Local chefs mix it up … with sweet peaches and hot peppers
Hatch green chile peppers are no ordinary peppers. Named for the New Mexico town, Hatch, where most of these distinctive peppers are grown, the chiles are harvested in late August and September. (Hatch has declared itself, modestly, to be the Chile Capital of the World; the city’s annual Chile Festival is this weekend, if you’re traveling in that direction.)
Last Saturday, at the Hen House Market at Interstate 29 and 64th Street, I watched a customer wheeling a cart piled with six big crates of the peppers. He says he roasts them and freezes them so he can use them all year. Saturday was the first Hen House “Peach and Pepper Throwdown” featuring Hatch peppers and Missouri-grown Bader peaches. There was even a representative from Hatch, New Mexico, to give a little lecture on that city’s best-known export.
