Pepper expert aims to spice up world dining

Maricel Presilla came from Cuba to the United States in 1970, and later went to Spain to study medieval history. It was just the beginning of a lifelong love affair with food and history, forever intertwined in her work.

She did become a history professor, but also founded Gran Cacao Company to import cacao and lead chefs on chocolate tours. She is the chef/owner at Cucharama and Zafra on the east coast, and was named James Beard Best Chef Mid-Atlantic in 2012.

What she wants to be known for, however, is educating people and inspiring interest in the roots of foods she loves.

Following up her encyclopedic “Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America” from 2013, she began to focus on peppers. Collecting seeds during travels, she worked for years to grow and study 300 pepper plants that have taken over her garden in Weehawken, N.J.

When she was invited to cook at the White House for President Barack Obama in 2010, she made peppers the focus of her menu. The response only fed her obsession with peppers, and she created a cook’s gallery of nearly 200 varieties in her newest book, “Peppers of the Americas: The Remarkable Capsicums That Forever Changed Flavor,” ($35, Lorena Jones Books/Ten Speed Press).

Every pepper photographed in the book came from her garden. Along with recipes and directions for using varieties fresh and dried in spice blends, salsas, sauces, soups and main dishes, she explores the history and science.

If she could pick only one pepper, hands-down it would be aji amarillo, but using visual reference and detailed explanations of flavors, she hopes to inspire others to seek out varieties of chiles, piquillos, poblanos, rocoto and even scorpion peppers.

Q. You studied medieval history. How did you end up in the world of food, writing cookbooks and running restaurants?

A. The thing is I come from a great family of cooks. My maternal aunts were great cooks, my father was a great cook, his mother was a great cook. I grew up in a place where cooking was valued, not a chore. … When I was living in Spain, I traveled a lot because of my research. I got to eat a lot of food. I almost became a food researcher, taking notes on all the food. Then back at New York University, people knew I cooked. … One thing led to another. I was invited by the university to do a food event with Catalan cooking. I was helping this famous chef from Barcelona. I was fascinated by her cooking. She wanted to stay in the U.S. and we did a little catering together, and she got a full-time job at a restaurant called The Ballroom in Chelsea. I met the chef, a Peruvian, Felipe Rojas-Lombardi. … It was the furst full-fledged tapas restaurant in the country. So, I started training with Felipe.

Q. How did your family history with cacao influence your earlier work?

A. My paternal grandmother was born on a cacao farm in Cuba. … My family still grew cacao when I went there with my father, and later when I did my Ten Speed book on chocolate. It was not what it used to be when I was there as a child, but it was still there. I wrote two books on cacao and chocolate, and I am a co-founder of the largest chocolate competition in the world, the International Chocolate Awards. I’m very involved in chocolate and cacao. It’s a natural thing for me to do chiles and peppers. It’s a world staple, it has a similar history. Peppers and cacao were born in the Amazon.

Q. Tell us about Peppers of the Americas, how did this project come to fruition?

A. I encountered them in every possible way through my travels for my book, “Gran Cocina Latina.” Peppers were everywhere, but they were still things other people grew. When I started growing them, it changed everything. This gigantic maple fell in my yard, it was the oldest tree on my block, probably one of the oldest in Weehawken, and all of a sudden I had sun. What am I going to do? I had shade loving plants, all ornamentals, and they were destroyed. I replaced them with herbs. I got some epazote and it was everywhere. The mint was taking over completely. Okay, I need to change. Let me try some peppers. They did so well, and typical of me, I start reading and teaching myself. I used to bring my peppers to my restaurant. I put them on a plate by the counter. Jim Oseland, he was the editor then of Saveur magazine, and came and saw the peppers. I told him the story. He saw an idea there, how about doing a story on the peppers you grow? I grew about 100 cultivars for that story, and we selected about 50.

Q. What do people need to know about choosing fresh versus dried peppers?

A. You need to understand there is great nuance in the flavor and heat of peppers. Every pepper has a place in the kitchen. It is not just the hottest. Even sweet peppers have something to offer. In every step of the cooking process, peppers can be important flavor enhancers. The problem we all face, we don’t have this variety of peppers in our markets. We are getting better. Aji dulce, I want people to understand how important it is and you’ll find them in Latin American markets. They have the same flavor as a Habanero without the heat. The ones they’ll have more problems finding are the Andean peppers, the rocoto and others from Peru. There are new regulations allowing these peppers to be imported fresh, but it is a slow process. There are pepper growers in this country growing the most exciting peppers on the planet. It is pepper mania! There are more hot pepper sauces here in this country than anywhere else.

Q. What’s the trick to roasting peppers?

A. Nothing fancy. You can put them in the broiler. If you have a gas burner, you can char the peppers right on top of the fire. If you have a cast iron skillet, do it there. if you have a comal, even better. This doesn’t require any particular anything. A dehydrator is super inexpensive to get, and you can get the most of your harvest with that. I process them in different ways. I put them in vinegar, pickle them, ferment them, dry them, make powders. These things don’t last forever, just like spices. It is a seasonal treat.

RECIPE:Spanish Potato Omelet with Roasted Peppers