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fiery-foods.com

Wilbur Scoville

As we all know, New Mexico has been a state for a full century as of this year. But that's not the only hundred year birthday we should be celebrating. In a coincidence that's altogether too perfect for our green chile obsessed region, 2012 also marks the 100th anniversary of the Scoville scale.

The Scoville scale, as anyone with a taste for the caliente should realize, is the more-or-less standardized method for determining how hot a chile pepper is. The scale ranges from 0 for a heatless bell pepper, to 16 million for pure capsaicin, the chemical compound that makes chile spicy. A good, hot New Mexico chile typically ranks somewhere between 3500 and 8000, while its degenerate offspring the Anaheim pepper is closer to 1,000. Law enforcement grade pepper spray registers at around 1.5 million.

Wilbur Scoville, a pharmacist, developed the scale in 1912 in order to ensure that the peppers used in a turn-of-the-century muscle salve called Heet were consistently spicy enough to take advantage of capsaicin’s topical pain relieving qualities (is there anything chile can’t do?). Appropriately enough, not only did Scoville develop the first standardized heat scale, he was also one of the first scientific chile tasters to note that the best way to cool down a fiery tongue is to reach for a glass of milk.

For more information about Wilbur Scoville, check out Dave DeWitt’s biographical article on fiery-foods.com.

Eric Williams ericwphoto.com

Behold, asada fries!

On a steep Nob Hill side street behind Imbibe is a tiny hole-in-the-wall kitchen, clad mostly in stainless steel. It’s called The Last Call, or TLC, and its proximity to Albuquerque’s nightlife weighs heavily on the short, funky menu. Read all about TLC’s signature dish in this week’s Food section.

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• carne asada
• french fries
• carne asada fries
• chile
• tacos
• imbibe
• nob hill

 

Two summers ago, I rendezvoused with The Mexican at Crazy Melva's Pepper Pot in Hatch. I was there for green chile for the freezer from Chile Express and Biad. Gustavo Arellano was there for the Chile Festival, in search of stories for his book. We broke tortillas over chile, I green he red. Here is an edited video of that historic lunch.

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• Baratunde Thurston on Twilight (jerry) [ Thu Feb 2 2012 1:19 PM ]
  

 

Las Cruces High School mariachis, chile eating contests and a chile queen coronation—put them together, and you've got a whole lot of small-town Southern New Mexico charm. The Hatch Chile Festival turns 38 on Saturday and Sunday at the Hatch Municipal Airport (due south on I-25, then one mile west of Hatch on Hwy. 26). Admission is $10 per carload, and don't forget to bring a cooler for all that roasted green stuff.

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