Chile Peppers

by Dave Dewitt

This is the sauce traditionally served on special occasions such as Christmas, and it combines chiles and chocolate, a popular and revered food of the Aztecs. Moctezuma’s court consumed 50 jugs of chile-laced hot chocolate a day, and warriors drank it to soothe their nerves before going into battle. However, the story of how chocolate was combined with chile sauces does not involve warriors but rather nuns.

  Legend holds that mole poblano was invented in the sixteenth century by the nuns of the convent of Santa Rosa in the city of Puebla. It seems that the archbishop was coming to visit, and the nuns were worried because they had no food elegant enough to serve someone of his eminence. So they prayed for guidance and one of the nuns had a vision. She directed that everyone in the convent should begin chopping and grinding everything edible from the kitchen. Into a pot went chiles, tomatoes, nuts, sugar, tortillas, bananas, raisins, garlic, avocados, and dozens of herbs and spices. The final ingredient was the magic one: chocolate. Then the nuns slaughtered their only turkey, cooked it, and served it with the mole sauce to the archbishop, who declared it the finest dish he had ever tasted.

  It is a nice story, but more likely, mole was invented by the Aztecs long before the Spaniards arrived. Since chocolate was reserved for Aztec royalty, the military nobility, and religious officials, perhaps Aztec serving girls at the convent gave a royal recipe to the nuns so they could honor their royalty, the archbishop. At any rate, the recipe for mole poblano was rescued from oblivion and became a holiday favorite. Another popular holiday chile dish unites chiles and walnuts and is called chiles en nogada.

  Visitors to Mexico are often surprised to discover that chiles and seafood often appear in the same dish. Chile aficionados realize, however, that dishes such as shrimp in adobo sauce merely reflect a culinary tradition thousands of years old. Chiles both spice up usually bland fish and also assist in the preservation process. Huachinango a la Vera Cruz is a perfect example of the elegance of some of these chile-seafood dishes. It is considered to be the signature dish of the state of Veracruz. Traditionally, a whole red snapper is cleaned, the scales are removed, and then it is marinated in lime juice, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and garlic. A sauce is created using onions, garlic, tomato, jalapeños, olives, and herbs, and the fish is baked in the sauce until tender.

  Although chiles are grown and consumed all over Mexico, they are particularly evident in the cooking of northern Mexico, which is termed “norteño-style” Mexican food, or the food of La Frontera, the frontier. In fact, in Mexico City the fiery cooking of the states of Chihuahua and Sonora is termed platillos popular on both sides of the border. The lore of Mexican cuisine holds that Norteño-style cooking is the hottest of them all, and that level of heat is a tradition that migrated to the American Southwest.

  IN SEARCH OF HOT STUFF IN COSTA RICA

  In September 1992, the DeWitts and Gerlachs joined forces once again to invade a Central American country—ostensibly for a vacation, and this time Costa Rica was the target. It was the first trip together for the DeWitts and Gerlachs since we took on Belize, and we planned, as usual, to eat our way across the country.

  But our friends all cautioned us that the food in Costa Rica was bland! We ignored the warning, believing that travelers can find hot and spicy food in virtually any country in the world. It was only a matter of time, we figured, before we uncovered some really fiery dishes. That matter of time turned out to be longer than we ever imagined.

  Escazú and Arlene Too

  San José, the capital, was our first stop, and from the comfortable Aparthotel Maria Alexandra in the suburb of Escazú, we set out to taste the local cuisine. It didn’t take long to figure out that although the local Tico food was tasty, it was also rather, well, bland—like the hearts-of-palm salad, for example, or the gallo pinto, the local name for rice and beans. The homemade corn and flour tortillas were excellent too, but whatever filled them had no bite. We decided to ask an expert about the local food.

  We were fortunate to meet one of Costa Rica’s premier chefs, Arlene Lutz, who is also a restaurateur and the star of La hora de Arlene, a televised cooking show that is shown in both Costa Rica and Guatemala. All this from a woman who didn’t know how to cook when she got married! Because of a strong desire to be “the best cook she could be,” Arlene went first to New York to study at the Waldorf Astoria. Over the years she continued to hone her cooking skills at the Cordon Bleu School in Paris and Bon Appetit in Los Angeles. So when the opportunity arose for a locally produced TV show, she had all the culinary skills necessary. Arlene is extremely proud of her heritage and promotes Costa Rican cooking whenever possible, but her La hora de Arlene showcases all types of cuisines. And, in the show’s 21 years, she has never repeated a recipe!

  We met up with Arlene at her restaurant, named Arlene’s, of course. The menu, offering dishes from around the world, reflects her varied culinary interests, and every Sunday the restaurant has a “theme buffet” featuring foods from a different country. After we enjoyed a wonderful meal and a delightful after-dinner discussion with Arlene, she invited us to return for a typical Costa Rican meal that she would prepare just for us!

  That special evening began on a good note: We quickly hailed a cab in the pouring rain and made it to the restaurant before we got soaking wet. A separate table had been set for us using gaily decorated tin dishes that are commonly used in the countryside, and next to us was a buffet table with lovely floral arrangements of bird of paradise and flowering ginger. After each dish was served during the meal, the remainder was placed on the buffet table, so by the end of the meal a beautiful display of Costa Rican food had been assembled.

  A waterfall in Costa Rica. Photograph by Mary Jane Wilan.

  The banquet began with a hearts-of-palm salad and was followed by a sweet-potato soup flavored with a hint of orange. Next was a plate of the unusual pejibaye or pipas, which are fruits of the same palm tree that yields hearts of palm. These very popular starchy fruits are boiled with herbs and served garnished with mayonnaise, and are definitely an acquired taste.

  The entrée of tongue in white wine and prunes was from a recipe handed down to Arlene by her grandmother. It was surprisingly tender and flavorful, and even those of us who didn’t think we would like tongue came back for seconds. We were then served Spanish rice, the only familiar recipe on the menu, and chayote and corn. Dessert was a wide array of local fruits including melons, oranges, the unusual red and fuzzy mangosteens, and armored cherimoyas with their custard-like taste—a refreshing end to a wonderful meal that lacked only chiles.

  Our conclusion after a few days in San José: Our friends had been right. If ever there was a cuisine that needed chile peppers, it was Costa Rica’s. We just had to dig deeper. It was time to split up and search the coasts. Mary Jane and I headed to the Pacific Coast while Nancy and Jeff were Caribbean-bound.

  Questions in Quepos

  Mary Jane and I were stuck in the tiny town of Parrita while I asked the gas-station attendant my first question in flawless, first grade–level Spanish: “Donde está Quepos?”

  The attendant pointed to the rickety, single-lane bridge that angled across a dark, raging river, and to the dirt trail beyond that passed for a road.

  “Á Quepos,” he said. To Quepos.

  “¿Verdad?” asked a skeptical me. The truth?

  “Sí,” assured the attendant, pointing again. “Quepos.”

  “Gracias. Let’s beat that bus to the bridge!” I yelled, peeling gravel.

  “Arrrrgh!” screamed Mary Jane. “We’re going to die!”

  Not to worry—I was just kidding about the bus. The bridge held up, and the road was not really all that bad—mostly rutted and full of gravel—but Mary Jane was still afraid I’d drive off the edge and into a crocodile-infested river.

  Fifteen bone-thumping miles later, we arrived at Quepos—and the roads were worse! Huge potholes resembling Serbian mortar craters caused drivers to weave about as if under the influence of an exotic tropical drug, and the maxi
mum speed through the former banana port was about five miles an hour. We found the sign indicating Manuel Antonio National Park and took a much better road to the top of a mountain, where the string of small hotels began. Some were perched atop the mountain, overlooking the spectacular view of three beaches and numerous dramatic islands, and others were beachfront establishments. We choose La Arboleda, on the beach, partially because of the reasonable price and partially because it had its own miniature zoo, complete with deer, agoutis, and parrots. After checking in, we began our exploration.

  Quepos is just being discovered as a tourist destination, so it is relatively unspoiled. There are only about 250 beds in about two dozen hotels and guesthouses, and most of the tourists fly into the small airport from San José. The lovely beaches and the national park are the main attractions, but a golf course and 17 hotel projects were under construction then, so I knew it wouldn’t be long until Quepos resembled a miniature Acapulco. Locals worry that such development, along with 150,000 visitors annually, will harm the national park and its profusion of birds, monkeys, iguanas, and other wildlife.

  One resort that blended perfectly into the environment was La Mariposa, which overlooks the national park and its three beaches. It was built in 1997 by David Tucker and Garth Kistler, two renegade businessmen from Atlanta who gave up the executive life and took an enormous risk when they bought five acres in the middle of the jungle.

  We sat with David Tucker on the terrace while the Mariposa cat bonked our legs, and David described the tedious process of construction, which required the Spanish colonial resort to be earthquake proof. It took them nearly 20 years to build the resort to its current dramatic, airy, and beautiful ambience.

  We were his guests for dinner, and the food—which he called “standard continental fare”—was excellent. We had baked snapper with a cream and wine sauce, chicken dominical (marinated in lemon juice and rum), and beef roulades. It certainly wasn’t Tico food, but it had one thing in common with it: no heat. David provides the local chilero hot sauce, but that’s it for pungency in Quepos. He did give us his chef’s recipe for gallo pinto, and that does have something of a bite.

  David mentioned that one of his employees, Leo Godinez, was a naturalist who gave “backwoods” tours of Manuel Antonio National Park, so the next morning at six we met Leo and drove down to the park. Within minutes, Leo had leaped into a stream and caught a three-foot male iguana with his bare hands. I wanted to take it home with us, but Mary Jane said it would never clear customs. The park tour was fascinating, and we saw many varieties of birds (Costa Rica has one-tenth of the world’s species, more than 850) and butterflies (more species than in all of Africa). Also making an appearance were sloths (very slow) and Jesus Christ lizards (very fast) that literally run across the surface of the water.

  Then the rains came, an intense downpour that made me worry about the condition of the road to Parrita. But we put such negative thoughts out of our mind while dining—safe from the rain under the thatched roof of Karola’s Restaurant, and listening to CDs of the guitar music of Ottmar Liebert and Carlos Santana—eating swordfish, shrimp, and yellowfin tuna that were fresh and delicious but, you guessed it, bland.

  It was still raining the next morning when we threaded our way through the Quepos potholes and found ourselves on the dreaded road to Parrita, which was slick with mud. It was crocodile weather for sure. Only my great driving ability and superb sense of timing got us safely back to San José.

  “Make that blind, dumb luck,” corrected Mary Jane. It was only after we returned to the States that we read in Conde Nast Traveler, “Only the brave actually drive from San José to Quepos.”

  Rica Red to the Rescue

  Back in Escazú, we hooked up with Stuart Jeffrey and Cody Jordan of Quetzal Foods International Corporation, who promised to prove that at least some parts of Costa Rica were hot and spicy. They should know since they have the largest habanero plantation in Central America.

  With Stuart and Cody as our guides, and with Stuart’s friend Brenda, we journeyed to Turrialba to meet with the researchers at CATIE (Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza), who had assisted in the habanero project. At CATIE, we met with chile expert Jorge Morera, who told us about their collection of Capsicum seeds, which are kept below zero in a huge cryogenic storage facility (read: freezer).

  “We have somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 different accessions,” he told us, “of which 660 have been characterized.” Translated, that means 660 varieties have been grown out, identified as to species and pod type, and their characteristics recorded. Morera also said that unlike in the past, when coffee and bananas received all the attention, CATIE was now emphasizing cacao, tropical fruits, squash, and chile peppers in its programs to assist farmers. He told us that the main pepper crops in Costa Rica were jalapeños, cayennes, Tabascos, and bells—until Quetzal Foods began their Rica red operation.

  Later, with Melena as our driver, and Ricardo Quieros from the University of Costa Rica as our guide, we drove north toward the habanero fields. It was a long drive over mountain roads with hairpin curves and spectacular vistas, and we made several interesting stops along the way.

  First we visited two palmito (hearts of palm) processing factories, where palm stems are peeled, cut, and processed into tender cylinders about an inch wide and five inches long. According to Nancy, Costa Rican hearts of palm are much tastier than their Brazilian counterparts, and Ricardo told us that Costa Rica was starting to challenge Brazil in production and export. Next we stopped at a black-pepper farm, walked through the fields of rather bizarre-looking vines growing on posts, and tasted some peppercorns, which were quite pungent.

  Black pepper vines growing on poles. Photograph by Dave DeWitt.

  After an evening of relaxation at the Tilajari Hotel Resort, within sight of the highly active Arenal Volcano, we continued our journey north, and Stuart and Cody explained how they started growing habaneros in Costa Rica. Their story was a classic tale of determination and problem solving. It all began in 1984, when Stuart, who had been an agronomist working with kiwi fruit, began growing habaneros in New Orleans from seeds he brought back from his native Belize. His fascination with the fiery and tasty habaneros led to dreams of producing habanero products, but he needed adequate production. He investigated buying a couple of sauce plants in Belize, but they were just too small to be feasible.

  By this time he had contacted his longtime friend Cody and had sent him a sauce he had concocted from his backyard habaneros, as well as from dried pods and powder. Cody took these fledgling products around Dallas to restaurants and spice companies. Although no one had ever heard of habaneros, the response was overwhelming. One restaurant wanted a hundred cases of hot sauce immediately. One spice company placed an order for two million pounds of habanero powder! It was obvious they could not fill those orders from Stuart’s backyard garden, but it was also apparent that they had to locate massive amounts of habaneros. But where?

  Stuart and Cody began searching the Caribbean and Central America for the ideal spot to find (or grow) massive quantities of habaneros. Some were grown in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, but that crop was consumed locally and was not exported. They explored Guatemala, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Dominica, and Jamaica, and found the same situation everywhere—small plots with limited commercial habanero production. In 1985, somewhat discouraged but not giving up, they posted bulletins with the Foreign Agricultural Service of US Embassies in Central America: “Pepper growers wanted!”

  Finally, a response came from Ricardo Quieros of the University of Costa Rica. He could help them, he wrote, and his family had grown peppers for many years. That was the break Stuart and Cody needed. They rushed to Costa Rica and inspected Ricardo’s 10 acres of a Panama-cayenne cross. Ricardo told them it was not a true habanero but that one could be developed.

  The next few years were devoted to developing the Rica red variety of habanero and determining where to
grow it. Ricardo collected seeds from 22 varieties of Panama peppers being grown on two small plots in Limón and planted them on sites all around the country—isolated, of course, from other varieties of peppers. From those planting, Ricardo selected 6 strains that had desirable qualities: large, round pods, bright red color, high heat, and disease resistance. These strains were again planted around the country, and the seeds from the best pods were collected. Finally, after four years, Ricardo had the Rica red variety breeding true more than 90 percent of the time and had determined the ideal spot to grow it. The location was the northernmost town in Costa Rica and it is called, appropriately enough, Los Chiles.

  We were greeted there by rain again, a portion of the 120 inches the region receives annually, and the “road” to the chile fields was so muddy we all had to cram into a four-wheel-drive truck to get there. But once we arrived, we were astounded. Spread out before us were more than 200 acres of Rica red habaneros growing between rows of young orange trees. The plants ranged in size from a few inches tall (recently planted) to monsters nearly seven feet high! The latter plants were two years old, had been pruned back after the first year, and were still producing well—some had over a hundred pods on them. They were grown on gentle slopes for good drainage, and the crop was amazingly healthy. Perhaps 1 in 30 or 40 plants was bare of leaves and fruit, but there had had been no time to identify the problem because the others were producing bumper yields of fruit.

  A Rica red habanero in the rain in Los Chiles. Photograph by Dave DeWitt.

  Huitlacoche, corn fungus. Photograph by Jamain. Wikimedia. GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.

  Stuart and Cody estimate that they and their Costa Rican partners have invested about $1.5 million in the Rica-red habanero operation, creating jobs for the locals and hot pods for American consumers in the process. The Rica red habaneros are fermented in mash form in a plant at the site, and the mash is sold to Louisiana hot sauce manufacturers to spice up their cayenne sauces.