Korean chillies, forgotten fruits? Part 2

A good friend of mine from Korea Mr. Gunsoo Lim and I am sending seeds up and down the world.

He is keen for superhot chillies, and I am looking for the ones that have a story to them or that have history.

It is not only that we send chilli seeds over the world; we also try to learn about each other’s culture through our food and recipe’s.

So I have gotten seeds from him from herbs, medicinal and for the kitchen, or a combination of the two.

That is where we differ in culture too, for me Endive is a green, good cooked and raw.

For my Korean friend, his food is both food and good for something, be it health or garden anything.

He got me Garland Chrysanthemum or Golden Daisy, as a green to eat raw, be it good for anything, I hate it.

The flower is superb looking, good and healthy an all, not food in my mind.

However, I got Korean Perilla from him as well, good for the soul and for the stomach.

The seeds are used for oil, and that oil looks a bit like sesame oil, that is why this herb is called sesame leaf.

The leaf however does not taste like sesame at all.

Now sesame leaf is an herb one shouldn’t miss out off, it is superb to drop in your stir fry at the last moment, and has a fantastic smell and taste to it.

Hard to describe, I would almost say it is peppermint, without the pepper. Sort of like the menthol is skipped in the herb, and the tastes behind that in peppermint has gotten stronger by 5.

It has a bit of sweetness about it, that you taste when it has just touched the pan for a bit, raw it is more strong of taste.

My friend showed me, they eat sesame leaf raw, folded as a parcel.

In this parcel, there is a clove of garlic, a piece of chilli, and a spoonful of soy pasted.

Have to try that this year, a bomb of taste for sure!

Man this is getting long, and I even haven’t started about the Korean chillies.

After months of searching, my friend Mr. Gunsoo Lim had found 2 rare Korean chillies and send me a note that he had something special, not saying what.

Another month later, he told me he had asked two farmers to send seed from special chillies, which are not even for sale in the market or at seed stores.

To me it sounded a bit strange, but later he told me, there were just a few farmers left that grow them, as they aren’t commercial enough these chillies.

Ha, now we’re talking aren’t we?

So he had these farmers send seeds from east to west in Korean, from a very isolated area, and that took its sweet time.

Waiting is half the fun, so I read up on where these chillies come from.

The soobicho pepper (Soobi cho) and the chilsoungcho (Chilsoung Cho) both come from a county in the Gyeongsang province.

They come from the Yeongyang County (Yeongyang-gun); This an inland county in the north-eastern area of North Gyeongsang Province, South Korea.

The soobicho pepper is cultivated since the 1960s, with a hot and sweet taste.

These chillies are susceptible to pests, so must be grown with great care.

They have a low yield, and are now only grown in low numbers and small areas.

The chilsoungcho chillies were popular in the 1980s, and lately are hard to find.

Its chillies have the form of a Crucian carp. The taste of this pepper is mild and sweet.

These are the 2 very rare chilli seeds that came to me now about 2 months ago, and almost proud to be here in Holland, they grow big and proud, and are the largest plants I have now.

Chillies from Yeongyang, where people sing about their chillies, not joking it is true !

An isolated area difficult to access, Yeongyang is sometimes called an "inland island". The county has the lowest population of all counties in North Gyeongsang Province, being mountainous with deep ravines, and only 10 percent of land is cultivable. The county is famous for its apples and chili peppers, and is home to the Yeongyang Chili Pepper Experimental Station. From 1984, the county has elected a "Miss Chili Pepper" to represent Yeongyang chili peppers.

The area is also known as a centre of literature, with the tradition of scholars reading and reciting poetry deep in the mountains. I love poetry!

Writing this down, I see myself discovering this regent, eating their apples, chillies and tasting their recipe’s.
After experiencing their great hospitality, and good food I will climb a mountain there.

I see myself reciting my poetry, in the woods on the mountains in Yeongyang!

To my wife;

Tell it to the mountains,

tell it the trees,

tell it to the birds in the trees,

and the playful young foxes on the ground,

but tell it no woman,

or,

tell it to no man,

how much I love you.

For men can not believe,

that a man loves a woman,

like the way,

I love you!

Yours truly,

Bart J. Meijer

Chilli challenge, firebreathing idiots and the good they do!

I have always been interested in chillies, since I tasted one that was more than just hot.

So what does one do nowadays, ones goes on the internet to search for info.

Doing that I found that not all info is true, what a news, but also that there is a growing group of people that grow chillies themselves.

Most of the time people do that in order to get the ones you can’t get in the shops.

Smart idea I have to say, I am doing that myself too . . .

Looking online at facebook, twitter and what have ye, I found groups that thrive on the super-hot chillies.

Not my kind of thing really, for I want taste in my food, and not make food that’ll strip the paint off from any door.

Still, intrigued by it, I started reading up on those super-hot chillies.

Now as I did taste really wild chillies that were absolute taste bombs, I can imagine there are super-hot chillies that have super taste also.

Now devouring the info on the web, and reading about finger licking good chillies, I sort of got slave to the info.

My friend Chris Whitehouse, a great artist in painting and drawing who is helping me with a book I am writing, told me about this facebook group, Darth Naga’s funhouseoff pain. . . .

If I wanted to join, and I have to say I had to think about it.

For me, chillies are about taste and bringing some heat in the food, not more.

So, the funhouse of pain. . . .

Well I lurked there for a bit, and joined, expecting silly stories about people in pain for they were so daft to eat a super-hot chilli and had no milk in the house.

If I do burn up from a certain chilli, I use less or don’t eat that chilli ever again.

Nothing of that, or just a little, but most of all informative it is a group of chilli sillies like me.

Once and again you stumble over a video of someone eating a super-hot like having a sandwich, but that is about it.

So Chris asked me to look at a video of a super-hot chilli tester, who munches away chillies for fun and as a challenge.

No thanks, but after he asked me once again, I watched just one, and another.

I was not about to, as I think that there is a certain aspect of masochism in it, that I don’t like.

Why give yourself pain, in order to show that you can eat something?

Is it bravery, or just silly, intriguing question isn’t it?

So I “had” to look at this certain hot food taster.

Ted “the firebreating idiot” Barrus, is a promising name for something I just don’t want to see.

Still, this guy has something about him that I like.

He is not a madman or an idiot at all, a hardworking bloke that does reviews for ultra-hot chillies and sauces at the side.

Looking at a couple of his videos, I sort off started to be sort of a fan, and watch him at times eating away on something I’d rather not cook with.

We got friends at facebook, mailed a few times and even chatted with him.

He explained me a few things, and he explained why and what he did, for the love of chillies.

He now will be will be on the History channel in the future and has been mostly on ABC and some times on the BBC, he even has articles written about him in big newspapers and all.

He gets a kick out of eating them chillies and sauces, which I think is harmless, and comes from higher adrenaline and endorphin levels due to the pain.

Your body feels real pain like burning, even if it is not really burning.

So the body produces adrenalin and endorphin to help you with the pain, and those two give you a rush like running up the Mount Everest.

 Now sure, it is odd to eat a chilli that is hot enough to spice up a whole cow, but then again he is making something good out of it.

I have been looking at other tasters as well, and Ted Barrus stands out, as he keeps it nice and informative. I would therefore say he almost is “the ambassador for chillies” and their growers.

No, not almost, he is “the ambassador for chillies” for sure.

He takes the time to explain and warn people about the effects, and he tells about their taste.

He is the spokesman for the super-hot chilli and chillies in general, and he informs you about what sauces are great, and which are almost too hot to handle.

Yes, I am a fan!

More than fans he gets so famous now, that he is getting hate mails, he has a load of copy cats, and people steal his videos. He even has a stalker now. People seem to get happy leaving odd and brutal comments at his videos, and he gets sucked in the competition for the world’s hottest chilli.

The side effects of getting famous, he really is getting famous, as he should !

There are 2 more tasters that I want to mention.

One is Gareth Fenwick as he makes a wonderful description of the effects it has on him in tiny detail.

He really lets you in to the world of natural high almost, telling how and what happens if you eat a super-hot chilli.

He also has a great way of telling about their taste.

He is not over the hill, if you know what I mean.

Even the Netherlands has a bloke that eats chillies like there is no tomorrow.

His name is Ton Maas, and he sometimes does a taste testes with his son.

I had a chat with him just about a week ago, and as he and I both have Dutch as our native tongue, it is easier for me to learn.

Sorry, being Dutch and all. . . . hehe

He told me the kick was in the challenge as well as the effects. The side effects with the adrenalin and all, makes him feel a load better after eating something fiery.

I do have to say, even I get that kick a bit.

After a hard day’s work, eating a good dish that was a bit overboard with the chillies, I feel like I can climb a mountain !

Eat more heat,

Yours truly,

Bart J. Meijer

Korean chillies, forgotten fruit?

Are Korean chillies forgotten fruits?

I think they are. In all the time that I have been informing myself by reading, listening and looking, I have not ever found as much as a word about Korean chillies.

This is strange as the Korean cuisine is different from many others, although you see the influence of nearby countries . Still, the Koreans like to do it their own way, even with chillies.
I have been reading up on the Korean cuisine, and found a wonderful site from Maangchi, it differs for sure and it is lovely.
Wise with culture I would almost say, their cuisine is understandable, and honest.
You can see what goes in, and almost by the look of it, know that you like it.

Now their chillies, to say the least, are a world apart. They have their own chillies, and more then just one or two. They have loads. Some come from little counties, and mountain areas, some are just commercial.
But all of them are their own.

They even have their own herbs, as if they are living on a secluded island.
Perilla is known in the eastern countries, also in the US, but they have their own. And again, it is not like any other, it is special!
Their bonnetbell flower is different; now I wouldn’t spoil you too much with other secrets, and leave that to an other time.
We're looking at chillies today.

Koreans have a different approach to chillies to where I (and most of my readers) come from.
They describe their chillies with how they taste, and what they can do for you.
What they can do for you in the sense of health and good.
So one they are promoted for being good for the immune system, speeding up your metabolism, being good for people with type 1 diabetes, and even for heart problems.

The chilli was introduced in Korea by the Japanese, in the 17th century, where the Japanese held monopoly on “japanese mustard” as Portuguese missionaries called it.
They did obtain seeds at some point, even though they were told that chillies could only grow in their original habitat. good excuse at the time, but now Korea has loads.
It is said that the Koreans eat the most chillies per capita in the world, and they export over 1 million Kg per year.

The first Korean chilli I ate, and have growing now is the Cheongyang Gochu, said to be one of the hottest chillies in Korea.
It is said to be good for the health, waking up the digestive system is mentioned, as well as its capability to clean the body of disease in the digestive system. It is also praised for keeping food from going bad, and is even used to make hand sanitizer.

This chilli comes with a story, as there has been a quarrel about the history of this chilli.
The Cheongsong regent or county claims it is theirs, as they clame it has been developed by crossing a sweet pepper and Thai chilli. They say the name comes from where it was developed. And they claim it was developed in Chongsong and Youngyang, hence the Portmanteau, "CheongYang”
The Cheongyang county however claims it has been developed there, in the 70’s by the Agricultural Technology Center. The manager from Agricultural Technology Center claims that he does not have the records, but just was crossing hot chillies, and found this sort as a nice and stable result.

Ok, taste and appearance;
It is sort of a strange chilli plant, with nice white flowers, and has its fruits in clusters from 3-7 chillies.
It is not a Capsicum Baccatum or C. Chinense, but looks more like a C. Frutescens.
This chilli is both used green and red. The taste when green is odd, like a crossing between a green Jalepeños and a Rawit, great taste, and a long lasting burn.
Red however it is far hotter, and the taste resembles a Piri Piri more or Rawit.
It is said to be between 10K scoville and 30 K scoville, and believe me it is hot !
As the chillies are not huge, 10 mm thick at the biggest and about 40mm long at max, you can spike your food in steps with ease.
For “normal” people 2 or 3 will do just fine in a curry or a stir fry dish, and hot heads can chuck in a hand full.

More to come about Korean chillies !

Yours truly,

Bart J. Meijer

Going Green With Chillies, going Dutch or pure logic?

Subtitle: Cradle To Cradle with plants, or simply going green?

I love organic vegetables, fruit and herbs, the more pure the better I’d say. Over the years I have been growing potatoes, carrots, beetroot, beans and lots of other things.
 In time I have had various pests and diseases that did some or a lot of damage. I even tossed potted plants away or even removed them from the garden in order to get rid of the pests.

And how much time I have wasted with chemicals and rubbish; up to a point I got fed up with it all. Too bad, as it drains your energy, instead of bringing it and kills the joy of gardening.
 Gardening should be about good products and lovely flowers and all, not bugs and other negative things.
Gardening should be fun!

Going green with gardening, does not mean spending loads of time to work around chemicals in order to find a new and novel way to be green. Most of the solutions have been about for years.
In my mind most solutions are mere logic, or old wisdom that has been discarded as being old-fashioned. Going green is logical, so may I introduce you to a new term? Bio-waste was already a word; bio-weapons is a word, so I want to introduce the word Biologic.

Biologic will be about using logical sense to keep things bio or green, as easy and simple as it could be. Some new things, lots of old things, and using brain over what has been said by then industries for years, of pesticides.

So I learned a few things that might be nice to share, and would make your gardening easier, that is biologic!

Waste is merely waste if it is regarded as such.

An old grower of roses that kept a show garden in Boskoop Netherlands, told me a very old secret: Some tea roses are known to attract aphids a well known problem. The way to get rid of them or rather to not get them at all, is to put a banana skin around the stem of the rose, and it works wonders, worms love the skin, so it will be eaten in about 2-3 months, simply add a new skin very 2 months or so and your roses will be fine all year. Start with it before the winter, so the aphids won’t like the plant in spring. You can use them for chilli plants as well, but not too much, so a spoon full of shredded skin per plant will do.

Coffee grounds are full of Nitrogen and still has some caffeine left in it as well.
Cats hate them, so they won’t use your garden as much for doing a big one. . .
And snails and slugs get heart problems from caffeine and die fast.

Once I had an infestation with slugs, so I went to the local car dealer. He had this fancy espresso machine and tons of ground extra fine coffee, I spread it all over the garden and the next morning the garden was full with dead slugs and snails. Again, worms love that, and eat it away in a matter of weeks.

So that brings fresh food for the plants, as all the goodies in the grounds are made to perfect compost on the spot.

New biologic combined with old: make a spray against aphids and creepy crawlies - chilli and garlic spray!

Take a ultra-hot chilli, or some drops of extract, and simmer with some cloves of garlic, filter to use for spraying, and Bob’s your uncle, aphids do like chilli plants, but don’t like hot feet, nor do they like garlic. If you add a little dish washing soap and a dash of methylated spirit, the ones that are there will be killed, and the ones that wanted to come loose their appetite.

 

Last but not least, worm compost or vermicompost is the perfect fertilizer with loads of extras. Worms eat garbage, or bio-waste from anything green, or that used to be green. The best worms for the job are not the normal ones, but you should get manure worms or Eisenia Fetida. They eat manure, preferably horse manure, but anything else rotting will do as well.

All our kitchen waste is fed to worms, red wriggler worms or compost worms or simply redworms, and they love it, even coffee grounds, tea bags, cardboard, grass clippings or flowers they love. This is called vermicomposting or composting with worms.

It is way faster than the normal compost bin, even faster than a tumbler composter and gives less to no greenhouse gases such as Methane. Both can be combined, if you just add some worms to the bin, or tumbler. You can find the right worms at shops that sell worm bins, or you can find them in old manure.

If horse manure is over 1 year old, it has bound to have some nice little red worms in it.

I will not get deeper in the worm composting at the moment, but will give you some benefits.
Worm compost enriches the soil with micro-organisms; adding enzymes such as phosphatase and cellulose. The microbial activity in worm castings is 10 to 20 times higher than in the soil and bio-waste the worm ingests.
Wormcompost is 100% free of pathogens it is even tested and proven that worms can clean a layer of sewage waste in a matter of 7 days. . .

For your plants it enhances germination excels plant growth and crop yield, improves root growth and structure. The micro-organisms are adding plant hormones such as auxins and gibberellic acid to your potting soil, and the best part, aphids hate the smell of plants grown in soil with 10-15% worm compost added.

So enough of this difficult patho auxin gibberish.

Go green with your plants, go biologic!

More biologic to come.

Yours truly,

Bart J. Meijer

Recipe; Chili con Carne

Recipe: Chili con Carne: boring?

No it is not; you can tweak this recipe, to make it your own adventure in chilli land!

I told you about learning to cook, well guess what?

I am still learning too, and hope to keep learning!

In the Netherlands you have those herb mixes, and sachets with ready to go herbs.

They are rather nice, if you want to rush and still cook decent food.

Then again, you are eating food that somebody else has spiced.

Now one of those mixes I still used up to 6 weeks ago, great taste.

It will only cost you 1.69 Euro, and Bob’s your uncle.

So, some time ago, guess what, the brand was not in store anymore.

Tried another, near miss I’d say, just about not spot on.

I hate that, when shops take something out of their collection, don’t you?

As I said in my personal blog, I want to see things positively, and address problems as a challenge.

If I can. . . . .

So, I can do this by myself, really I can. . . .

Uhm . . . I will . .

So, I hit the net and started searching.

I will find the right way within weeks, as I make chili con carne once a week.

Coming weeks that is, until I get the hang of it.

Most of it I already knew, fresh garlic, fresh chillies or dried if I have to, onion, mushrooms, bell peppers etc. etc.

Ground beef, high quality, and please no hamburger meat as really good meat makes the chilli!

One thing though, beans. I tried several and did not like them all.

If I use the common bean, the brown one, well then have a huge problem with flatulence. . .

With what I ate last time; if I used the methane for my car, I could have driven miles. . .

So, I found that with kidney beans the problem is far less*, by a mile or 3.

That is why I use Kidney beans.

Soo, what herbs to use?

Now that amazed me, as I use most of them in Chinese and Indian recipes, so nothing to buy.

I like that, being Dutch and all, and it's amazingly simple!

Cumin, Oregano (Mexican if possible), Black pepper and?

Now that set me on the wrong foot, with these herbs it is almost there, but not spot on.

I tried various, and kept searching and serving, but even the missus said it was just a tad off.

After weeks I found that just a pinch of cinnamon does the trick.

Once, I put in about a little dash, and that is way too much, so a pinch it is!

So now you want to make it all?

Great ! Here we go !

You need:

Ground beef 400-500 grams, the better the quality, the better the chilli!

2 onions

4 tomatoes 300 gram

2 sweet Bell peppers yellow

3 cloves of garlic

Fresh chilli if possible or powder if you have to.

250 grams of mushrooms, champignon or white table mushrooms

Cumin a teaspoon

Oregano (Mexican if possible) a teaspoon or a bit more

Black pepper, fresh ground 10-20 twists of the wrist

A pinch of cinnamon

2 spoons of tomato paste

A small tin of sweet corn

2 tins of Kidney beans

3-4 bouillon/stock cubes, or 2 cups of real stock/bouillon.

Salt if stock/bouillon is added.

Start with your ground beef, put it in the pan on medium heat with a tablespoon of oil,
get it nice and loose, and let it get brown a bit.

If fat starts coming out of the beef, put in chopped onion and the garlic.

When the onion starts to glaze, put in the chopped Bell pepper.

Now is the time to put in the first chillies chopped, use about half you wanted to use, you can add more later.

Or use the chilli powder, but do take in mind to get great chilli powder.

Not the run in the mill normal Cayenne powder if you can, Kernow chilli farm has superb 30 chilli powder !

Other companies on the net have great powders and flakes also.

After 10 minutes, add the mushrooms and powder down the bouillon/stock cubes and add them.

Or if you have real stock/bouillon, add it slowly while stirring, and then put in a teaspoon of salt as the cubes have salt in them and real stock too little.

Now as stock has Bay leaf and other spices, you do not have to put in Bay leaf.

Add your spices, do not go overboard with the cumin, as it might give some bitter.

Then add the 4 tomatoes chopped and well, and give it all 10 minutes.

Lower the heat now, so it’ll go to a simmer.

Now the mushroom and tomatoes will start losing moisture, and you will really see it all get wetter.

No problem, but don’t put a lid to it, and add the tomato paste.

Taste, taste, taste !! It should be slightly too spicy and hot, as you still need to add the rest to it.

Give it 5 minutes.

It is time to add the sweet corn and beans now, do that slowly or your meat will go into shock and get tough on you.

If it all is back to the simmer, start tasting again.

Now it is time to add salt if it needs it, and chilli.

If you add more chilli, do it finely chopped to keep the eaters from surprising hot chunks.

So now you’re about done!
This is a base recipe only, for starting chilli lovers, so you might want to tweak it a bit.

I love adding a teaspoon of Marmite when it is just not salty enough.

If it is slightly over the hill with the chilli, serve some nice bread with it, to dampen the taste buds

Have a good meal !

yours truly,

Bart J. Meijer

Wild Chillies, chillies gone wild?

Wild chillies, chillies gone wild?

I have rambled a bit before about rather tasteless chillies.

And in fact, there are more than a few rather tasteless chillies, if you ask me.

Especially if you have been surprised with really good chillies that have a certain herbiness or flavour that amaze you.

Sure there is the difference between water grown chillies "hydrophonies", and the ones that have had a real life in soil. I love organic greens for sure, for they have much more flavour.

So as they are way too expensive for me, I grow them myself now.

In the years, since I moved out with my parents, I learned to cook and appreciate flavours.

My mom was not the best cook mind, so I had to learn from scratch.

Hard in the start, but the best way to learn I’d say.

But having others eat my food, and done more than a few taste sessions for wine, I learned that I have more than just great palate.

Capsicum Eximinum flower.

So I boasted to one of the lads at www.wildchilli.eu that I have great palate and would love to taste wild chillies.

That after I have noticed that none had a description of taste, and nobody did really seemed to know how they tasted. . . .

So I was challenged, and I do have to say I was surprised about the taste.

Really, in the wild chillies you can find the mother of tastes for all chillies and peppers.

First off, I got 3 sorts to taste, and wrote about it in a post.
A question of taste!! The readers loved it, and I loved tasting them.

I got loads of readers there, and got more and more chillies to taste.

Dried berries I had to taste, minute things, with loads of taste that surprised me.

I am picking 2 to describe and will tell you more about others in posts to come.

First off, was one that sounded great, the Capsicum galapagoense.

A species endemic to the Galapagos Islands, doesn’t that sound posh?

First taste is sweet and lovely, and a fruit like..
I would say bell pepper like, without the bitterness?
I loved it, so I licked a little piece from my hand, but it got stuck to my upper lip.
Got just a bit of direct heat but not sure about the taste, so I popped in another with it. . . .
Licked my lips as well, still not feeling any heat.

Definitely sweet bell pepper, the yellow one, even though this berry is red.

Sweet and lovely without the bitterness, I loved it !
The heat started building a bit after the taste faded out, and kept on building.
Not in the nose at all, just tongue and throat
Good grief, I really started sweating, having a real heavy reaction.
My lips started burning hard, and so did my mouth.

My ears even felt like I was going deaf or coming down from high altitude.

They started ringing even.
After 10 minutes the heat was calming down, also on the lips, still sweating though.
I hate this one, for having this fierce afterbite, and yes I am bitten by this one.
This one is weird !
20 minutes now, and the heat is almost gone and I have come to hate this one.

I have had this before with certain chillies, but for the life off me I would not know which one.

Chris Fowler heard of my quest to find the mother of tastes. So he was so kind as to send me a first timer.

He sent me a really fresh wild chilli, a Capsicum Eximium. An end of season fresh, Eximinum, perfectly round about 4 mm, dark red.

I opened it with a knife, and there was only one seed in it.
But this berry was very fleshy, thick skinned, and really looked like a berry.
Not a lot of air or open space, just like a blueberry or fox berry.

So, let’s go, my first fresh wild chilli ever !
I hoped to get some taste with this ini mini berry.
First taste was sweet, and then whammaaa the heat kicked in.
Most of the heat faded really really fast, weird.
As soon as the heat started to vanish ( in seconds really ) my mouth was able to taste.
A crazy sensation of a total overload in tastes, so hard to describe really.
20 or 50 times as much taste as the dried one for sure!

So I was sitting there with this mouth full, or more, with taste from this tiny berry in utter amazement really.
Just mumbling and being amazed, I sat there.
So my wife asks: Are you all-right luv, or are you burning away?
I just nodded.

After 5 minutes the taste slowly died, or I got used to it.

Sweet, fruity like apple maybe, berries, liquorice, almost overblown by the other tastes.

Definitely salt or umami as an after taste, broth like.

The only way I can explain how much taste, and how blown away I was, is this.
If one imagines an astronaut’s pill with everything in it, it is this berry.
In one pill the taste of:
5 apples
a handful of berries,
a small piece of Liquorice,
a pinch of salt
and some meat essence.

Crazy, so much taste!
I will never eat one again for fun, but could imagine me putting just one in a glass of tomato juice ( horrid stuff )
That mini berry, just one, would make tomato juice more than drinkable.

Now, seeds for wild chillies are not widely available.

Then again, I told you about the hippy like share culture amongst chilli lovers.
If you join a forum or a facebook group for chillies, share and re-share.

Do ask; maybe someone loves the wild chilli as much as I do, and shares.

Yours truly,

Bart J. Meijer

Courtesy to Chris Fowler  for the images!

Piri Piri

Yet an other boring chilli, the Piri Piri?

Other then the often so often boring chillies you can get in the store here, you can get dried Piri Piri.
As it is something different, I am bound to try it, out of curiosity really.
It doesn't look nice, they are just little chillies all wrinkled up, and loosing colour every so often.
In short, not looking very attractive in my eyes.

On the positive side, it is a handy little chlli, that can be dropped in with a flick of the wrist.
Easy to use, as you can add one or two to a dish and let them simmer for some time.
For hot heads, you can use more for sure, only then they seem to have some good taste as well.

One time I was at a Chinese restaurant, and they had a dish that had one in every bite. . .
Flaming hot to say the least, but had good taste for sure.
That said, you have to use a load to not only spike the food, but to be able to taste the chillies flavour as well.
So, handy to make food hot, but not too much taste.

Out of curiosity again, I seeded one of the seeds out of one of them last year.
For a chilli plant it has little leaves, and looks more like a hedge really.
It has the tiniest flower buds in the axil of the leaves, that grow out to little flowers, and in some weeks the little chillies form that go red in about 2 months.
It is a beauty this plant, that you can sit and enjoy, just looking at it.

When it had a good few chillies, lovely red and shiny, I tasted one.
Good grief, that little chilli had me sweating in seconds, what a mistake to take a whole chilli even if it is that minute.
It had good taste though, really.
After my pellets calmed down a bit, taking a good 20 minutes, I sliced one open.
It is full off seeds, but I could cut a little piece between the seed lists.
That is the part in a chilli that has the least heat.
And it tasted great, really fruity and good herbs, a strong taste for sure.
Yeah, that made me open my eyes for the Piri Piri, I love it !!

I love it, but that said, the dried ones are about as interesting as cheap chilli powder.

Maybe this post will make you as curious as to

plant a seed from a rather boring dried chilli

Yours truly,

Bart J. Meijer