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Fresh and Feisty

Question: What costs an average of twenty-five cents fresh, but several dollars for dried, powdered, and bottled? If you answered “garlic” you’re right. If you answered “ginger” you’re right. And, if you answered “chiles” you’re also right. So, why do some people never buy fresh ingredients, if you get so much bang for your quarter-buck? The answer lies somewhere in the murky Bermuda-esque triangle convenience, habit, and experience.

I appreciate dehydration as a necessary, at times very desirable, form of preservation. Dried fruit is a huge favourite for snacking and baking, and dehyrated vegetables are useful for dips, spreads, casseroles, and even soups, if you are camping and travelling light. I should probably confess from the start that I have in my cupboard, and would never want to be without, dried garlic granules and powdered ginger, and I grind my own dried chipotles to make a powder that raises an ordinary quesadilla up a notch or two. My question certainly isn’t intended as hate-mail for the dried seasonings department. The important thing is this: fresh foods have a different flavour than their dried counterparts.

As someone who has been known to make a ginger snap cookie that uses fresh, dried, and candied ginger all in one recipe, I can say unequivocally that the different flavours and characteristics of each form dictates how I use them. A subtle, even, and pervasive background note calls for powdered ginger, often well integrated with flour or liquid, a sharp bite calls for fresh – chopped or grated, to maximize the juiciness – and a concentrated, sweet blast calls for diced, candied (or crystalized) cubes. Used together, they perform a perfume-like arrangment of top, middle, and bottom notes that give a full-on ginger experience.

Certainly, there are arguments for stacking the fresh with the dried in all three of these flavour categories. Chile con carne benefits greatly from having the smoky depth or fiery heat of dried chiles, but also from the bright, tangy flavours of the fresh peppers. While I am content to eat a dish made entirely from the dried peppers (especially in those seasons when the fresh are out of season and hard to come by, although with produce imported from around the globe that is less common these days), I think that a dish made without any fresh peppers lacks a certain vividness.

I am only guessing when I say that I think most people who don’t buy fresh garlic, ginger or peppers do not realize what they are missing. Perhaps they are concerned that they won’t use the fresh ingredients up before they go bad – but garlic keeps quite well in a cool place, ginger can be frozen for weeks at a time (and grated from its frozen state) or planted in sand. Chiles – by far the most perishable of the lot – can keep nicely in the fridge for a week or so, provided they are bagged. The thing of it is that even if you lose half a jalapeno to the white fuzzies, you’ve only lost about 10 cents worth of produce. While I am as against the wanton waste of food as anyone, it’s really not a big deal if you lose a little chile every now and again, or your garlic starts to sprout. The difference in flavour is significant enough to splurge against the chance that you may waste a tiny portion of it, and if that doesn’t move you, perhaps you should consider simply eating more meals that use those ingredients. After all, the volatile compounds in garlic, ginger and chiles have medicinal or therapeutic uses, and they’re cheaper than vitamins, for goodness’ sake.

One should never discount fear, though. If you’re not accustomed to handling raw chiles, you will probably accidentally set your eye or lip on fire, at least once. After you’ve danced your way through enough habanero burns, you become habituated enough to the sensation that it doesn’t burn the way it used to. Just like when you first try wasabi, and you think you’re going to die, but a few weeks later you’re chowing it down with abandon…only with wasabi, the fiery blast sensation only lasts a few seconds, and with peppers it can sting for some time. Careful handling will help you avoid most of the pepper pitfalls, though, so break out the gloves, or use a fork to secure the pepper while you’re slicing and you’ll be fine. It’s a learning experience.

On the softer side of fear is – simple lack of familiarity. If you won’t know what to do with it when you get it home, it’s less likely that you’ll buy it to begin with. Fresh garlic can seem time consuming, although it’s not entirely difficult now that there are crushers that work without even needing to peel the clove. It does tend to burn a little more easily than onion does, so mind it carefully in a frying pan, but otherwise you’re good to go. Ginger is nubbly and has an unattractive, tough, slightly bitter skin, but it is easily scraped away with the edge of a spoon to yield the golden root to you’re slicing and dicing content. Chiles, the most dangerous one, really, in that too much can render a meal inedible, vary so much in character and power that it can be difficult to know how much to put in any given dish. Do you add them whole, slice them, dice them, or puree them? Do you leave the seeds in? The stem?

My mother experimented with using fresh jalapenos at a time when they were an infrequent thing to see in our local market. She added them to her usual recipe for chilli – she simply pureed them in the blender first, and boldly added the puree of four large jalapenos straight into the chilli pot. Now, jalapenos are notoriously variable in terms of heat versus size – very unpredictable in these parts. I think that, even though we were unfamiliar with the fresh peppers, these might have been on the feisty side of things. The resulting chilli was barely tolearble, and certainly not useful as dinner until my mother made up an entirely new pot of chilli, completely bereft of seasoning, and added it to the volcanic contents of the first pot. Then, finally, we could sit down to dinner without searing our mouths right off.

Still, even with the unpredictability of heat, fresh chiles are not difficult to wrangle. Take a slice of the end to see how hot it will be, and add to the recipe accordingly. If you like less heat, remove the seeds and the veins, if you like more – leave them in. Start by adding a small amount to your dish, and work your way up to blast-furnace quantities – or not, as you wish. You don’t need to be a chilehead with a cast-iron stomach to enjoy the flavour of fresh chiles.

Experiment. Play with your food. Run wild with the grocery budget, and spend less than a dollar to get all three! It’s cheaper to use the fresh stuff, in the long run, especially if you use seasonings as freely as I do. Reap the health benefits of eating fresh foods, while enjoying the crazy amounts of flavour that fresh, inexpensive ingredients can bring to the party.

 

April 2006