Roasting Green Chilies

This became a necessety this last summer when Pat had a nice gardenful of these babies. I couldn't keep up with eating them so i roasted them and froze them so i could use them for later. I must say, they are MUCH better roasted!

Preheat your oven’s broiler.
Lay the chilies (this actually works with any kind of peppers) on a foil-lined baking sheet.
Place the pan under the broiler (get as close as you can to the heating element) and let them broil until most of the skin is black. (You can also do this over an open flame on your cooktop or grill.)
Remove the pan, flip the chilies over, and repeat on the other side. When they’re done, they should look black and gross. (Note: the charring process should take 10-15 minutes. You don’t want to leave them in there forever because they’d eventually disintegrate or become too mushy.)
While they’re still very hot, place the roasted chilies into a large Ziploc bag.
Then seal the bag and allow to sit around for 20 minutes or so. This will allow the chilies to steam, which will cause the charred skin to loosen (At this point i have thrown them into the freezer as is, defrosted and skinned them later and they've worked out quite well.)
When you’re ready, remove the chilies from the bag, one by one, and with your fingers, gently peel off the black skin, discarding the charred flesh.
From here you can package these tightly in a Ziploc and freeze them for later use.
If you’d like to use them right away, just slice them open, lengthwise and scrape out the seeds with a knife or spoon. The more seeds you leave in the hotter they will be.

Roasting Garlic

Nothing beats REAL fresh roasted garlic. It's super easy.

Grab a bunch of heads of garlic. Try not to buy them too small.
Cut off just enough of the top to expose all of the cloves inside.
Find a old pie pan or sometimes i even like to use my cupcake/muffin tins.
Drizzle a little olive oil (1 or 2 tablespoons) in the pan and tilt around to coat the bottom thoroughly.
Place the garlic heads, cut side up, in the pan. If the heads won’t sit flat on the pan, just give the bottom a little slice to even it out (you may also even try puttig the cut side down so that the whole cut end gets carmalized).
Drizzle the exposed cloves with olive oil. You want them to have a coating of moisture so they won’t burn easily.
Sprinkle the cloves with salt (Kosher salt is best and super forgiving) and pepper.
Cover them with aluminum foil and pop them into a 375-degree oven and bake for 40 to 45 minutes.
Now, all you have to do to extract the roasted cloves is to grab the bottom of the head and gently squeeze until the cloves pop out. They should be quite mushy.

Cutting an onion

It seems that i can never cut an onion right. By the time i get enough of the onion that i need, I'm usually in tears (from frustration and from the onion itself).

Here's a surefire way of doing it right and with minimal tears.

Start by cutting the onion in half from root to tip.
Lop off the top end.
Peel off the outer layer.
Then make several small, vertical slices all the way through the onion.
Next, rotate the onion 90 degrees and slice again, creating a fine dice.
The root end of the onion holds it all together while you slice away.