Here at Lanacoora, we create something a little magical with some of the chillies. We smoke them. We take the jalapeno, we put it in the smoker and smoke it over a low temperature for a couple of days. This is a process that is called “cold smoking”. This is as opposed to hot smoking, where the heat is under the produce, and smoking at high temperatures for shorter time. The hot smoking process effectively “cooks” the chilli, where the cold smoking process “smokes” it.
This results in a chilli that is called a chipotle (Chi-pot-lay). An essential in the food of Mexico and the Southwest, this amazing, labour-intensive product is clearly something special. It retains it’s color, with a deeper hue, retains some moisture, has a wonderful smell, rehydrates easily and tastes fantastic.
While our little tin smoker does a fabulous job, we are making use of some of the rocks on our land, and building a smokehouse. While this project is underway, it will still take a few more monts to gather the rest of the rocks, lay them and get the roof on. It will be a big smoking day when it finally happens!
The process of building our smokehouse has taken over a year, partly because Jim has been working away. The stone is all from here, and the higher you look on the building, the better the stonework is. Practice makes perfect. The kids have been really useful too, collecting rock, mixing mortar, making cups of tea and bringing beer, chipping away at rock and being genuinely enthusiastic about yet another hare-brained scheme….
Here are some more progress photos …
