Looking out my Backdoor: Night cooking

Do you ever spend the night working? Without getting out of bed? Not creative thinking, not mentally composing poetry or writing love (or hate) letters you will never send. I mean real physical labor type working.

I just spent the night cooking, perfecting my version of pay de chili marron, translated as bell pepper pie. Without getting out of bed.

This is not a usual Mexican dish. You could peek into every kitchen in Etzatlan and you won’t find a slice of this exotic pie. As my gardener Leo says, “Mexicans don’t eat bell peppers.”

We are surrounded by hundreds, no exaggeration, of greenhouses growing bell peppers which are shipped all over the world. You might find our Etzatlan peppers in your grocery.

Mine, I am proud to say, came from my own garden pepper buckets. I say “proud” because it has taken me three years to figure out how to grow peppers, really beautiful peppers, beautiful enough to win prizes at the fair, if I could smuggle them up to the fair.

See, the deal is that right now my kitchen is full of peppers, my latest harvest, and though I give them generously to neighbors, who’d have thought I’d have so many. Especially peppers. I also pulled up the rest of my carrots.

Carrots are easy. I’ve enough for several meals. That reminds me of the winter we were snowed in for over three months on the ranch at Dodson, when I was ever so young. The only way to town was horseback so kitchen supplies ran low to none.

But we had two things that never ran out. It had been a good summer for carrots and the sandbox in the cellar was well stocked with the orange roots. And deer meat.

Every morning there was a herd of deer atop one or another haystack. For once we didn’t have to eat the entire deer. We could cut off the back-strap and feast on that most tender of steaks.

That winter, I discovered that carrots made a dang fine imitation of traditional pumpkin pie. Fine dining with tender steaks and carrot pie. That winter, I had to be creative in the kitchen.

The point is, you don’t look at what you don’t have. You look at what you do have. Then figure out how you want to use it.

When you are gardening, even as small a production as my few industrial buckets, the garden is not like a store. Chances are all the green beans will be ready at once, well, with beans, it is at once every day for two or three weeks. Or suddenly I have a virtual mountain of spinach. Or I look up into the avocado tree, still plentiful with fruit, and discover that I don’t want to eat another avocado ever.

The garden refuses to behave like a store where you can pick up one squash, a half of papaya, and two onions. OK, thank you, that’s all I need today.

Right now, from my garden I have bell peppers, lots. And I have an idea which kept me up all night perfecting the process.

This whole idea started a long while back when I was dining with friends at the Hacienda El Carmen. Pay de chili marron was on the menu. I had to try it. I do love sampling new foods. I liked it but the next words out of my mouth were, “I can make this better.” I put the idea on the shelf for later.

Later happens to be now because I have an abundance of bell peppers. I chose my prettiest red pepper, red because they are sweeter. And I modified my favorite cheesecake recipe. I liquefied the pepper in the blender. Used seasonings as if for pumpkin pie, cinnamon, cloves and a smidge of nutmeg. And hour in the oven and out popped the prettiest pie you ever did see.

I cut a tiny wedge, because as confident as I was the pie would be delicious, what if I was wrong?

Once my creation cooled, I cut slices and went around to all the neighbors. When they asked, “What is it?” I answered, “Eye of newt, heart of cockroach and tongue of scorpion.” Still, nobody turned me down.

When they tasted the result of my sleepless night, most folks wanted the recipe. So there you have it. Bell pepper pie.

Oh, what I would give for a hunk of back-strap.

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Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashton’s essays and other work at http://montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com/. Email [email protected].