Gochugaru is one of the classic ingredients in a Korean kitchen, and in recent years gochugaru and gochujang (the fermented chile paste) have been having their moment across the U.S. There are generally two different types of gochugaru - a larger flake and a more fine powder.
We ground ours to be somewhere in the middle. It has a deep, earthy flavor whose heat hits towards the tip of the tongue and lingers. I just ate a bit straight. The earthy flavor is mellow and the heat definitely remains. We gave it 3 out of 4 stars on the heat scale.
I think our Gochugaru chile powder is a bit hotter than what you would purchase somewhere else, so be careful when following different recipes! Some will call for very large quantities of the chile powder and you can dial it down when using ours.
If you are a NYT Cooking subscriber, here’s a recipe list that uses gochugaru and one from Bon Appetit.
Kimchi sundubu-jjigae (Spicy soft tofu stew with kimchi and pork belly): This soup became a favorite of mine when I lived in Boston and would trudge across the city to Allston with my best friends on cold nights to get ripping hot bowls of sundubu-jjigae. There’s plenty of recipes online for different types to make so don’t think you have to use pork belly.
A big batch of Kimchi!
Tteokbokki (Rice Cakes): I love Tteokbokki for their texture and there’s tons of recipes out there for different ways to cook with them
Last week Friday, Nacho picked up our olive oil from where it gets milled and bottled, about 45 minutes away in Hopland. He had a moment of appreciation for the fact that the 7 and a half bins of olives only turned into a single pallet of olive oil. For us that means 704 bottles from about 500 trees that are managed for a mix of production, privacy, and beauty.
Because we have such a large mix of olive trees, each variety is at a different stage of ripeness when harvested. Less ripe green olives add spiciness while the more ripe purple olives are smooth and buttery in flavor. The flavor of the oil changes a bit from year to year. The 2023 harvest is a mellow and smooth olive oil with a bit of a grassy & peppery finish.
We're excited to share the November 2023 harvest with you!
If you still aren't sold, here's what a few Boon Box subscribers think of it!
"Boonville Boil on Salmon. Insanely Good. Boonville boil dusted on roasted chicken wings is 🔥 ” - Heather M-T
"The Boonville Boil seasoning blend was amazing. So amazing it is gone and now I am sad. Popcorn with butter, salt, Boonville Boil, and a little parmigiano is incredible. I put it on roasted potatoes, roast broccoli, really most things!” - Joe M
Perfect Shrimp: One thing I am quite proud of is how perfectly I can cook shrimp. Peel some shrimp, leaving just the tail on. Toss with plenty of Boonville Boil, olive oil, and salt. Get a pan hot over medium high heat. Add all your shrimp to the pan, making sure not to crowd them. Let cook for about 2 minutes, until you can see the opaque cooked color of the shrimp start to curl up the sides. Quickly flip every shrimp. By the time you get to the last one, the first ones you flipped will be done.
Smoky Trout Chowder: I am a huge fan of Julia Turshen’s cookbook Simply Julia. It really hits the spot with simple recipes that are budget friendly, don’t have too many hard to find ingredients, and work great with our chiles. I followed her Smoked Trout chowder recipe (onion, celery, potatoes, clam juice, water, half and half, and smoked trout) and used Boonville Boil instead of Old Bay. SO GOOD! She also has a recipe for Mustard Cracker Fish I haven’t made in awhile that would be great too with Boonville Boil.
Gnocchi with Roasted Vegetables: I have recently embraced store bought gnocchi. It is our go-to when we really want to make whatever is left in our fridge more interesting. I tossed sliced delicata squash and cauliflower with Boonville Boil, salt, and oil and roasted it in the oven. I cooked some bacon, then pan seared the gnocchi in the same pan. When the veg was ready, I mixed it all together and topped it with ricotta cheese.
This is the first year we've been able to make strawberry chile preserve with strawberries from our farm! We are lucky enough to have great friends at the Philo Apple Farm, just down the road, who were willing to make weekly batches of this preserve with the berries we harvested every Monday morning.
Cruz diced up the strawberries, added Piment d'Ville, and cooked each batch in a traditional French copper confiture pot. Her jam is looser than other jams as she stirs it only as much as it needs and is characterized by large hunks of strawberries. It's delicious, has the perfect amount of heat to it, and we hope you love it.
Need more enticement to make the trip to Windsor? Check out the prep Leah has been doing to highlight our chiles and her skill. These will be on the menu on the 25th! - #1: Bacon candied with brown sugar and Sugar Rush Peach chile, blue cheese, peaches, and green onion. #2: Sungold tomato sauce with Smoky Piment d'Ville, garlic, olive oil, stracciatella and Yahualica flakes.
Last October, the crew from the PBS show America’s Heartland came out to our farm to capture what it is like to grow and harvest chiles in Mendocino County. We’ve been patiently waiting to see the footage and you can now catch us on Episode 5 of Season 17 of America’s Heartland! It is currently available to watch on the America’s Heartland website and will soon be on YouTube and live on PBS.
At the end of May we spent 10 days planting 4 acres of chiles and 3.5 acres of dry beans, splitting our days to plant in the mornings and evenings so we wouldn’t have to be out in the heat of the day.
Compared to other farms, we grow our starts in the greenhouse for a pretty long time. This year we planted seeds at the end of January and focused on developing incredibly healthy roots before planting the ground in late May. They look a bit lanky when first planted but they have already developed more of their leaves and are starting to thrive!
We also planted a LOT more beans than we have previously and I’m so stoked about it. My 93-year-old grandma was in town during planting and she came on out and helped us plant a small section of Tigers Eye beans. While one variety we planted didn’t germinate, we hope to have solid harvests of the other 9 varieties(!) of beans we sowed.
And we will be ready for them come harvest time with our new bean thresher that we imported from Turkey! I think Alejandro might be most excited about the thresher since he spent the most time riding our bike-powered bean thresher last year.
This machine will *hopefully* take about 3 weeks of work and complete it in a day, maybe even in a few hours of time! Threshers are used to clean beans from their shells which sounds like an easy task but when you are trying to produce over a ton of beans, you really don’t want to do it by hand. We’ll share more about the thresher once we get to use it in September!
Did we also mention that it is also strawberry season? Here on the farm we have 4,500 Seascape Strawberry plants. Once they begin to fruit, they don’t stop until the fall (or we start to run out of water and prioritize the chiles). We’ve been known to walk outside and snack on strawberries well into October and even November.
We sell the majority of our strawberries to the Philo Apple Farm for their strawberry jam, while the rest of the berries head out to restaurants and individuals here in the valley. On Fridays when we have a big harvest of berries, our plan is to sell them on the side of the road in front of Lichen Estate (right next to the farm at 11001 CR 151 in Boonville) in the afternoons. Like I said before, we’ve been busy!
Pick up a variety of whole dried chiles and make Romesco Sauce. It’s a mix of dried chiles, hazelnuts and almonds, bread, and tomato and is a perfect summer flavor to slather on a piece of crusty bread with a thick juicy tomato and even works as a dipping sauce for fresh veggies. When I cooked at the Boonville Hotel, we would spoon it on grilled flat iron steaks. It is definitely *chefs kiss*.
My preference is to use a mix of Ancho, Espelette, and Guajillo chiles with a few Yahualica chiles (or a tiny spoon of Yahualica flakes!) to amp up the heat. As a note, we’re running low on our stock of whole dried chiles. Once they sell out, we won’t have the next crop ready till December or January.
I regularly make the mistake of turning on the oven for long periods of time in the summer to braise meats and this summer my goal is to use my Instant Pot as much as possible. That means making Comapeño Carne Adovada in the electric pressure cooker real soon. It’s great to have on hand for easy tacos, nachos, or even to spoon on top of your morning eggs. Also! We now have Comapeño chile powder available by the individual jar.
Yesterday, Nacho brought out the bed prep implement that forms a bed, lays drip irrigation line and weed barrier, covers the edges with soil, and marks where each chile start should be planted. Later this week we will pull all 80k chile starts out of the greenhouse to netted enclosures in the fields to harden the plants off so that they will be able to thrive once they are planted in about 10 days. Things are happening!
We’ve also had some really great press this past month with a feature in Forbes and an 8 article package in the San Francisco Chronicle about Anderson Valley with a dedicated article about our chiles. It’s been great to see the different ways people share our story. Heads up: SF Chronicle has strong paywalls. Use a private window to view! It will also be in print later this summer!
It was my first live interview and I had less than 2 hours to prep for it. Needless to say, I was pretty freaked out! Though, my nerves started to relax when they intro’d the segment with the song Wannabe by Spice Girls. This warmed my dear millennial heart.
The interview was quick and it was a cool opportunity to be able to share a bit about our farm to a totally new audience. But the crux of the interview that made me legitimately laugh out loud was when the interviewer said “There’s a kinda old cliche that U.S. food, when you go out and you eat it, it tends to be, well I hardly dare use the word, a little bit bland!”
If you are already using our farm-to-jar chiles on a regular basis, then the food you are eating is anything but bland! You know that if something needs a bit more oompf in flavor, our chiles are the perfect solution. Food in America is also anything but monolithic. The food we eat here is diverse and full of so many different flavors. Whether it’s a bit of Calabrian chile flakes, or a big spoonful of Smoky Piment d’Ville or Comapeño chile powder, your food is already light-years ahead of what the BBC thinks we’re eating.
My response to the interviewer from BBC was that, “I definitely think my friends use a lot more chile powder than before they met me. I spend a lot of time with people who love food and are definitely interested in making it more flavorful.” Thanks for being one of those people.
We're so happy to be part of making the food you eat flavor forward and full of different chiles. Cheers to eating NOT BLAND food together!
Krissy & the Boonville Barn team
P.S. If you want to listen to the full interview, visit this link and head to 41:46 in the episode.
I get excited whenever other companies reach out and want to use our chiles in their products. Lumineux Chocolate in South Carolina started using Piment d’Ville in this chocolate bar last year.
Their chocolate making mission is to bring African cocoa beans to chocolate lovers in the U.S. and show off flavors folks haven’t had before. The chocolate itself is incredibly fruity and the heat of the Piment d’Ville is definitely present.
With some sweet treats, the sugar can overpower the flavor of Piment d’Ville but that is not the case here. It’s a deliciously spicy chocolate bar made with cocoa beans from Uganda and Nicaragua.
The ground is finally starting to dry out from the incredibly rainy winter we experienced. Nacho and Alejandro have moved out of the greenhouse on non-rainy days and have added one and a half acres of growing space to the farm this year. This means more space for beans and chiles! A new water system was installed for this new field along with fencing and the promise of a fruitful harvest.
Gideon has been learning all about what it means to import equipment as we have a legit bean thresher on the way from Turkey! Hopefully it means no more bike threshing - our thighs rejoice!
I’ve been deep in the world of redesigning our website and can’t wait to share it with you next month. Maybe by the time I write next month I’ll even have eaten a perfectly ripe strawberry out of our field. The cold, wet winter has everything here in the valley at least 3 weeks behind and we need some serious sunshine for the berries to start popping. One can hope…
Don’t be fooled by the sweet name of ‘Sugar Rush Peach’. This chile clocks in at one of the spicier chiles we’ve grown and while it does have sugary flavors to it, the heat is very much there. It is super sweet to begin with - with noticeable flavors of peach, bell pepper, and mango.
Then the heat starts to rise up. This pepper is aptly named as it brings a bright fruity heat. It’s also quite rare to see any hot chile powder that is not bright red or orange in color. And as far as I can tell, the only place you can get this chile powder is from us and from Curio Spice (and we grew all of it!). *Note: we haven't added sugar to this chile powder. It's naturally sweet in flavor!*
I’m a big fan of Josh Mamaclay, the Marketing and Engagement Manager at Curio, and his ability to perfectly describe the nuanced flavors of different spices and come up with a wide array of uses for each one. Josh's skill shown through when describing the Sugar Rush, noting it pairs well with fruit-based desserts - think of a broiled pineapple or roasted peach a la mode with a bit of the Sugar Rush chile powder on top. Or possibly a strawberry-peach galette with sugar rush and mascarpone or ricotta whipped cream to offset the heat.
It also works well with cocktails - you could make a seasoning with equal parts citrus zest, Sugar Rush, cane sugar, and flake salt to coat the rim of a mezcal cocktail.
You could also try mixing it into a mango salsa. If you are thinking more savory, pair heavily spiced meat kebabs or kofte with a yogurt sauce made of greek yogurt, tahini, lime juice, salt, and the Sugar Rush. Or add it to a scallop or shrimp ceviche.
These chiles were fun to grow but a bit of work to harvest. The plants were literally dripping with chiles and we'd have to stick ourselves into the middle canopy of the plants to find the ripe chiles that had turned from yellow to orangey-peach in color. They are really different than any other chile we have on the farm.
Boonville Barn on Ingredient Insider's Podcast
Last September, John Magazino and Andrea Parkins from our food service distributor, The Chefs’ Warehouse, stopped by the farm to record an episode of their podcast Ingredient Insiders. We talked about how we started growing Espelette chiles to make Piment d’Ville and what it’s like to grow chiles here in Boonville. They also stopped by The Boonville Hotel to speak to Executive Chef Perry Hoffman about how he uses Piment d’Ville at his restaurant. You can listen on Spotify or watch the interview on YouTube.
What We're Cooking
On the farm, we have 500 olive trees that are a mix of 25 or 30 varieties of Spanish and Tuscan olives. Each of these varieties ripens at a different speed and also has a different flavor than the tree next to it. There’s a range in size, shape, and color in these olives. We think this helps lead to a flavorful, yet balanced olive oil, with butteriness coming from the purple ripe olives and pepperiness coming from the still green olives.
The olives in the 2022 olive oil were definitely more purple than green and more ripe than less ripe, making the olive oil smooth and buttery. It doesn’t have that really intense grassy pungency that it has had in the past and I’m enjoying the mellowness of it.
The number one thing we can tell you about olive oil is use it! Don’t hoard it in the pantry and save it for special occasions only. Enjoy it now at its peak flavor. Olive oil is not something that gets better with age. Make Pasta Aglio e Olio. Glug it into a simple bowl of our beans. Drizzle it on avocado toast. Fry your eggs in it. Make a salad dressing for some winter chicories. Dip a freshly baked focaccia in it! Or even make an olive oil cake with it. Honestly, with olive oil, the opportunities are endless.
If you’re wondering why our oil just says “olive oil” compared to “extra virgin olive oil”, it’s because we produce such a small quantity of oil that we don’t feel it’s really necessary to get it professionally tasted and scored to determine it’s “extra virginity”. Read more about what it means to produce Extra Virgin California Olive Oil here from the California Olive Oil Council! Regardless, our olive oil is free of additives, is not blended with any other oils, and is made only from olives that we grow on our farm. Harvest date is on the bottom!
Please don’t be mad at us if we sell out before you are able to place an order. We’re sad there isn’t more to go around, too. If you are looking for other really great California olive oil, check out Fat Gold or ENZO Olive Oil. Both of these companies are owned by people we know and think are great and are olive oils we use at home too!
Travel Tips from Visit California
If you happen to be traveling around California this year, look for a copy of Visit California’s Best of California Magazine! There’s a familiar face on page 68 and some of our favorite places to visit in the valley!
What We're Cooking
- It’s going to be cold and rainy next week (with another chance of snow?) so I’m bound to make a big pot of soup, or some kind of braised meat that will warm up the house. Or maybe a pan of Shakshuka with some crispy bread!
We ended 2022 strong and ready to take a break and the rain offered that to us, something we all really needed. With the sun up, we’ve completed our crop plans for this year, got a few seed orders in, and Nacho is already germinating chile seeds in the greenhouse.
We’re making plans for what else we want this year for both the farm and for ourselves, including balance! We have plans for a few new chiles (when do we not?!) and might have found some space to grow more beans on. Additionally, we’re making investments in infrastructure to make things a bit easier for us. In farming, you never really know what the year ahead holds, but I’m excited about what we grew in 2022 and excited to spend the year enjoying it with you all.
A New Batch of Whole Dried Chiles
Our web store is currently stocked with the 2022 harvest of our whole dried chiles including Ancho, Mulato, Guajillo, Espelette, Red Serrano, and Yahualica Chile de Arbol. We grew more Ancho and Mulato chiles for you and should have them around for much longer than we did last year. Also, this year’s crop of Guajillo chiles are really good.
Check out this recipe for a dried chile romesco sauce. It’s delicious and you can use whatever mix of chiles you want depending on what heat level you are looking for! The recipe card will be popped into each order of whole dried chiles. And if you need more recipe ideas, check out this link for a list of recipes that use whole chiles that I started putting together last year. Have a recipe you want me to add to the list? Email me at hello@boonvillebarn.com!
Need a Valentine's Day Dinner Idea?
How about chicken mole! We received very positive feedback from people like you about Arcelia’s Mole Kit and we still have more available! Each kit includes the recipe for Chicken Mole, 4 bags of whole dried chiles, Mexican Chocolate from Taza Chocolate, and spices from Oaktown Spice shop (Allspice, Bay leaves, Cloves, Cinnamon Sticks, White Sesame Seeds, and Black Peppercorns).
Or Something a Bit Sweeter?
Proudly queer and Filipina-owned, Kokak Chocolates specializes in small-batch single origin heirloom chocolates in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco.
Carol has created 3 different chocolates (2 bars and a truffle collection!) featuring our Red Serrano, Calabrian, and Comapeño chiles. While we don’t have these products available for purchase, you can buy them directly from Kokak and they will ship in 1-2 business days!
"Kokak," meaning ribbit in the Filipino language, stems from Founder and Head Chocolatier Carol Gancia’s deep Asian roots and passion for making adventurous flavors with the rare cacao variety, “Naciónal.”
A Feature in Civil Eats!
A big shoutout to writer Bridget Shirvell from Civil Eats for covering the growing production of domestic spices that include our chiles! This is a great introduction to learn what other spice farmers are doing across the country. The article was also picked up by Eater and featured there as well!
Bridget writes that “Spices have long been in an overlooked corner of the local food movement. In some cases, that’s because customers don’t know to look for local spices. In others, it’s because many spices thrive in more tropical, subtropical, or generally more specific ecosystems, which are uncommon in most of the United States.”
We’re so glad YOU know where to look to find spices grown here in the U.S.!
What We're Cooking
Honestly, what have we been cooking? I feel like we hit a point of exhaustion at the end of the year which was really a sense of eat whatever we can that is easy and doesn't take too long. Instead here's a list of things I hope to eat in the next month.
Chile Flakes for all heat levels!
I'm a big fan of food related gifts especially if you can make something delicious and share with others. Here's some ideas for some homemade gifts to share!
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Make Chicken Mole at Home!
Arcelia’s Mole Kit has all the chiles, spices, and chocolate you need to make her incredible Mole de Pollo (Chicken Mole). This recipe is a stunner and it really isn’t too hard to make! Make it a date night dinner or as the main course for New Year’s Eve!
Here's what's in the kit:
- Four bags of Boonville Barn Collective Whole Dried Ancho, Cascabel, Espelette, and Mulato chiles
- Oaktown Spice Shop Jamaican Allspice, Whole Cloves, White Sesame Seeds, Tellicherry Black Peppercorns, Sri Lankan Cinnamon, Turkish Bay Leaves
- Taza Chocolate Mexican-Style Stone Ground 70% Dark Chocolate Chocolate Disc with Sea Salt
- Recipe card for making the Mole de Pollo
Upgrade Classic Pantry Items
Our Pantry Starter Kit is back with a few tweaks!
This year’s box features a jar of Piment d’Ville Sea Salt, Smoky Piment d’Ville, a tin of Fat Gold Olive Oil, and a few of our favorite recipes.
It’s a great price point for gifting friends or family members who are just learning how to cook, could use a few nice ingredients, or for friends that miss the flavors of California.
While we don't have any of our olive oil available, we're stoked to feature Fat Gold Olive Oil from some of our dear friends/Krissy's favorite author.
Send the Boon Box!
We still have subscriptions available for The Boon Box!
This is a box that arrives at your door 3 times a year filled with a variety of our chiles powders and flakes, chile preserves, and sometimes beans.
The first box ships December 12.
Sign up for one of our three options including just chiles, chiles and 5 pounds of beans, or chiles and 10 pounds of beans. Boxes will be on sale until December 5th and will not be on sale again until October 2023.
The first box includes the Piment d'Ville Collection Box filled with Classic, Spicy, and Smoky Piment d'Ville from our brand new 2022 harvest, Calabrian Chile Flakes, and Spicy Tomato Preserve made with Comapeño Chile Powder.
What We're Cooking + Thanksgiving Ideas
The Boon Box is a mix between a subscription box and a CSA. You pay for all 3 boxes up front, get chiles from our farm delivered in three boxes, and help support our farm with the funds we need to get the next growing year started. You also get satisfaction for helping a small farm during the time of the year when farming input costs are high! As a “thanks” for your upfront investment, you receive the products at a 10% discount.
The first box of the year ships in early December, followed by March and July.
This year’s subscription will include 7 jars of chile powder, 3 jars of chile flakes, and 3 chile jars of preserves.
We like to include a real mix of chiles in the Boon Box. Subscribers will start with the new 2022 harvest of Classic, Spicy, and Smoky Piment d'Ville, followed by some fan favorites and at least 1 chile powder that we may or may not sell to our larger audience! You'll try our selection of chile preserves (or if we decide to make a new product, we'll make sure you get it first!).
We’ve sold subscriptions to the Boon Box for the past 2 years and adjust things according to what subscribers think of it. Here's what some of last year's subscribers had to say:
“It is wonderful to have peppers that don't burn my mouth and deliver such different flavor profiles.”
“I purchased these boxes for multiple friends as Christmas gifts! They all enjoyed them and used everything. It's the perfect gift ever! Thank you!”
“Is it too cliché to say that I love everything that your farm produces? I hope not, because it's true! Boonville spices, dried chiles, beans, and the collaborations are all in high rotation in my kitchen. Thank you for doing what you do, my taste buds appreciate it.”
“I have never ordered a subscription box and was so excited to receive each one… Each box was like a present from my past self and I really enjoyed reading the zine with each. I also was able to try new things. One of the motivators for supporting Boonville is that I love the company values and supporting a small California farm business.”
Remember: We are a chile farm! If the idea of receiving upwards of 10 jars of chile powders and flakes throughout the year seems overwhelming, this probably isn’t the right box for you! If it seems like the right amount, then sign up!
We’ve curated the contents of each box to ensure you have the right mix of things throughout the year without overwhelming you with too much Piment d’Ville. We definitely don’t expect you to use the entirety of each box before the next one arrives. The chiles are at their best within a year of when they arrive in your kitchen, but if they are kept out of the sun and heat, they will last a few years.
Feedback from previous customers indicated that it’s helpful to know what is included in each box to ensure they don’t double purchase items they are already going to receive. We’ve made a note on each product on our website if we plan to include it in the box.
We hope that you're just as excited as we are about the Boon Box. We truly look forward to the days when our office is brimming with these boxes ready to ship out.
Thanks for supporting our farm!
Krissy, Gideon, and the Boonville Barn Team
By the end of August we'll start harvesting Sugar Rush Peach and Poblano, our first two to ripen this year. We will harvest and process both of these before August is over. These early harvest chiles are a solid reminder of what the next few months will look and feel like.
Then, the first 2 weeks of September are generally spent harvesting and threshing our different varieties of dry beans. It’s the perfect lull in the chile season where our Espelette chiles for Piment d’Ville aren’t quite ripe yet, giving us ample time to get our legs back in shape while we thresh the beans on our homemade bike-powered bean thresher. We tried growing a few new kinds of beans this year and I’m really curious what the yield will be like!
Mid-September is when things really start to amp up and we find ourselves in full on chile harvest mode. While the vineyards that surround us in Anderson Valley are starting to find themselves on the back end of harvest, we’re still 100% in it. We harvest 3-4 times a week and somehow still find time to get the rest of our work mostly finished. We continue harvesting till around the middle of November, constantly filling and emptying the greenhouse and creating hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of chile powder. And at that point it’s time to harvest olives and start fulfilling holiday orders.
It’s a bit exhausting thinking about the next 4 months and what they hold. But it's also some of the most exhilarating and satisfying months of the year. I’m constantly impressed by what we are able to accomplish and by the dedication our team has to producing incredible chile powders.
Stella Totino from The Kitchn wrote a lovely feature on our Calabrian Chile Flakes that basically sold us out of the 2021 harvest. My goal with growing an Italian chile and turning it into flakes was to honor my family that is still in Italy (admittedly in Puglia - not Calabria) and have the absolute best flake to cover my pizza in.
Stella writes, “Although they’re grown half a world away from my beloved Italia, these bits of pepper pack a whole lot of Mediterranean-worthy punch. Unlike many others I’ve tried, the flakes are large enough to actually carry the flavor throughout any dish without being too large. You know when you’ve got a leathery chili skin sticking itself to the backside of your teeth? Yeah, that’s never the case with Boonville flakes.”
We still have a few jars available on their own and some available as part of the New Harvest Bundle with Guajillo, Habanero, and Aji Limon chile powders. We had some … unfortunate gopher damage in our Calabrian Chile block this year. While we planted many more of these plants this year, TBD on how big the harvest will be.
Other Inventory Notes:
August and September are my favorite months to harvest as much as possible out of the garden and eat as simply as possible. With good tomatoes and fresh herbs, there’s little you need to do to make dinner taste delicious.
Photo Credit: Bon Appetit / Isa Zapata / Spencer Richards
In the midst of three power outages, two small fires, and uncharacteristically wet and cold July weather, seeing our Piment d’Ville called out as Highly Recommended by Bon Appétit was an incredible win to start off the month of July!
Kyle Beechey had some really lovely words to say about our Piment d’Ville, even just the headline of “Piment d’Ville Chile Powder is Smoky, Savory, and - Most Important - Super Fresh” makes me blush.
Photo Credit: Bon Appetit / Isa Zapata / Spencer Richards
"As a chef, Scommegna was tired of the price of importing Espelette from France and noticed that the climate of her Mendocino home was similar to that of the Basque region. In 2019, Scommengna had the opportunity to take over her family farm, and she learned to cultivate her beloved chile. The brand’s short supply chain—the peppers are grown, ground, and packaged all on-site—means the chile powder is ultra fresh, and each Boonville jar is dated with the harvest year. The chile, like wine, tastes different depending on the weather; hot summers yield a spicier crop."
She continues, "I can best describe its flavor as a mild, smoky, savory jolt with a heat that creeps up on you gently. In my kitchen, I use it like Maldon. It’s a finishing chile, and I sprinkle it over just about everything: scrambled eggs (or Just Eggs in my vegan case); toast with creamy toppings like avocado, ricotta, chèvre; vegetables, especially roots like carrots, Tokyo turnips and sweet potatoes. Any of those roasted with a dollop of yogurt and a sprinkle of Piment d’Ville are in constant rotation."
What we do here on the farm is not normal. Yes, there are other farms in the U.S. who grow chiles and even a few other farms out there that are creating different kinds of dried herbs, chiles, and spices. But few of these folks are growing, processing, packaging these spices and marketing it under their own brand, too. This morning, as I drank coffee waiting for the impending heatwave (a complete 180 from this time last week), I was thinking about how different we are from other farms and other food companies out there. We fit in this weird middle ground of being a farm that doesn’t sell fresh produce and being a food company that does more than buy ingredients to make a product. Sometimes I have a hard time succinctly explaining what makes our chiles special and I’m grateful to people like Kyle Beechey for sharing our story.
- Grilled chicken seasoned with a LOT of Smoky Piment d’Ville, garlic, and herbs on top of garden cucumbers, tomatoes, and grilled romaine tossed in a simple basil mayo.
- Warm bread with mayo, sliced tomato, flaky salt, and Piment d’Ville.
- Juicy peaches and plums right over the sink.
- Grilled corn with chile lime honey butter with whatever chile powder you are feeling
- An overabundance of onions in the garden calls for a caramelized onion dip.
- Our friends over at The Foodocracy posted this recipe for a Frozen Spicy Salted Nut Butter Rice Cake that I want to make as soon as I go to the store and grab rice cakes. Basically, slather your fave nut butter on a rice cake, cover in melted chocolate, and top with flaky salt and Piment d’Ville and pop it in the freezer for 10 minutes. It’s so easy and I can't wait to make it.
]]>I feel like I blinked and all of a sudden it's the middle of June. Time on the farm moves fast when we're incredibly busy and have little down time. From getting our chiles and beans in the ground, to making a new jam, to enjoying late season rain but not all the weed whacking or intense allergies that come with it, I'm already feeling tired!
We're gearing up for a big season of growing 12 different kinds of chiles (and somehow 9 different kinds of beans?) and are stuffing our faces with as many perfectly ripe strawberries from our field as we can. As our chile plants stretch their roots deep into the soil over the next few months, we hope you spend your summer cooking with our chile powders and finding new flavors you love.
Don't forget to share what you cook with us! We love hearing how you use our chiles. Read on to learn more about what we've been up to and what's new in our store!
Making preserves is a perfect way to showcase the versatility of the chiles we grow here in Boonville. Our next addition to the Boonville Barn lineup is a Strawberry & Chile Jam. This jam is packed with organic California strawberries and our Piment d’Ville.
It is bursting with ripe strawberry sweetness followed by a lingering heat from the Piment d’Ville. Slather it on a piece of buttered toast or add a spoonful to a scoop of vanilla ice cream. You won’t be disappointed. This jam is only available in 10 oz jars.
Grab a jar of the Strawberry & Chile Jam on its own or in a duo with our Citrus & Chile Marmalade!
As pants become shorts and gardens begin to explode with the bounty of summer, it’s time to make sure you have the perfect chile powders to pair with every meal! Here’s some of our favorite summer meal options when it's too hot to turn on your stove:
Our team spent last week planting all 70,000 of our chiles. Yes, 70k chile plants plus all our beans. It’s … quite a lot of work! I even convinced my dad to help us plant which is a feat in itself! And yes it might look extreme to be wearing a down jacket and hat while planting chiles in June but it was about 45 degrees that morning!
Here I am dropping chile plants down this planting tool (it’s normally used for bulbs). It’s got a point end that you jab into the ground and release the handle to make a hole and allow for the chile plant to drop into the soil.
We then follow with shovels to top each hole with a bit of soil. Repeat till all the plants are in the ground.
While we get our plants in the ground a bit later than other farms around, its important to remember that we’re not rushing to bring the first chile to market during the summer. Instead, we give the chiles time to fully ripen on the plants in the field before harvesting them to dry. Our temps here stay pretty cold in late May overnight (some vineyards were running their frost fans at the end of the month!) so we try and give the soil as much time to warm up before we plant our crop.
Every fall during the chile harvest, we string up some Espelette chiles for ourselves and for friends as a special token of the fall’s bounty. The 2021 harvest season was a bit hectic for me and Gideon and even though Nacho kept reminding me that he had made a bunch of Espelette ristras, I kept filing it away in the back of my head for later.
While taking inventory last week, I came across the 25 perfect ristras of Espelette chiles that Nacho made in November. These strings of chiles are perfect for hanging in your pantry so they are accessible when you need dried chiles to cook with.
They are also a great way to adorn your kitchen and other parts of your home. In the Basque region, the sides of buildings are covered in strings of dried chiles. It’s a really beautiful sight. Use these ristras within 2 years for cooking or as a decoration for 10 years.
]]>We truly have no plans to become a jam company, but what started as a way to use extra chile powder during the pandemic has turned into a delicious way to highlight some of our spices! Our Citrus and Chile Marmalade is packed with California-grown ingredients including oranges and lemons, Big Sur sea salt, and our Piment d’Ville.
The flavor profile of the marmalade is one of deep citrus ~ lingering heat ~ tad bitter ~ tinge sweet.
It’s a little saucy, a little jammy, and is the perfect cheese plate companion. Use it as a dipping sauce, as a glaze, a spread, or eat it by the spoonful.
I really enjoy the marmalade on toast or as a glaze on coffee cake. Last week, Zingerman’s Deli paired the marmalade on their Sweet Butter Tea Cake and it was absolutely delicious. The marmalade is great on a grilled turkey and cheese sandwich and can even be used in a sweet chile glaze for shrimp!
Aside from our olive oil, this marmalade and last years Strawberry and Espelette jam are the only products that we don’t make here on the farm. Last year, we got great feedback about these products and we've started exploring how to recreate these a bit closer to home (the strawberry jam was made by a friend in Michigan).
We're currently working to recreate our Strawberry and Espelette jam from last year, but with organic strawberries from Rodriguez Family Farms. And in August we'll be working with a local kitchen to both highlight and balance our Comapeño harvest with an additional spread. So, while we have no plans on becoming a jam company, we're still excited by these three products and how they help us highlight not just great producers in California, but our spices as well!
Each time I put together a cheese and charcuterie board for me and Gideon to share, I always add a jar (or a little dish) of Piment d’Ville.
I think that PdV is the perfect thing to sprinkle on a tangy goat cheese or on a creamy triple cream wheel of brie as it helps round out the flavors on the board without being overwhelmingly spicy. Slather your cheese on a cracker and give a sprinkle of Piment d’Ville - I go for Classic or Smoky Piment!
We learned recently that in the early days of the spice trade, spices were mixed into wheels of cheese to stretch the expensive ingredients so that they could be enjoyed for longer periods of time.
Whether you make a batch of Piment-o Cheese or mix any of our chile powders into a bowl of soft goat cheese, your cheese plate will shine. And don’t forget to add our Citrus and Chile Marmalade to the board too! It goes great with hard cheese like manchego, other aged crystally cheeses and with soft cheese as well.
Cherry Bombe is an indie media company that champions women in the food and drink world through features in their quarterly print magazine, podcast, and events. We were lucky enough to be featured as one of the “Members We Love” in Issue No. 19 all about entrepreneurs! Head to www.cherrybombe.com to get The Entrepreneur Issue!
Above: Smiling with last month’s feature in NYT Cooking and Cherry Bombe!
Florence Fabricant said that our Calabrian Chile Flakes “deliver an almost floral aroma and balanced, lingering heat with a whisper of sweetness. Use with abandon on pizza, in linguine with clams, even over steamed lobster.” So, it’s time to do what Flo Fab said and use the Calabrian Chile Flakes on everything!
If you haven’t tried them yet, we promise they are SO much more flavorful than the generic “Crushed Red Chile Flakes” you might be used to. Give them a try and let us know what you think! It’s been really exciting to see how much people enjoy these new chile flakes!
On Thursday May 12th at 6:30pm EST, we will be joining the Zingerman’s Deli team for a Meet the Maker online dinner! We will spend an hour chatting about our farm and what all we produce in Boonville. Zingerman’s Deli is an Ann Arbor, Michigan institution that is celebrating its 40th year of serving some of the best sandwiches in the country. Zingerman’s is an incredible supporter of small food businesses and we’re so lucky to be on the shelves in the Deli! (Side Note: Gideon and I happen to really love their Reuben Sandwich kits. And yes, our dog is named Reuben. Highly recommend!)
I’m really excited about this event especially because the Zingerman’s team has put together 5 really fun dishes with our chiles including:
- Fresh Zingerman’s Goat Cheese with Piment d’Ville and Matzo Chips
- Poblano Mac and Cheese
- Zingerman’s famous Tea Cake glazed with our Citrus and Chile Marmalade
Dinner is available for pick up at the Deli in Ann Arbor or can be overnighted across the country (just order by May 8!). There’s also the option to join for just the chat at a reduced price. Tickets are available for purchase through Zingerman’s Deli. Hope to see you on the 12th!
A quick note to let you know that everything on our website is from the 2021 harvest! Chile powders! Whole chiles! The handful of Tolosa beans that are left! Yes, all of it!
We spend February - November each year growing our crop for the year, August-November harvesting, and September-December drying and grinding everything. Right now, our greenhouse is full of our chile starts as they enter their last full month of time in the greenhouse. At the end of May, they will head outside to “harden off” before getting planted in our fields in early June.
When you see the “2021” date on our chiles, that means the chiles were harvested from August - November in 2021. Peppers go right from the field into our greenhouse to dry. For our chile powders, we then remove the stems and seeds of each chile before sending them into our dehydrator. Each variety then ground, bulk packed, and stored in a temperature/light/humidity controlled environment to preserve their quality. Then, when we’re running low on jars, we break down bulk packs into individual jars to ensure the chile powders stay as fresh as possible.
We currently have 9 different chile powders available, a number that seems truly huge since our farm business was built on originally growing one sole chile for our Piment d’Ville.
By the time you've read this we will have harvested our first round of strawberries! We grow these to help round out our season, and after an almost complete crop failure in 2021 our new plants this year have been doing well. Much of our harvest is driven down the road to The Apple Farm, which they turn into jam. We also supply berries to businesses around the valley, and individuals who can take a half or full flat (6 or 12 pints).
Its hard not to feel optimistic this time of year, as all our baby chile pepper plants in the greenhouse spend their days developing roots, and our berry harvest is almost a month an a half ahead of last year. There is something special about being able to walk outside the office and eat a red ripe berry that has been warming in the sun!
That’s right, y’all. Four. New. Chiles. Each of these chiles are incredibly distinct and range from mild to ultra spicy. There’s a little something for everyone and flavors you might not expect.
Since these chiles are so different from what we’ve grown in the past, we have the chiles available on our website by the individual jar instead of as a 2 jar pack.
Want a deeper dive on the Guajillo Chile Powder, Habanero Chile Powder, Calabrian Chile Flakes, and the Ají Limón Chile Powder? Keep scrolling!
We can't wait to see what you think.
Guajillo chiles are one of the backbone flavors of Mexican cooking. This chile powder is a really different texture than our other chile powders. It’s ground three times, making it superfine and almost velvety in texture (similar to paprika).
As a mild chile, the guajillo chile powder isn’t going to add much heat to whatever you’re cooking, but will add the background notes you want from a good chili powder. And in chili powder, I’m referring to the more classic spice blend of guajillo and ancho chiles, coriander, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder and salt that’s in most seasoning packets for making a pot of chili!
You can also use 1 teaspoon of the guajillo chile powder as a substitute for 1 whole dried guajillo chile pepper in any recipe.
Nacho, our foreman, has a really great description of what the heat of habanero chiles is like when eaten raw. He said that habanero chile normally starts with heat in your mouth, then heat in the chest, and then spice all the way into your belly. The habanero chiles we grew stopped in the chest when eaten raw. And dry, the heat mellows quickly, before headed into your chest.
The hybrid variety of habanero chiles that we grew (the NuMex Suave Orange) is packed with tropical sour pineapple flavors. It was bred for strong flavors without an overwhelming heat, leaving just a touch after we processed it, but nothing that will sting or linger. It’s unlike any chile powder I’ve ever used and I’m really excited to keep finding new ways to use it. [Note: If you’re looking for lots of heat, check out the Ají Limón instead]
Thinking of uses, the first things that came to mind was a cheese and bean quesadilla with avocado and mango salsa or on a fresh fish ceviche. Nacho thinks its best on grilled chicken. I’m holding out for early stone fruit season and will ask Gideon if he could make a stone fruit galette (Peaches! Apricots!) and I will secretly sprinkle the habanero chile powder on top. It would also be great on the rim of a cocktail!
I have a habit of shaking absurd amounts of those crushed red chile flakes on my pizza, but I still have no idea what is really in “crushed red chile flakes.” Okay, yes, it’s some kind of dried red chile or a mix of them. But! As someone who grows chiles it's important to me to know what the heck kind of chile is in there! I knew I wanted to find and grow a perfect chile that would not only be delicious on pizza, but one you could put a name on. And so, we did.
Staying true to my Italian roots I was able to find a variety of cayenne chile that hails from Calabria and was good for drying. These chiles are beautiful when they grow, with long spindly bodies that curl in all different directions.
Use our Calabrian chile flakes as you would crushed red chile flakes. I highly recommend getting a take out pizza from your favorite pizza shop and sprinkling them on each slice. What Gideon and I have really been loving is Pasta Aglio e Olio, specifically Roy Choi’s recipe that’s published in Food & Wine from the movie Chef (also a favorite).
Ají Limón is also known as Aji Lemon, Aji Limo, Lemon Drop pepper, or in it's native Peru as Qillu Uchu. This chile has incredible lemony citrus and hops notes if you can get past its stinging heat. I think this would be perfect on ceviche, in the classic Peruvian Aji de Gallina, in a fermented hot sauce, or paired with bright, acidic flavors like vinegar, coriander, and garlic. As a note: these chiles need a much hotter climate than we can provide on our farm and we won't be growing it again. Once the 2021 harvest is gone, it's gone!
Thanks for waiting patiently for over a year and a half for our 2021 harvest of olive oil! If you’re new here, you might have missed the fact that in 2020 we had an incredibly small crop of olives and decided it wasn’t worth the effort to harvest. This meant we didn’t have any olive oil to sell from about mid-2020 when we sold the last bottle of our 2019 harvest till right now! Even though we had our biggest harvest ever (4 macro bins full!) our yield was just under 50 gallons. That means we’ve got about 250 bottles to share with you. It’s not a ton, but we’re just really happy to have it available again.
Our olive oil is a blend of all the olives harvested on my family’s ranch (or front yard - how lucky!). We have 500 olive trees around 20 years old that were planted by the previous land owner in conjunction with UC-Davis as a research growing site for different olive varieties. There’s between 25-30 different kinds of olive trees, including both Spanish and Tuscan varieties.
Some olives are tiny and grow abundantly on a tree while others are huge but grow sparingly. The high variation also means that some trees are filled with deep blackish-purple olives when we harvest, while those on the next tree might still be green. We think this helps lead to a flavorful, yet balanced olive oil, with butteriness coming from the purple ripe olives and pepperiness coming from the still green olives. Gideon would chime in here and say that this years harvest was on the greener side!
We harvested our 2021 crop of olives on November 16. We were able to complete our harvest in 1 day thanks to the help of a great team and some pretty amazing olive harvesting rakes that we finally got to use.
While some of us harvested olives by hand, other folks walked around power raking trees with our new Infaco rakes and left no olive behind. We’ve used other mechanical rakes in the past, but these new rakes were no joke. They were easy to use and are an incremental step in finding mechanized solutions for making farming easier, even when farming on a small scale.
The number one thing we can tell you about olive oil is use it! Don’t hoard it in the pantry and save it for special occasions only. Enjoy it now at its peak flavor. You may notice some final settling in the bottle, but rest assured, that's natural! Olive oil is not something that gets better with age. Glug it on a simple bowl of our beans. Drizzle it on avocado toast. Fry your eggs in it or make a salad dressing for some winter chicories. With olive oil, the opportunities are endless.
If you’re wondering why our oil only says “olive oil” compared to “extra virgin olive oil”, the answer is simple. We produce such a small quantity of oil that that we don’t feel it’s necessary to get it professionally tasted and scored to determine it’s “extra virginity”. The California Olive Oil Council has put together a good primer on what exactly Extra Virgin means over on their website.
Regardless, our olive oil is free of additives, not blended with any other oils, and is made only from olives that we grow on our farm. Harvest date is on the bottom!
We have less than 20 bags of whole dried Ancho chiles remaining and about 80 bags of Mulato chiles left from the 2021 harvest. And unfortunately we are all sold out of our whole Espelette chiles.
But! There’s plenty of Red Serrano, Guajillo, Cascabel, and Yahualica chile de Arbol in stock! If you’ve already purchased some of our whole chiles, let us know what you’ve been cooking! We’re always excited to see what folks whip up with our goods. Reply to this email and let us know what you’ve been eating. Need recipe ideas? We’ve collected these recipes to help guide you in cooking with whole dried chiles.
It’s time to get going on the 2022 season here in Boonville. Nacho is starting to seed and germinate the first round of chiles (!!) and, after a disasterous 2021 season we got 6000 new strawberry plants in the ground a few weeks ago. Compost has been added to the olive trees and new drainage ditches have been dug around the chile fields. The sun is shining and it’s warm outside, but we haven’t had rain in over a month which feels a bit concerning now. Regardless, we’re staying busy and are looking forward to seeing the first chiles pop out of the soil.
Stay warm wherever you happen to be and enjoy the sunshine if you’ve got it.
- Krissy and the Boonville Barn Team
In the past 2 weeks, we’ve put stickers and harvest dates on countless bags and filled up each of those bags with the 2021 harvest of WHOLE DRIED CHILES!!!
Last year, our whole dried chiles sold out way faster than we expected (in 2 weeks!) which is why this year we grew both more varieties (seven!) and just more in general - we can’t wait to see what you cook with them.
Ancho! Mulato! Espelette! Yahualica! Cascabel! Guajillo! Red Serrano!
I’m assuming the 600 pounds of whole dried chiles we have will last for many months but honestly, you all continue to surprise me with how much you love our chiles.
If you are new to whole dried chiles, a great starting place is our Master Salsa Recipe. Or just start by popping a chile or 2 into your next pot of beans! For those looking for more inspiration, you can try Arcelia’s Mole de Pollo and take a look at our growing list of recipes that use whole dried chiles. We’ll keep adding to this list when we find other delicious recipes out there. Found a recipe that you love that uses whole dried chiles? Send a message to hello@boonvillebarn.com with the recipe and we’ll add it to the list.
If you see something go out of stock, it might be that we just need to pack more up. I’ll add a disclaimer to the product listing when we have fully sold out of our inventory of that chile so make sure to sign up for the ‘Back in Stock” emails to ensure you get what you’re looking for. Right now, the only chile we are pretty light on is the ancho.
Additionally, because these chiles are light, but also bulky, it's best to order in quantities of 2, 6 or 10. Odd amounts may result in some ... strangely filled large boxes with high shipping costs.
The rains have poured down on us here in Anderson Valley since the end of October and we’re happy to report that our irrigation pond is filling up. At this time last year, I think we could still see the bottom of the pond and right now, the water level is the highest I’ve ever seen it. We've had over 20 inches of rain and it's only January. There’s daffodils blooming (yes, too early) but the lush winter grasses are tinted yellow after a hard frost and cold weather just before the New Year.
Our cover crop is slowing growing in and we’re already flipping the greenhouse over from chile drying zone to chile growing zone. We’ll wait to start germinating all our seeds till next month but we’re deep in 2022 planning mode with any seeds we need on order and are trying to find the right balance between growth and what our bodies and spirits find realistic and enjoyable. We went a little wild in 2021, growing more varieties of chiles than we ever had before which was utterly exhausting. This year, we’re cutting out what either didn’t work well or was just too much (a sad goodbye to Dakota Black popcorn and Aji Limon chiles that you probably didn’t even know we were growing). Cutting things back a bit and focusing on what we know we're good at will be a welcome change this year.
Oh! Two very lovely articles about us came out at the end of the year. Check out these great pieces from California Grown and Modern Farmer!
Some of these recipes call for chiles that we don't currently grow. We recommend finding them at Curio Spice Co or Oaktown Spice Shop.
Thai Panang Curry Paste - Serious Eats
Thai Red Curry Paste - Wanderlust Kitchen
Spicy Chili Crisp - Serious Eats
Salsa Macha - Bon Appetit
Braised Lamb Shoulder with Chilies and Dates - Serious Eats
Texas Chili Con Carne - Serious Eats
Turkey and Bean Chili - Bon Appetit
Tacos Al Pastor - Chef Gabriela Cámara
Chicken Tinga Tostadas - Food52
Chili Colorado - Bon Appetit
Red Pozole with Pork - Serious Eats
Pozole Rojo - Mexico in My Kitchen
Beef Birria - House of Yumm
Burmese Chicken Braised in Coconut Milk and Turmeric - Food52
Smoky Pork 'n' Beans with Red Chiles - Food52
A variety of recipes for Guajillo chiles - Rick Bayless
]]>The 2021 harvest is complete - everything is in from the field, and we’ve got the final round of peppers hitting the dehydrator next week. As we start selling the 2021 harvest and start to dream about the New Year, it’s important for me to take a second and put the numbers down on a page to really grasp what we accomplished since harvest started in mid-August.
Honestly, no wonder we’re all so tired! Oof!
Add a t-shirt, hat, or tote to your order! Our sturdy tote bags are great for filling with gifts, groceries, or snacks for a long car ride. Add them to your gift order and we’ll pack everything inside it for your recipient! I only keep 1 of our t-shirts in my closet because if I had multiple, I would wear it more than once a week - it’s that soft and cozy! And our BBC hats are perfect to keep the winter sun out of your eyes which happens to be extremely intense (and hot?) here in Boonville lately.
Gideon, my husband and the guy tippy tapping away on his computer making sure we have all our packaging, supplies, and folks get paid (i.e., business partner) joined the Anderson Valley Volunteer Fire Department in June 2020 and has spent the past year and a half responding to calls of all kinds across the valley and offering support to folks on their worst of days. And he’s been nominated for Fire Fighter of the Year here in Boonville! I couldn’t be prouder of him. For every t-shirt, hat, or tote purchased, we donate $5 to the AV Volunteer Fire Dept. While I’m not the coolest under pressure or fire related situations, I’d love to do my part and raise a bit more $$ for the Fire Department before the year closes out and I’d love your help in getting there.
(Full disclosure, the picture is from a driver training event, he's very serious when responding to an emergency...)
Thanks for being a part of what we do here in Boonville. We wouldn’t be here without you.
I’m truly still in shock that 2 weekends ago, James Beard Award winning cookbook author Dorie Greenspan decided to use her monthly column in the Sunday New York Times Magazine to talk about Piment d’Ville and what we’re doing here in Boonville.
Dorie took the time to get to know me, understand what makes our farm special, and pair our story with an easy to make recipe to show folks what to do with Piment d’Ville. It feels like an incredible honor.
Dorie’s Sweet Potato Galette is a fun addition to your Thanksgiving, holiday or Friday night table! I’m highly averse to making dough (I do not consider myself a baker) but even I was able to make this pastry dough! The Piment d’Ville is mixed with cream cheese and spread on the cooked pastry dough as a thin layer of Pimento Cheese-like spread. Thin layers of apples and sweet potato are sliced and set atop the cheese. It all gets brushed with maple syrup and Piment d’Ville and becomes a truly sweet and savory pair.
Missed it in print? Read the article here and find the recipe here! (You may need a NYT/NYT Cooking subscription to access the links)
The Boonville Barn Collective is a woman-owned farm that’s been producing unique chile powders for 10 years in the resource-rich Anderson Valley of Northern California. Piment d’Ville is our signature, a domestic version of the coveted Basque Piment d’Espelette. We're honored to have you as a follower of the farm. If you're on Instagram, be sure to give us a follow and please do reach out if you have questions or feedback about anything we grow!
There’s SO much work that goes into making super fresh farm-to-jar spices and so much pedaling that goes into bike-threshing our beans. We’ve spent the past 9 months growing, harvesting, drying, grinding, and packing our chile powders, beans, and popcorn for you and we're excited to share the fruits of this year's labor!
We're putting the finishing touches on this year's crops and have most things ready to go. Our tiny team works incredibly hard and it doesn’t feel right to discount the work that we’ve put in all year as we release our 2021 products. We hope that (if you are able) you choose to support small businesses, like ours, this year in your gifting or choose to stock up on our products for yourself!
We’re about 90% done with our harvest here in Boonville. We have about 1 more day of harvesting chiles and we’re hoping to harvest our olives this week! It’s been a long but fruitful harvest season and we can’t wait to share this new batch with you.
This has been a pretty wild past month. At this point, we have harvested somewhere around 15 tons of chiles and still have a solid amount to bring in from the fields. We've been working extremely hard to clean beans, process chiles, and make sure that we've got a solid variety of goods for y'all coming from this harvest and we hope you are getting excited.
And with that, it's time to open up subscriptions for our second year of the Boon Box - our 3x a year delivery of curated goods from our farm at a 10% discount!
** Note: The first box of the year ships in early December **
The Boon Box is the best way to enjoy everything we produce here in Boonville, including trial runs on spices we haven't shared before and small harvests of beans that we don't sell on our website!
We’ve timed the boxes to ensure you have a fresh and ready supply of our spices. We won’t overwhelm you with Piment, but instead share the bounty we have to offer!
Have we mentioned that this makes a great gift for friends and family for the holidays?
Each box is filled with an average of $50 worth of chile powders, beans, popcorn, chile salts, whole chiles, and other surprises we might have made with our chiles. We also write a zine for each box and include new and favorite recipes so you know how to use each item you receive.
This year's subscription will look similar to last year's with a few new additions. Here's what you can expect:
- Box 1 in December will contain the Piment d'Ville Collection Box from the 2021 harvest, 2 pounds of dry beans, and a pound of popcorn
- Boxes 2 and 3 in March and July will have a mix of Poblano chile powder, Comapeño chile powder, our chile salts, and whole dried chiles. They will be spaced out throughout the other two shipments in an effort to keep things interesting and balanced
- You'll receive at least 2 new chiles that may or may not be available for purchase outside of the box including a Calabrian Chile Flake and a Smoky Habanero Chile Flake (Pictures below!!)
- New recipes to continue giving you inspiration in the kitchen!
- Overall, folks will get 4-5 pounds of dry beans. If cooking and eating dry beans isn't your thing, we would recommend supporting us in a different way, or sharing with a friend
With your one time purchase, you will receive a box from us in December, March, and July filled with things we grew here on our farm.
In purchasing a subscription, you purchase our products at a 10% discount and help ensure we have the funds we need during our planning season in the winter as we figure out what the 2022 growing season will look like.
We have a limited number of subscriptions available and they will sell out.
Our first year of the Boon Box was a resounding success and if you need encouragement to sign up, here's what some of last year's subscribers had to say.
"It gave me something different to cook!"
"I loved getting sneak peaks of items before they were available or stuff with small yields that were exclusive to the box. Getting the story behind everything in the box made it that much better. The farm news was always so well written and honestly lovely!"
"I love chile powders and had tried yours, but I started to use it more often especially with your recipes and tips... Keep this up!"
"Love access to new products and items you typically sell out of."
"It motivated me to try new things. Now I look for bean recipes which is something I never did before!"
While we grew more chiles and beans this year to expand our subscriptions for the Boon Box, it's still pretty limited! If it seems like something you might be interested in, we recommend signing up now so you don't miss out. The number of subscriptions we sell is dependent on what we have harvested and there's some crops that just don't produce too much!
We hope that you're just as excited as we are about the Boon Box. We truly look forward to the days when our office is brimming with these boxes ready to ship out the door and the smile on our Post Office employee's faces when we have everything bagged up for them and ready to go!
Thanks for supporting our farm!
Gideon, Krissy, and Nacho