For more than two decades, chile peppers have ruled our lives. While Paul has specialized in the horticultural aspects of the pungent pods and breeding new varieties, Dave has focused on the food history of chiles and their usage in international cooking. During this time, we have witnessed an explosion of interest in chiles, fueled mostly by the media. Chiles have evolved from being viewed as something to avoid ("they're all too hot!") to being considered a necessity in the larder as people have learned about the different varieties of chiles, their varied heat levels and flavor profiles, and their ability to transform ordinary meals into spectacular ones. While interest in cooking with chiles has exploded, growing them has become a major hobby. We have "chilehead" gardening friends all over the world, from Finland to Australia, and we calculate that between us, we have made chile pepper pilgrimages to nearly thirty countries in our quest to learn more about them. When a nursery in New Jersey raises five hundred varieties of chiles to sell as bedding plants via mail order, you know that they have reached the peak of popularity! Knowledge about chile peppers, is, of course, multidisciplinary, crossing into the fields of botany, horticulture, history, archaeology, medicine, chemistry, and culinary arts around the world. We could not delve deeply into all of these fields in a book of this length, so we focused on horticulture and culinary arts, two of the most popular avocations internationally.

That said, we cover the other disciplines thoroughly at our two Web sites, the Fiery Foods and Barbecue SuperSite (www.fiery-foods.com) and the Chile Pepper Institute site (www.chilepepperinstitute.org). The past decade has seen many advances in the field of chile peppers, and we cover them all in this volume. The new hottest pepper in the world. The technique for juicing chiles.

Hydroponic chiles. Bonsai chiles. New flavor profiles. New chile varieties. We hope that our readers have as much fun using this information as we did in researching and writing it!.