Ancho Chile Blackberry Syrup

If you know me you'll know my affinity for Mexican food.

Er, OK, more like obsession.

Being in LA I consider myself blessed  with the multitude of taco trucks to choose from and, usually, a salsa bar to indulge upon. I think my love for this street food partially stems from these variety of salsas and condiments. I love salsas partially because of the heat that they can pack. For as long as I can remember my dad has called me "asbestos mouth" (as well as numerous other, um, charming names), which had to do with  dumping cayenne powder all over my pasta. I really don't know where this was going except for the fact that it leads me to the fact that I like spicy food. And what this means, getting back to my first point, is that I love the unending number of chiles that Mexican food has to offer not only because of their heat, but also because of their flavor.

Initially, this recipe was published in Gourmet and called for dried pasillas as the chile of choice. The rest of the recipe is pretty simple: lemon juice, dark brown sugar (I used light), cane sugar, water, and blackberries. Being that I didn't see feel like braving the LA traffic (and because I'm lazy) I decided not to go to Grand Central Market for their wonderful chile selection, but instead I picked up some dried ancho chiles from Whole Foods. Upon opening the bag I realized I forgot how raisin like these chiles got when dried. Woops. Oh well, it's all I had so I moved forward. Basically, you make a syrup by boiling the lemon juice, water, and sugars together and infuse it with the chiles (aka throw them in...seeds and all) then stir in a blackberry puree when the syrup has cooled. As you can see from the picture three measly chiles yielded A LOT of seeds (insert flash backs to deseeding chiles at Thanksgiving for a mole). From my earlier rambling you'll remember that I love spicy food so needless to say I was excited at this site...the possibility of a spicy yet sweet syrup!

After the syrup had cooled and I added the blackberry puree it was time to try it. Hmm. Apparently the anchos were more raisin-ey than I expected because it was all I could taste. AND NO HEAT. So much for appreciating the variety of flavors that chiles have to offer. There was a little blackberry taste there, but not much.

Great...I essentially made raisin syrup and could have left out two decently expensive ingredients.

Since I now had about a cup and a half of the stuff I thought I might as well use it. I though that some drinks were a good application and a made a ancho chile blackberry rye cocktail with a little muddled mint. Hm...not bad actually. Although it still tasted raisin-ey (ugh) the heat was beginning to linger on my tongue halfway through. Interesting. I also made a ancho chile blackberry soda with just the syrup and some club soda, which actually tastes pretty good if you ignore what I was actually trying to achieve.

I suppose next time I'll try using guajillo or the called for pasilla to get rid of the raisin flavor. If those fail to achieve a good heat level I might just throw in a habenero for good measure. Also, I think the flavor of blueberries might not be overpowered as easily as the blackberry was. But before all of that I need to get rid of a bunch of ancho chile blackberry syrup. Maybe a good sauce or rub for venison? Throw some grilled strawberries on the plate as well....hmmm.