I am so mopey. I just ate penne pasta with a romesco sauce I’d been making since yesterday.
Last night I washed and broiled ten tomatoes, a large onion, and ten cloves of garlic, to get started on this sauce. It was a warm evening and I had to turn the vegetables constantly to make sure they didn’t char too much on one side, thus roasting my hand under the broiler a little along with the tomatoes. Tonight I peeled the tomatoes and garlic cloves, chopped the onion, peeled, seeded, and boiled three dried ancho chiles in red wine vinegar, toasted five ounces of slivered almonds, ground the almonds into a fine powder, peeled the chiles*, sieved the tomatoes and chiles into a pulp, and puréed everything in the blender with some salt and olive oil.
During the last minutes of this process, I cooked pasta at the same time; last night, I decorated cookies for Patrick’s party while I roasted the vegetables (and my hands) in the oven. All in all, making this sauce has been very tiring.
End result? The sauce wasn’t tomatoey or garlicky enough, but tasted strongly of red wine vinegar and stale almonds. Sigh.
All that work for a mediocre meal, and I’m so full I can’t even eat something else to cancel it out. That’s the end of that recipe for me, and remind me to buy some new slivered almonds and store them in the freezer this time. And my finger still hurts a lot from the chiles.
*Actually Erik peeled most of the chiles, because partway through I felt a burning on my finger and had to stop. Lesson: do not put chiles on a cut.
[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
Preparing for a BBQ a couple of summers ago, my friend was cutting some chiles when he felt his hands “burning”. Soon after, he had to soak his hands in a bowl of cold water the rest of the day. We thought he was a wuss, but since then I’ve heard other stories, like yours, about this happening. So we can forgive him now.
Forgive, definitely! These were mild chiles I cut, so it wasn’t too bad, but with hotter peppers you actually have to wear gloves while cutting them; in fact, even gloves may not protect fully from the hottest peppers. Crazy, eh? Your poor friend!