Jalapeno Poppers with Goat Cheese and Raspberry

This months recipe is one of my own design and it should be noted that I rarely pay attention to exact measurements of ingredients or times or processes.  Le Singe does not bother with such trivial bits of information which is perhaps why he is such a terrible baker.  But I did my best to keep track of what I was doing for your sakes, dear readers.  What originally started out as a craving for some raspberry-chipotle glazed chicken, evolved into this experimental popper.  Now, I've never actually made poppers before but the idea seemed simple enough; stuff small and reasonably spicy peppers with tasty cheesy fillings and deep fry.  Simple, no?  Well, this took some doing and it was, as I said, an experiment and a challenge to venture into new culinary directions.  For the peppers I knew ahead of time I wanted to try them both fresh and pickled.  If you opt for the latter, I suggest starting the day before to leave time for a pickling process.  And so I present to you recipe, method, and confessed mistakes.

Jalapeno Poppers with Goat Cheese and Raspberry:

Makes about 16 poppers

Filling:

4 oz Cream Cheese

5 oz Goat Cheese

Salt 

Pepper

Seedless Raspberry Jam

Pickled Peppers:

5 Tbls Kosher Salt

3 Tbsp Sugar

3/4 cup white vinegar

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

1 cup cold water

16 cored and seeded jalapenos

For breading and frying:

2 beaten eggs

1/4 cup flour

1 cup breadcrumbs

Vegetable oil 

For the pickled version, mix all of the ingredients listed above in a plastic container with a tight fitting lid.  I find that the kind a quart of wonton soup comes in does the job nicely.  Let sit in the fridge at least overnight.  I let mine go for about 2 days and they were great.

If you are not a big vinegar fan (which I can't imagine anyone not being), you can just core and seed fresh jalapenos and skip the pickling step.

Now, once the peppers are cored and seeded it's time to fill.  I discovered that cheaping out and using a sandwich baggie with a corner cut off, was not adequately strong enough for the extruding of cheese filling (read: exploded baggie) so I recommend the use of the pastry bag.  However, this method worked well for the raspberry filling, so go ahead with that route.  Fill each popper with about a teaspoon worth of raspberry.  I tried to leave a line of it laid down the inside of the pepper.  Next, fill the pepper with the cheese mixture.  When you've finished you'll have something that looks like these.  Once all the peppers are filled, put them into an airtight container and refrigerate for an hour or two to allow the filling to set up.

Now you'll need your breading stations: eggs beaten in a bowl, flour in the bowl next to that, and breadcrumbs in a bowl next to that.  Take the filled peppers out of the fridge and begin the breading process by first dipping each pepper into the beaten egg, then roll it in the flour, dip once again into the egg, and finally roll in the breadcrumbs.  If you are lucky to have such dedicated friends as LaGar

lique and Jamesicles, this process can be sped along into one great breading and frying assembly line.

You will need about an inch of vegetable oil in whatever vessel you choose to fry in. 

 I used a pot.  I regret that at the time of this writing I do not own a thermometer to 

check the temp on the oil.  I recommend that you use one and keep the oil at around 275 or 300.  I had to kind of guess this and wound up with some well done poppers on the first few tests.  Anyway, using a pair of tongs, because oil burns suck, gently place two or three poppers into the hot oil, being careful not to crowd them.  Fry until they reach a golden brown and then remove to a plate lined with paper towels or a cooling rack placed on top of a cookie sheet.

Let these cool for a few minutes because the insides, for those of you fortunate enough to not know this from first hand experience, are molten lava hot!  Enjoy!

Now, I have to tell you that there are a few things I learned from this.  One is that using raspberry jam straight from the jar seems to have too high of a water content when deep fried and got way too liquid-y inside the poppers.  It just did not stand up well and the flavor was lost due to the dripping of it onto the plate at first bite.  I would recommend cooking about 3/4 of a cup of this stuff down to about a 1/3 of a cup and cooling it before you attempt to fill the poppers.  I already mentioned the part where you should use a pastry bag for the cheese filling because of exploding baggie, and the fact that using ones fingers just does not get the cheese sufficiently stuffed into the poppers.  Then you're left with just a bite or two of cheesy goodness and then you run out!  Unacceptable!  Please see photos below for final product shots including illustration of above two mistakes.  Other than that, I feel like this recipe warrants another try. My brave taste testers discovered that some home grown peppers that I got from Scotts and Pans were really effing spicy as compared to the supermarket peppers.  Also they were divided on the pickled versus fresh debate but both seemed to enjoy the goat cheese/vaguely raspberry/jalapeno flavor combination.