Chasing Chiles Hot Spots Along the Pepper Trail

Chasing Chiles makes you feel like you are riding shotgun on Gary, Kraig and Kurt’s Spice Ship.

This book is an agri-culinary-eco-botanical odyssey that brings some of the most important issues about food, eating, and the impact of climate change to the fore in a way that is both engaging and compelling. A truly pleasurable read for anyone who appreciates authentic flavors and the pleasures of the table—and of course, the wisdom of our farmers. Practical principles we can all ‘swallow’ is the guiding light here.

Chasing Chiles looks at both the future of place-based foods and the effects of climate change on agriculture through the lens of the chile pepper—from the farmers who cultivate this iconic crop to the cuisines and cultural traditions in which peppers play a huge role.

Why chile peppers? Both a spice and a vegetable, chile peppers have captivated imaginations and taste buds for thousands of years. Native to Mesoamerica and the New World, chiles are currently grown on every continent, since their relatively recent introduction to Europe (in the early 1500s via Christopher Columbus). Chiles are delicious, dynamic, and very diverse—they have been rapidly adopted, adapted, and assimilated into numerous world cuisines, and while malleable to a degree, certain heirloom varieties are deeply tied to place and culture—but now accelerating climate change may be scrambling their terroir.

Over a year-long journey, three pepper-loving gastronauts—an agroecologist, a chef, and an ethnobotanist—set out to find the real stories of America’s rarest heirloom chile varieties, and learn about the changing climate from farmers and other people who live by the pepper, and who, lately, have been adapting to shifting growing conditions and weather patterns. They put a face on an issue that has been made far too abstract for our own good.
Read More: Chasing Chiles

The Authors

Kurt Michael Friese

Kraig Kraft

Gary Nabhan

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