Chile Relleno (Stuffed Poblano in a Whipped Egg Batter)

Variations

• Picadillo: minced meat with raisins, almonds and spices — an older filling than cheese.
• Chiles en nogada: the same poblano with a picadillo filling under a walnut cream sauce and pomegranate seeds, from Puebla, made in August and September; green, white and red are the colours of the Mexican flag. It is usually not battered at all, which makes it closer to a different dish than to this one.
• Without batter: stuff the peeled chillies and bake them. Much lighter, and the point of the dish is gone.
• Guatemalan: ko.wikipedia notes it is eaten there too; that version often has a vegetable-and-meat filling and sometimes breadcrumbs.
• The chilli: poblano is the default — large, thick-walled and mild enough to eat whole.

Tips

• The coating is a foam. Deep frying sets out the coatings that go into the oil wet — flour, flour with starch, a cold thin batter — and then the ones that do not, which is where it files this dish. Capeado is a meringue with the yolks folded back in, so what expands in the oil is the air already in it rather than water turning to steam, and it sets that way. That is why it is light, and why it collapses if it stands.
• Use the batter the moment it is made. A foam does not wait. Heat the oil first, stuff every chilli first, and whip the whites last. In any other order the second chilli gets a thinner coat than the first.
• It will not stick to a wet chilli. Do not rinse the peeled peppers, and dry them properly. The dusting of flour does the same job — it takes up what moisture is left and gives the foam something to hold.
• Peeling means burning the skin off. Charred skin separates by itself while the pepper sits in its own steam. Baba ganoush chars an aubergine on the same flame but scoops the flesh out instead of peeling it; here the chilli has to stay whole, so it has to be peeled.
• Leave the stalk on. It is a handle, and it holds the slit chilli closed.
• Do not deep-fry them. Two or three centimetres of oil is right, and you spoon it over. Fully submerged, the puffed coating is crushed.
• Sauce underneath, not over. Caldillo poured on top softens the coating within five minutes — the same timing problem enchiladas turn on.
• The heat is in the pith. As chilli and heat says, capsaicin sits in the white placenta rather than the seeds; scrape it out with a knife tip for a milder result.