dway@heraldsun.com; 419-6654
HILLSBOROUGH — Dave Ramirez is no superhero, although he was in control of the “flame-on” command at the pepper roaster and he was quite popular among those who wanted to be rescued from the dastardly clutches of the summer food doldrums.
So the garden-fresh enthusiasts who picked a pound of poblano peppers from the vendors’ booths during PepperFest at the Eno River Farmers Market on Saturday came trekking to see Ramirez.
“We’re celebrating our pepper harvest at the market today, so we just thought it would be something special for our customers,” Ramirez said as he used a hand crank to tumble a jumble of red and green peppers in a tubular, steel mesh container fired by gas flames for the roasting.
“Probably, I don’t know, about 30 or 40 pounds or something,” Ramirez said in answer to how many peppers he had roasted in the contraption at that point. “We’re getting a lot of bell peppers, poblanos and a lot of Anaheims,” he said, describing the Anaheims as a “mild chile pepper” and the poblanos as “hotter.”
“We also have some Japanese peppers, shishito peppers. They’re great either roasted or sautéed,” Ramirez said. “We’ve got a few people put habaneros in there, which are crazy hot and not usually roasted, but why not?”
Ramirez, whose farm in Rougemont is called Geodesic Gardens, said he’s “kind of big in the pepper scene” this year. He likes them because “they have a lot of vitamin C, [are] very low in calories and the hot ones really make your mouth excited.”
He called the crunchy vegetable a versatile favorite for summer that can be used in “just about anything. Chile, soups, sandwiches, salads. The roasted chiles can go with any kind of Mexican or Southwest dish. You can freeze them, so stock up now and just put them up for the winter.”
Megan Phillips and Anna LaBarre of Hillsborough had no plans for saving their flame-kissed delights.
“She’s making a roasted red pepper soup with these, [mixed with] onions and garlic, like a bisque,” LaBarre said of her friend’s intended use for the hot-off-the-roaster haul.
“This is an awesome thing they’re doing here with the pepper roasting,” LaBarre said. “It exposes people to different ways to eat peppers. You don’t have to have them chopped up in a salad.”
“This is actually my first time, and Anna told me about it,” Phillips said of her trip to the market. “I wanted to come out and try it,” unaware it was PepperFest, but more than satisfied with the outcome.
“This is a typical Saturday morning for me to come out to the farmers market and get some local produce and talk to my local farmers,” LaBarre said. This is the freshest and best you can get.”
Nearby, Stephany Weston of Hillsborough lifted her sack of roasted peppers from Ramirez’ table and, placing it to her nose, inhaled deeply. Repeatedly.
“I think I’ll probably use these for sauce. Hot sauce. Salsa verde,” Weston said. “I did stuffed poblanos,” which were dished out in sample-size bites, she said of her morning tribute to PepperFest that had since disappeared from her table.
From her booth in the shade of the market pavilion, Rachel Rose of Graham, whose jellies and baking business is called Spoon, offered, perhaps, the most exotic pepper dish — habanero brownies.
“It’s an acquired taste,” Rose acknowledged, and was baked specially because for PepperFest. “Actually, chocolate and peppers go well together. Chocolate and anything goes well together.”
Her pepper jellies were a crowd favorite.
“They were a huge hit in the fact that we sold out entirely,” Rose said. “It’s actually more popular than even I knew. We served it over goat cheese from Hillsborough Cheese Co. on flatbread crackers from the Accidental Baker.”
