Taming the heat…

I learned a new cooking trick this week that I wanted to share with you. In my cooking classes, I’ve taught my students that if they don’t like spicy food, then don’t add the spice or just a smidgen.

I like food with a little heat, but I wouldn’t call myself a true spicy food lover. Sometimes I want to add hot peppers to a recipe that benefits from it or a dish that is supposed to be spicy, but I don’t want the dish to be an ass-burner the next morning. Sorry, but it’s true. Lol!

We have been watching the show Iron Chef, which is now on Netflix and not the Food Network. I used to love the food network but now prefer cooking programs on other channels like the BBC, Bravo, or Netflix.

One of the Iron Chefs competing in a battle was Mexican Chef Gabriela Cámara. Cámara has a restaurant in Mexico City called Contramar, specializing in seafood. She also has a cookbook, My Mexican City Kitchen, published in 2019. You learn to cook Mexican food from Chef Cámara on Masterclass.

The Iron Chef battle used chilis right up her Mexican cuisine’s alley. Some of the dishes she made were spicy, using as many as five different chilis and other dishes weren’t spicy at all. In one of the dishes, she used citrus juice to control the heat of some habanero peppers.

Ah! This was something I had never heard of before. I like adding fresh jalapeños to food, but you can never tell or be sure what jalapeño is very hot and one that is not as hot.

I am making pork carnitas tacos for dinner tonight with fresh local corn. I wanted to make another side dish that wasn’t heavy, like rice or beans, since it is blistering hot outside. I wanted something light and flavorful.

I found a dish called Calabacitas. Calabacitas is a dish using zucchini and yellow summer squash, which I had one of each in the fridge.

I looked up different recipes for calabacitas and saw the similarities in some and others that were copied and pasted from one website. This infuriates me if you don’t know that by now!

I combined a few recipes with what I had on hand and needed to use up before they went bad and came up with my own to try.

The basis of the recipe is using zucchini and summer squash along with corn; sometimes, tomatoes, garlic, and green chilis are used, and sometimes not. Queso frescos, oregano, onions, and cilantro are in most recipes. Some call for fresh lime juice; others do not.

I decided in my recipe I would use zucchini and summer squash. I would also use onions, garlic, fresh jalapeño, lime juice, cherry and grape tomatoes, oregano, cilantro, and feta cheese as a substitute for the queso fresco.

I took a nibble of the lone jalapeño I had in the veggie crisper and knew it was a hot one. Shit, I wanted to use the jalapeño but didn’t want the dish to be too spicy. I remember chef Cámara used citrus to control the heat of habanero peppers, so why couldn’t I use fresh lime juice to tame the heat of my spicy jalapeño?

I removed the seeds and pith, the spiciest part of the pepper. I cut the jalapeño into small dice and put it into a small mise en place bowl. Next, I squeezed fresh lime juice over the jalapeño. Later, when I make the dish for dinner, I will taste diced jalapeños to see where the heat is.

Ok, it’s after dinner, and I am reporting back that, yes, citrus does tame the heat of chilis which is what the blog post was about. To be honest, and we know I am, as much as I try to be a zucchini and squash person, I’m not.

Millions of people love zucchini and squash, but I can’t get past the watery texture. I’ve tried making it several times and am still not a fan. I think the only way I like zucchini is in chocolate cake, which makes sense since it makes a moist cake from all that water.

I am sorry, zucchini and summer squash lovers, but I am not a fan even after grilling, sautéing, zoodles, roasting, and casserole. In my head, I want to love some foods that everyone raves about, but at the end of the day, I still don’t like them.

The rest of the dinner was delicious; pork carnitas tacos with homemade corn tortillas and fresh, local bi-color corn that was tender and sweet. A true taste of summer.