2023-2024 Boon Box Zine 2

Boon Box

Boon Box #2

Hello and happy March!

I’m writing this on a rare sunny day amidst what has otherwise been a very damp winter. We’re still under what is considered a ‘normal’ amount of rainfall for our area, but as a few flowers start to emerge from between our raised beds (whoops!) we’re enjoying this warm, sunny day and looking at more rain ahead. We’re still very much in the winter season, but have already started this year’s pepper crop. The seeds have germinated in the greenhouse, we’re chatting with neighbors about additional bean acreage, and, dare I say it, 5 years in, things are starting to become a bit routine. While there is normalcy in the activities, anytime you step into the greenhouse, filled with this years promise, it’s always a magical feeling.

We hope you enjoyed all the goods in your December Boon Box and have found different ways to incorporate our chile powders into your everyday cooking. We don’t expect you to have finished everything, but hope you have at least tried them each once. With 3 more jars of chile’s in this box, we know that it might seem like a lot of chiles in your cabinet. Know that we send these chiles with explanations about how to use them to get you started and hope that you spend the year cooking with them in your kitchen!

There’s one jar of chile powder in here that’s not for sale yet on our website. If you love it and are on our newsletter list, you’ll get an email when we’ve got it on sale if you're interested in more. We also have 5 extra jars of Spicy Salty Lemon. If you are interested, shoot us an email and we can send some your way.

Stay warm out there and hope everyone enjoys the sunshine as we slowly transition from winter to spring!

Krissy & Gideon & Nacho & Alejandro

The Boonville Barn Team

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What’s Inside Box 2

INNA Jam’s Spicy Salty Lemon with Piment d’Ville

Fatted Calf

Duroc Salami with Piment d’Ville

Guajillo Chile Powder

Gochugaru Chile Powder

Comapeño Chile Powder

Guajillo Chile Powder

This is one of my favorite pictures of our chiles. Its from few years ago when we grew guajillo chiles for the first time and picked a variety that produced MASSIVE chiles. These peppers were so big that they barely fit into the bags for whole dried chiles and were so heavy they made the plants fall over just before they were fully ripe. It was a moment of truly recognizing the vigor that hybrid seeds have compared to heirloom varieties.

Normally, we purchase a small quantity of open-pollinated seeds (this is important in having seeds you can save for the next harvest that will grow into the original chiles), grow them for the season, make sure they work in our environment and taste the way we want them to, save the seed, and then plant out a block the following year. Sometimes it takes a few years for us to cultivate enough seed to do so.

The year of this photo we decided to buy 2 types of guajillo seeds - one hybrid variety that we would grow, dry, and sell that year, and an open-pollinated variety that we would grow specifically for seed and then grow to sell the following year. Both chiles tasted great, but the size of the hybrid guajillos was just too unmanageable for what we were doing with it! If we were just making powder, the hybrid seed would save time during processing, but we would still have to buy seed each year. Instead, we opted for the open-pollinated variety that produces smaller chiles, but the plants are sturdier and the size is much better for our whole dried chiles.

Okay so onto the flavor! Guajillo chile powder is a bit sweet with a mellow heat, has a light smoky flavor, and notes of tomato. We lightly smoke them with mesquite (just like our Smoky Piment d’Ville!) while drying to add a more complex layered flavor. The chiles are then ground three times into a superfine and velvety powder. Guajillo chiles are classic Mexican chiles that are used in countless dishes. Their mild heat really makes them an all purpose chile that you’ll keep reaching for whenever you want a bit more flavor.

How To Use Guajillo Chile Powder

● If a recipe calls for whole guajillo chiles and you just have powder, you can substitute 1 tsp guajillo powder for each whole chile. Just know that this works best for recipes where you are slow cooking something or blending into a paste!

● We love these Mushroom “Carnitas” tacos because they are pretty simple to make but also filling!

● I tend to add about a tablespoon of Guajillo chile powder to ground beef (along with a pinch of comapeño, garlic powder, cumin, and coriander) if I’m making some easy nachos for dinner.

● Guajillo chile powder is a great option when a recipe calls for simply “red chile powder.”

● It is delicious in Chicken Tinga and in Pozole Rojo.

Comapeño Chile Powder

Comapeño chiles are wild chiles that grow on mountain slopes of Veracruz, Mexico. Being a wild chile, it’s rare that folks actually cultivate it. Each pepper is less than an inch in length and while there are plenty of chiles on each plant, their overall weight after harvest is minimal. Harvesting and processing these chiles is a bit of a long and slow process. We grab buckets to sit on, cut a plant down and slowly, individually harvest the chiles or use olive harvest rakes to pull off the chiles. Then during processing, we individually pull off the stems. I had to agree when I overheard one of our harvest employees say “this is really boring” while harvesting the peppers because it takes a really long time to make progress.

But! Their flavor is unmatched by any other chile out there, which is why, against our better judgment, we continue to grow comapeño chiles year after year. As far as we can tell, we’re the only folks in the U.S. that cultivate it on any scale or potentially grow comapeño chiles at all.

These chiles are spicy, acidic, and citrusy. Its flavor overpowers its heat and is strong enough to still taste all of the chile’s characteristics when it has been slow cooked. Now that you have a new jar of Comapeño chile powder, you can throw out the old Cayenne chile that in your pantry. Comapeño is a better option than cayenne because it adds flavor along with the heat. The heat doesn’t really build and won’t overwhelm you. Don’t be nervous to use it!

One of our favorite ways to use this chile is in Comapeño Carne Adovada. It’s pork shoulder that is slow cooked with a tomato/onion/comapeño sauce. While it takes a few hours to cook, it’s pretty easy to make and incredibly delicious with tortillas, rice, and beans. I’ve had success making it with chicken (add more stock and olive oil!), beef (make sure it's a fatty cut!), and even with mushrooms (cut cook time significantly and add more oil and stock!). It’s a great dish to make for a party or an evening when you want to take a bit of time to prep something and then relax for the 2 hours it cooks while friends come over.

Comapeño butter spiked beans are a hearty braise of white beans and aromatics,

finished with chili butter, a few chopped tomatoes, and vinegar. Enjoy these with rice and greens, or tuck them into a tortilla.

If you are a chicken wing fan, we’ve got a recipe for Hot Honey Comapeño Wings. A full teaspoon of Comapeño yields a wing with serious heat. Cut that in half if you’re serving more spice-averse diners. Though the regular bake setting of most ovens works great, if your oven has a “convection bake” setting now’s the time to use it. You’ll get wings that are crispier. No convection bake setting? Finish off your wings by browning them under the broiler for a moment or two, but watch them very closely to ensure they don’t burn.

Gochugaru Chile Powder

Chiles for Gochugaru were a new addition to the farm this year at the request of the Curio Spice team. The plants were fairly productive and we ended up with about 47 pounds of Gochugaru chile powder. While we’re sharing the first bit with y’all, the majority is set aside for Curio’s Korean BBQ spice blend! And, we couldn’t help sharing some with a salami producer just down the road for a new product they are making.

Gochugaru is one of the classic ingredients in a Korean kitchen, and in recent years gochugaru and gochujang (the fermented chile paste) have started to enjoy their moment across the U.S. There are generally two different types of gochugaru - a larger flake and a more fine powder. We ground ours to be somewhere in the middle. It has a deep, earthy flavor whose heat hits towards the tip of the tongue and lingers. I just ate a bit straight and while the earthy flavor has mellowed, the heat definitely remains.

I think our 2023 harvest of Gochugaru chile powder is a bit hotter than what you would purchase somewhere else, so be careful when following different recipes! Some will call for very large quantities of the chile powder and you can dial it down when using ours.

How to Use Gochugaru Chile Powder

There’s 2 recipe developer/cookbook writers that I’d recommend for Korean cooking. First, Eric Kim writes recipes for NYT Cooking and also has a great cookbook called Korean American. His recipes are less traditional but full of flavor. Second, Maangchi has over 6 million subscribers to her Youtube Channel where she posts videos of traditional Korean dishes. Her website is also packed with great recipes.

If you are a NYT Cooking subscriber, here’s that uses gochugaru, one from our friends at Oaktown Spice Shop, and a few more from Bon Appetit.

Kimchi sundubu-jjigae (Spicy soft tofu stew with kimchi and pork belly): This soup became a favorite of mine when I lived in Boston and would trudge across the city to Allston with my best friends on cold nights to get ripping hot bowls of sundubu-jjigae. There’s plenty of recipes online for different types to make so don’t think you have to use pork belly.

Gochugaru Salmon with Crispy Rice A big batch of Kimchi!

(Rice Cakes): I love Tteokbokki for their texture and there’s tons of recipes out there for different ways to cook with

Spicy Salty Lemon by INNA Jam

INNA Jam is a fruit preserving company based in Emeryville, CA. Owned by Dafna Kory and Jesse Solomon Clark, INNA Jam makes some of the best jams, shrubs, and preserved lemons around. They take advantage of the large bounty of fruit and herbs that California has to offer, using just about all CA grown ingredients. Dafna works closely with farmers across California to source whatever is in season and at peak ripeness that week. Then she and her small team preserve the fruit for our enjoyment year round. Dafna and I met back in 2014 and we caught up a few weeks ago to chat and talk more about Spicy Salty Lemon.

Back in 2010, Dafna was working as a video editor and spent her time outside of working making jam as a way to use more of her senses after a long day of staring at a screen. It all started with batches of jalapeño jam that she made and gave away to friends. They kept asking for more and as her exploration of jam as a medium took hold, she started INNA Jam and preserving California fruit full time. “We have such amazing fruit and there’s so many ways to preserve it,” Dafna told me.

Dafna and her 3 person team make a LOT of preserved lemons. First, they cut up whole lemons, salt them, and cover them in lemon juice. The salted lemons cold ferment for a year (!!) before they get chopped up and packed. For the spicy version, Piment d’Ville gets added to the chopped lemons before it gets canned.

Dafna says that the Piment d’Ville adds a really complex layer to the already flavorful Watsonville lemons. And the fact that they come already chopped up in the jar makes these preserved lemons SO easy to use.

Some recipes you may come across may tell you to rinse the preserved lemon to remove some of the saltiness. You don’t need to worry about that with Dafna’s, as she uses a bit less salt to cure the lemons than other companies do. But! It’s important to remember that the Spicy Salty Lemon is a cooking ingredient, not something to eat by the spoonful. Spicy Salty Lemon is still about 10% salt. One reason it works so well to finish dishes with is because it can be

used as a flavor brightener and in place of finishing salt. Make sure to factor in the saltiness when you are using it.

Dafna is probably more in tune with what’s getting harvested in California than anyone else I know so I had to ask what her what she gets most excited about: “Santa Rosa plums are magical. I don’t know how fruit is able to have flavors like that. California strawberries are amazing. Fresh Bay Laurel is so verdant and green and herbaceous. When I smell it, it pushes a button in my brain that brings me joy.”

Check out more of what Dafna makes at www.innajam.com and let us know what you think of the Spicy Salty Lemon!

Dafna harvesting mulberries

Lemons preserving in the Inna Jam Kitchen

How To Enjoy Spicy Salty Lemon

● Make a chimichurri-esque finishing sauce (Dafna’s recommended use!): add a few spoonfuls of Spicy Salty Lemon to a bowl with freshly chopped parsley and whatever other soft green herbs you have on hand like dill, chives, basil, mint, or cilantro. Mix with olive oil and use as a flavor booster for a bowl of soup, a bowl of beans, or meat that’s already cooked.

● Drizzle the chimichurri (or just a bit of the salty lemon!) on steamed green vegetables like asparagus, green beans, or broccoli.

● Gideon’s first introduction to Preserved Lemon came from Ottolenghi’s cookbooks.

● Bon Appetit has a list of recipes that use preserved lemon.

● Pea, Olive, and Preserved Lemon Salad from Serious Eats as well as bunch of other ideas from SE

● Recipe ideas from Food & Wine

● More ideas from Martha Stewart

Duroc Salami by Fatted Calf

Fatted Calf has been using Piment d’Ville in their charcuterie for … honestly I have no idea, but quite a while! When you walk into of of their storefronts in Napa, CA, you’ll be met by a photo of their iconic Basque Coil pork sausage (which is heavily spiced with Piment d’Ville) as well as many other cured items in their case that use our chiles. Fatted Calf is owned and operated by another husband and wife team of Taylor Boetticher and Toponia Miller. They first opened in 2003 and have over 2 decades of meat curing experience behind them. They work incredibly hard to source only humanely raised animals for their shops and work with the farmer networks of Heritage Foods to purchase pork from Kansas and Missouri.

One of our Fatted Calf favorites is the Duroc Salami. I had no idea that they were using our Piment d’Ville in this salami and came across it by chance at a shop here in Boonville. I was excited that they were carrying Fatted Calf products and was reading what was in each salami and was pretty floored when I saw our chile!

The Duroc Salami is an ode to California and is made with Piment d’Ville, Napa Valley Red Wine, and California fennel pollen. We like slicing it up for a charcuterie board and regularly use it on pizza. I feel like this one is pretty self explanatory for use. Hope you love it as much as we do!

We hope you have a nice spring!

Your next box will arrive in July.