying pan ready on the burner with about half a cup of olive oil. Coat the pepper with the batter, being careful to keep the cheese wrapped up inside.

Place carefully to fry. While the bottom of the pepper is frying, use a spoon to coat the top of the pepper with the hot oil. When the pepper bottom is nicely browned, turn the pepper using the stem as a handle. Seriously. Do it carefully and slowly and it works like a charm. When both sides are browned, place the pepper on a paper towel-covered serving plate.

So the sky’s the limit on what to put on your beautiful, homemade chili rellenos when they’re done -- spicy or mild salsa or tomato sauce, sour cream, guac… The main thing is, enjoy!