Chiles — ComidaTime Pantry

The chile that makes Peruvian food taste Peruvian: fruity, floral, and orange even when the rest of the plate is pale.

Peru's berry-dark chile — mild heat, raisin and smoke, the other half of ají amarillo.

The wide, wrinkled dried chile that smells like raisins and chocolate: the body of many moles before the cacao goes in.

The chile that birds scatter and cooks fear a little: the heat of Thai, Vietnamese, and a few Ethiopian pots.

Oil-packed southern Italian heat — fruity, medium, on pizza and pasta.

The rattle: seeds loose in a round shell, nutty and medium, for salsas and adobos.

The thin red heat a French or Moroccan pot uses when it wants fire without a dried chile ritual.

The generic heat the books still write when a kitchen means flakes, powder, or a dried red.

The slender red chile that turns a table salsa into a warning: clean heat, little fruit, no apology.

Tiny wild-leaning Mexican chile, sharp and seedy, for salsas and a salt rim.

The jalapeño after fire: smoke, sweet heat, and the taste of a salsa that has been thinking overnight.

The flesh that goes into Spanish chorizo and a spoon of salsa.

Whole dried pods — the starting point of a Mexican salsa and a Chinese oil.

Piment d'Espelette: the Basque red that seasons a French kitchen without shouting cayenne.

Fresh heat, unnamed variety: the instruction to add a living pepper.

The workhorse dried chile of the Mexican book: brick-red, fruity, and in more recipes than any named pepper in the series.

Spanish slender chile, pickled or dried, next to a Basque steak.

Pale Mexican chile — banana-pepper cousin, mild, for escabeche and rajas.

Tropical fruit and a serious burn: the chinense chile of the Yucatán and the Caribbean.

The chile that left home and kept its name: mild enough to pickle, serious enough to smoke into chipotle.

The red that colors a rogan josh without turning it into a dare.

Small smoked jalapeño, fruitier than a long chipotle mora, at home in adobo.

A poblano that ripened and dried into chocolate and dried fruit — mole's dark cousin of ancho.

Flash-fried Galician peppers: most mild, one a surprise.