the search for chilies
we have been craving spicy mexican food for what seems like forever (Emma notably longer than cam, as cam got a fix last week at the “california burrito kitchen,” a mexican restaurant run by americans that can be roughly compared to chipotle. Disappointingly, its fuego hot sauce, generously described as más allá de picante- beyond hot- did not live up to the title). So, we decided that we needed to take matters into our own hands, and we have set Wednesday (tomorrow) as our date to make tortilla soup.
However great our desire for the soup , our search for ingredients could be described as harder than our apartment search (at least we had some options in the latter!) An internet search for “chiles de ancho Buenos Aires” turns up not one potential vendor, and we have been all around the city looking in spice shops. Many Argentines have suggested heading to china town for chilies, but we feel somewhat unauthentic putting asian chilies in Mexican soup (and China Town has yet to come through for us in terms of food). It looks like we make have to fake it until we can receive shipments of supplies from the US.
If anyone has any suggestions for the best type of “generic” (ie, non-ancho) chili to put in tortilla soup, feel free to leave a comment… and we’ll be sure to let everyone know how it turns out!
Joaquin said,
November 27, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Hey guys,
You can do the Chinatown thing without being inauthentic. After all, all chiles came from the New World after all. If they’ve got Thai Chiles, just call them Chiles de Arbol (they are fucking hot, though), you can probably find a Spanish name for anything hot you find in Chinatown. I’ve got faith, you guys can make this soup happen
cande said,
November 28, 2007 at 1:56 am
so positive, gracias Joaquo