Every summer we buy chiles serranos at the farmer's market here in town, and then wonder what we're going to do with so many of them. We usually end up making salsas and freezing some of them, but sometimes a few serranos end up in our compost bin.
Interestingly, this past summer when I was in Argentina (which was their winter) the lady I stayed with for 3-4 days who does cooking lessons in her home had a solution. She toasts them along with some tomatoes in a hot, dry skillet on a back burner, then blends them with a very small amount of olive oil before putting this paste into a jar and saving it in the refrigerator. It's there for anyone who likes to add a little bit to soups and stews, to give them that proverbial "kick" they sometimes need. Now we do the same. We have our jar of chile serrano paste in the refrigerator and we use it whenever we need to spice something up a bit.
Last night we went overboard. We had some firm, white cod (bacalao) filets, and Javier made a revised paste by adding a little pressed garlic into the hot stuff, then spreading it over the fish before broiling. Sounded easy, looked great - but it was almost too hot too eat. We ended up scraping some of it off the fish just so we could eat it.
What did we learn? A little bit of this stuff goes a LONG way. We should have made a whole new spread with more olive oil, maybe a little lemon juice, the garlic, a tiny bit of salt, and then spread it thinner. Enjoy the picture, but do not - I repeat - do not cook it this way!
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