Super-sized grocery items

[rant]
In the "What's Cooking" thread I posted about a batch of Cajun chicken piquant that came out as chicken not-very-piquant and that I suspected suspiciously oversized jalapenos were to blame. Last night the rest of that batch of jalapenos went into the Chinese ground pork with hot peppers recipe from The Chinese Cookbook by Craig Claiborne and Virginia Lee. In the intro to the recipe, Claiborne writes:

"This is a recipe that is only for the genuine connoisseurs, those with the palate of Beelzebub, for it is firey hot to the taste. This is a dish to make strong men cough, and Texaqns, unless they are of the proper ilk and enthusiasm, weep capsicum. Heed well this warning."

That has been my experience with this dish (I'm a fire eater and I love it). Jenise reports she was served this dish on a trip to China and it is indeed incendiary.

Last night's batch turned out merely mildly warm. I've made this dish with jalapenos before and they have always had the necessary oomph to do a proper job. Not this time.

There seems to be a trend with both produce and poultry to produce a product that is larger, but at the expense of flavor.

This first started happening with turkeys in the 1950s. The birds seemed to get larger and larger every year, and eventually some of the big commercial producers had to resort to artifically flavoring them (e.g., the infamous Swift's Butterball).

Then it started happening to chickens, starting with Perdue's Oven-Stuffer Roaster. Most mass-market chicken parts--especially boneless, skinless chicken breasts--come from oversized birds and have little flavor. I have a treasured recipe for Cantonese lemon chicken that was published in the New York Times back in 1976. It calls for battering and deep-frying whole boneless, skinless chicken breast halves. Back in 1976 there weren't chicken parts for sale, just whole and half birds. You had to buy a 2-3 pound fryer and cut away the boneless breasts yourself. Modern prepackaged boneless, skinless chicken breasts are about twice the size of what the recipe has in mind and are too big for this frying process. Either you end up burning the coating or the meat isn't thoroughly cooked through. These days I have to cut the breasts in half before battering and frying them.

And the whole chickens for sale these days in supermarkets all seem to be of the 3-4 pound size, so no help there. You have to seek out a market that specializes in free-range birds. Or an oriental market.

Then we come to bell peppers. They, too, are nearly twice the size they used to be, and less flavorful.

Cauliflower seems to be larger than it used to be, as well.

And now we have giant jalapenos with almost no heat. Sigh.
[/rant]

-Paul W.

I cannot address all these ills but, perhaps, regarding the jalapenos: When I was little, the lady who lived in the apartment directly under us would periodically babysit me. To this day, I do not know her name other than "The Pepper Lady". I don't remember what she looked like, either. I remember three things about her apartment: she had a great big dictionary on a lectern (had fun leafing through that), she grew African Violets (which I'd never seen before and are said to be difficult), and, of course, she grew hot peppers. Lots of them. All kinds. On an East-facing window-sill in NYC. So, why not grow your own?

Due to extreme variabilty, I am designated jalapeno (other peppers too, but they are most variable) in our house. Whenever Betsy is using, she brings me a small piece to taste. I rate from bell to hot hot hot. Even with home grown, there can be variability on same plant. I am sure there are plenty of varities bred for midlness, but the growing conditions (soil, water etc) make a difference. I think more stressed plants have more flavor (like grape vines). One thing I know is that the pretty, smooth ones are likely to be milder than those with brown streaks,

Another problem is Texas (I believe) developed some low-heat jalapenos for the masses. Who knows what kind of crosses we're getting nowadays.

I thought the heat had to do with sunlight: the more sun, the hotter the fruit.

I thought the heat had to do with sunlight: the more sun, the hotter the fruit.

In general, the more water stress, the hotter the chile.

I've noticed super huge bananas out here, that are hard and never seem to get any softer. I do not buy them anymore and usually plow through the pile until I find smaller ones. Same with jalapeños...way too big for my use and again, look for smaller ones. Bell Peppers are bigger too, very pretty and I have not noticed a decrease in flavor. I do a lot of customer requested items in my neighborhood grocery store and they do not seem to mind and usually fill my requests. Now, if I could only convince them to carry Flank Steaks!!

[Jenise]

Last week at Winco I bought 12-14 inch tall red bell peppers. I have never seen bell peppers that size, ever, any color. I took a photo of one next to a quart Bell jar--the peppers were about the same diameter and three inches taller. They were a dark red, some with green streaks (I chose those in particular--some green will always be sharper flavored) with thick flesh. Excellent, really excellent--I make a lot of pepper salads as appetizers. Oh, and only 68 cents each.

Sounds great. I am fond of roasted red peppers so those biggies seem like prime candidates to me.