Taste report: Praetermissum CAP 1144

We all know chili species like the annuum, chinense and baccatum.
But there is much more!
The International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (nowadays part of Bioversity International ) has named more than 20 different wild capsicum species, including the Capsicum Praetermissum we are tasting today.
This wild chili has its origin at the west-coast of south America (Chili, Peru).
The backside of the leaves are a bit hairy but not so much as you've been used of a Pubescens style chilli.

Fruits of the Cap 1144

  

I sow my Praetermissum Cap 1144 for about a year ago. It took a while before it germinated and was not a very big grower. When summer has ended it still didn't grow to be a huge plant.  

I've seen pictures of big Cap 1144 plants but mine remained rather small.

Cap 144 seedling

In the winter it started to flower.

And wow what a beautiful flowers it got! Even when you don't like eating chillies this is a plant you want in your house just to look at!

Cap 1144 flower

After the flowers the berries came and took a few months to ripen.

Now the berries are ripe they fall of the stamp easily. just a little push and there they go.

The fruits of the cap 1144 are very small, thin peel and containing 3 to 10 seeds and some moist.

There is no clear placenta like seen in many cultivated hot peppers.

 2 Euro coin to see the size

Now to the taste:

First impression was a kind of bitter what reminded me of the taste of Pseudocapsicum, a toxic plant grown for its good looks. Yes I did try it before I knew it was toxic, but the bitter taste told me quick enough not to try anymore.

After the bitter a nice bell pepper like sweet, without the sour you find in lots of commercial bell peppers.

A gently, but continuous burn makes it a pleasant chilli to eat.

When the burn is over and the bell pepper taste disappears, a dried tomato like taste takes over.

This dried tomato stays very long, making you to want to eat another chilli.

Nice one to spice up your classical tomato and meatloaf pasta's and also would do good as a taste-maker on potato chips.  But you'll have to do a lot of work cleaning so many little fruits, I wonder if anyone would really use them.

Pseudocapsicum, do not eat them!

But be warned!  Bart ones at a dried Praetermissum CAP 1144 and that was a real bugger!

Aldo

Sauce review: Scovilla Excite Mango & Coconut fruit hot sauce.

I am in for a challenge this time, with tasting this sauce, not for the heat but for the taste.
I hate coconut if it is over the top and am not too fond about mango either.
With coconut I do think it is over the top rather fast even if you don’t use too much. Both coconut and the German cuisine can be rather rough or crude maybe, so I am in for something.

I have been a good few times in Germany, and that country is lovely and good fun. Don’t however think you will run over loads of good looking blonds with Lederhosen, you will not.
And if you think it Germany is all about beer, beer bellies and drinking huge Litre glasses of beer? Wrong again.
Germany has got the greatest pilsners in the world, no doubt about that, all super natural and conform their Reinheitsgebot.
Sure they do have beer and wine fests, all for good fun, but you should taste their game meat at the restaurants. . .
Or their salads, their lettuce with a touch of vinegar, onion and and , I need to go to Germany again soon.
Sauce hé, back to sauce. . .

Well, this sauce contains:
Mango, Coconut, Habañero pepper powder, Orange juice, Lemon juice, Passion Fruit juice, Paprika,
Apple vinegar, Coconut essence, Sugar, Starch and Ascorbic acid.
The bottle is a stunning 311ml, normal price 4,99 Euro, so good value for your money.
I especially like the note on the bottom of the label, 100% natural, and: Thanks to Mother Earth

The consistency is great, not too runny, not too thick and it has structure.
Not chunky I mean, it’s got a lovely texture so you feel what you are tasting.
I would say it almost feels like a jelly or jam, in sauce form.
It smells lovely, almost a bit like apricot coconut and well like a fruit bar. Ha I might like this after all.
The taste, hmm.

At start it is a bit syrup like, sweet and sour with sweet being the overtone. Yes it has mango, and it has coconut both not too much, and heat slowly beginning on the middle of the tongue, slowly going down.
At the same time you taste the citrus fruits as an undertone and the apple vinegar does something lovely with the fruit sugars in it. Almost as if you are left with a hot apple syrup taste.
The paprika brings a herb taste in it, together with the habañero peppers. I could swear there is a bit of salt in it to enhance the taste, and there is not.
This is the effect of using great peppers and good paprika, getting a bit of a savoury umami taste.
I like that as a counter to the sweet and sour.
The sauce is not very hot, but has a great bite, 1 out of 5 maybe.

Hihi, I am eating mango and coconut and I love it, this is nuts !
The kids gave it a taste too, and love it, they want to have it on ice-cream.
Now, they are used to a bit of heat, and are giving me the eye that I don’t give them any more.
They simply love it!
1/3rd of the bottle is gone with tasting, and I am 500 words.
So, nice idea from the kids, I am going to use it on ice cream and report about that this week.

O wow, it is on sale I just read at the Scovilla site.
3,99 Euro per bottle, go and get them, maybe take two or try something else too!

Yours sincerely,

Bart J. Meijer

The race for the best chilli, or ?

Hello my good readers,

It has been a long time since I wrote, partially due to pain, and an other part stress. It is hard to stop writing, and even harder to get back to writing. Until I read something that made me mad, pissed off! What better way to get back to writing with a rant ! So with pain in fingers and shoulders, I want to tell you something.

I told you before about the hippy like feel the chilli scene has.
And it has, people share recipe's ideas and seeds.
These chaps help eachother out, if they lost seeds or even lost money or goods.
Sauce companies that were in a storm or in a flood are helped.
Even one chilli lover that lost his house due to a fire, is helped with money.
And money there is in the scene.
Even though we have a crises here and in the US, hot sauce business is booming everywhere. Now don't ask me why, but it is.
Maybe as people want to discover new tastes and new food experiences.
Maybe as people like it more hot than ever.
Sites selling chilli seeds are popping up like crazy everywhere, and not all with the best of products I'm afraid.
Now that comes natural, where there is money there will be good and bad sellers.
But things are starting to smell like fraud and deception maybe.
I hate to say this, but I more and more get an odd feeling really with things that happen.

I have always said the best chillies are not the hottest ones.
True, some of the super hot chillies are great, even if you only use a little, and some are just downright awful.
Didn´t you notice that the hotter the chilli is, the higher the price at a seeds selling store?
If it would be up to me, the best tasting ones would be the most expensive, but they are not.
So,
there is good money in the next Guinness book of record chilli, people want to buy it weather they will eat it or not.
Oddly enough it doesn´t make a lot of difference if it is tasty, the next chilli in the Guinness book of records for being the hottest in the world is worth a load of money.
Ha money, there is the word again that would normally spook a hippy.

Well, there are good few people that are not hippy in this business.
Now I am not saying people should not make a living, but people should not sell a thing based on rumours.
If you say you have the next record holder, show some real proof !
No doubt about it the hottest chilli is the Trinidad Scorpion "Butch T" until proven otherwise !
But rumours oh rumours. . . .
I am not the first person to stumble over these rumours.
Tina Brooks wrote an excellent post about this too.


So I raised my eye brows when last year the new upcoming record holder was presented.
Seeds were sold for silly money, 10 seeds for around 10 dollar, and keeping in mind you can easily get 1000 seeds from one plant. . . .
Need I say more? Well yes, I have plants that gave me well over 5000 seeds in one year.
Anyway, the new Moruga was the hottest, the upcoming record holder. . . .
I tasted 3 varieties, and the Satan Strain Moruga was extremely hot, and extremely tasty !
But I have never seen proof that the normal Moruga Red that would be the hottest, was the hottest.
Seeds were sold in no time though. Next was the Carolina Reaper, the seeds started to be sold a week before the proof would be presented in the US national press released on Monday, August 27 2012.
Needless to say I have neither seen proof or a big national wide press release. All I have seen was a lot of talk about laberatory tests that were never shown, and the rumour that the Guinness Book of Records nowadays asks money for testing a record holder. . . .
I am not contesting that this might be the next record holder fot the hottest chilli, it is just that I want to be sure.
But no worries, the seeds were sold in no-time.

Now I hate it if my friends in hippy chilli land are ripped, and/or if their believe in the hippy like chilli scene is damaged!

The variations in the Carolina Reaper are so big, the so-called stable cross, is anything but stable.
Look at all the pictures, they should be the same chilli!
This is damaging my childish Santa kind of belief in the chilli world, and I am surely not alone in that.
Don't let them fool ye !

Then again, I never wanted to be a hippy anyway !

Yours sincerely,

Bart J. Meijer
Pictures by courtesy of Jason Richards

Taste review unknown Yellow Crazy Hot,

Now my friend Henry and his friend Beppe from Italy send me one load of chillies you would not believe! They selected the ones I needed to taste, although they have a lot more, they wanted me to taste these ones. So I dug in and as it appears, with the first bite I made a mistake.
Now excuse me please, but I did get a little excited unpacking, and got punished. I unpacked one, bright yellow and a little orange, not pointy but irregular in a funny way.

The paper next to it said Cornetto Calabrese, so not knowing it I was taking good care but took a rather large piece from in between the seed lists. I felt like a chilli rookie again, man that pepper had me sing. Good grief it was hot, but tasty never the less, but boy did I sing. So I asked Henry if they always are that hot. Well then I understood I need to learn to speak and write Italian. Who needs Latin?

So, I thought I’d better taste on, I will get it later. The scent of this chilli is great, perfumy chinense, with fruits and sweets. The chinense part that sometimes has an irritating overtone in both smell and taste is not there, it is in balance. So tasting again, but more, much more careful. Tastng and smelling I get a scent and taste from Tea Rose, perfume. In the middle there is no sweets, no paprika but fruits and a bit of metal like bleeding. You get that in times if you eat superhot chillies like these. Rinse with milk and get back at it, smaller bits I take. In the tip of it I find a bit of sweet and tastes like pineapple. A little piece from the middle does give me a bit of a bitter, but not irritating as such, and again the tea rose and the perfumy chinense. At the top however I get apricot and tea rose as well as some paprika taste. This is one weird lovable chilli that is extremely hot, far hotter than a Fatalii.

So again I have a chat with Henry from Italy, asking what it is. In the end I show him the picture and the label that I thought belonged together. “Ah” Henry says “that is a Bhut Jolokia Yellow, and the best he has selected over more than 10 years”. Every time he only takes seeds from the plant he likes best, and sure did one great job. This my good readers is one chilli to respect, not feared, but used in little bits if you don’t want to be scorched. But this is a chilli that makes me think of a great Chili con Carne, that is subtle on the herbs. Good grief Beppe, I am so digging in the next one tomorrow. Thank you ever soo much, this is a superhot chilli I love !!

Yours sincerely,

Bart J Meijer

Taste review: Parvifolium mini mini

Last year I was send some seeds from Lee, the founder of Wildchilli.eu.
One of them was the "Parvifolium mini mini" It even became one of the biggest plants I had this year.

Lee already warn me it would take a long time to ripen them, and he was right!
For more than months the fruits stayed green, and with winter and frost coming, I had to dig it out and take it inside.
Even inside, with warmer conditions, it didn't ripen. So today I decided to taste a green one.
The fruits of the Parvifolium mini mini are very small like the name already did suggest.

Now to the taste:
First (like you can expect from a green chilli) the typical green bell-pepper taste,
Followed by a nice fresh citrus, wow its just like a ripe lemon!
Then the heat kicks in, very shape sting in my tongue who also disappears rather quick, leaving me with a little taste like lemongrass.
A itchy feeling in my nose made me blow it..and then it started: This one burns in your nose!
The burning feeling you get under your nose when you have a cold and have to blow it a lot.....times ten!


Parvifolium mini mini, a little,citrus tasting, bugger, wonder how it will taste when ripe!

Aldo

Fusion fish soup recipe with Sichuan flower pepper.

This is one fast recipe, with excellent and mind boggling tastes as simple as it is, and it will play your mouth like you would never believe. It has fragrances as if you were in central China, a taste as if you were on one of the Indonesian Islands, while a mountain breeze plays with your hair!
Hope you can keep up with me, as it is fast !

You need:
250 gram firm fish, perch, seabass, mackerel, or barracuda.
250 Ml of water
5-6 good quality Sichuan flower peppers
1 Facing Heaven Bullet chilli dried
1 Cabai Bendot if possible( Red Rocoto or Giant Red Rocoto )
5 cm of winter carrot
5 cm leek
1 little clove of garlic
1 little red onion
A bit of sea salt
One dinner spoon peanut oil or rapeseed oil
Chinese Jasmine tea
A couple of branches Samphire or seaweed if possible
A little dried rice noodles

If you can't get the seaweed and the Cabai Bendot, no worries it will still taste great.

Put water up in a normal pan with a lid, about a litre to get to the boil.

Slice your fish in thin slices. I use Vietnamese barracuda here that tempted me to use Dong Xuan Market, but pepper would not fit in it.
Slice thin slices from your garlic, less than a mm.
Peel the skin off from the Facing Heaven Bullet, and cut in to very fine pieces.
Crush and cut the flower pepper in fine pieces.

Put your wok or frying pan on medium fire with the oil, slices of garlic, the crushed flower pepper and fine cut Facing Heaven Bullet chilli.

Slice the leek and carrot “Julienne” making nice and fine strips. Cut thin half moon slices of red onion, and Cabai Bendot.

As soon as the garlic starts to sizzle the first bit, add 250 ml of water and some good sea salt. In the pan with only the water blanche the Samphire in it for just a minute or 2 and take it out.
Then put a handful of dried rice noodles, and a tea egg with Chinese Jasmine tea enough to make the water to a light tea. Put down the heat on the pan with the tea water and rice noodles.
The water in the wok will now almost be boiling too, add the fish, this will take very little time as the fish just has to get white. So as soon as it is to the boil again it is ready.
Rinse the plates with hot water, now start serving. Put a good soup spoon full of the fish with its broth in the plate. Centre the fish in the middle, with the broth around it. Take some rice noodles, just about more than a dinner spoon full out of the pan with Jasmine tea, and put on top of the fish. I do this with chop sticks, as the stuff is very slippery. Take the leek Julienne between two fingers in the middle, and place it on top of noodles. Stick 3 Julliene pieces of carrot between the fish and the noodles just pointing outwards. Around the fish in its broth, put 3-5 half moons of red onion, and 3-5 half moons of Cabai Bendot.

Enjoy !

Yours sincerely,

Bart J. Meijer

Taste review Rocoto mini red

After my last Rocoto, I expected this to be a mild chilli without a really strong taste. . .
Well, think again. . . Surprises surprises, what a lovely chilli!

First, this plant again has amazing flowers, and them hairy leaves and stem.
This plant however does not grow like mad, its gets flowers, drops a few, and gets fruit.
It really is much faster than the other ones. and stays within 60-70 cm wide ( approx 2 foot )
But then the ripening, it takes ages and makes you wonder if anything is wrong. And no, there is not.
These plants are really a bit odd you know, they hate full sun, and like a bit of shade. Not too much shade, but a bit. Full sun all day is a no no. So if you have a spot where you don't want to place chillies as it is a bit in the shade, this is the place for a Rocoto plant.

Now this one is hot, really hot, but not as hot that you can not get the taste. Again this watery hot is strange, take a little bite and your mouth is watering and hot all over in seconds. The taste is odd and lovely, makes me think of a wild chilli. Not a really strong taste, but certainly 3 steps up from the Giant red Rocoto. It makes me think of a Roma tomato, soft and almost creamy. Then it starts giving more and more tastes. Its got both tomato and apple taste in it, and a general taste of fruits. But that taste is almost contradicted with herbs and the taste of berries. It is slightly sour, making me think of that tomato I said before, but also of Juniper berry with the slight bitter it has.

In short a fantastic Rocoto that you can grow in a pot, with such good flowers and a very complex taste. Now mind, it is not a superhot, but the heat builds if you cook it. And due to its instant spreading in the mouth of the heat, your fist bite rocks !

Yours sincerely,

Bart J. Meijer

Taste review the Chocolate Cherry chilli

This is one stunning chilli, and odd. This is a cherry chilli that grows upright, not hanging, still it is an annuum, so direct family from the paprika. This chilli is from Hungarian origin, and is used in pickles and fresh. Weird as I have never seen a cherry chilli grow up, and looking cute and this chilli has a real chocolate colour. It is not super seedy, in the inside it really looks like a mini paprika, and is very easy to clean,
All in all the appearance of this plant and its fruits, it makes soo much advertisement for itself that I was sure they would taste like. . . . . .  not so good as they look.

However, the taste is stunning, overwhelming. Not its heat. It took me some time to get how to describe this chilli. It has a very deep and dark paprika taste, so would looks deceive me, no it really has that. It has a very rich and herbs like paprika taste, very strong without the bitter, and the heat of half a peppadew or a thrird of that from a Satan's kiss. Then after eating half and chewing it for about 20 seconds it starts to build a sweet taste like that from light roasted malt before brewing, or like that from chewing wheat in the field. You know for making chewing gum from wheat, what we did like kids on vacation.

Now how can I explain the deep and dark paprika taste? It has at least the taste of 3 times a paprika, but different. You know if you have tasted the yellow and the red bell pepper, and maybe a roasting pepper that is much darker? Well, if there would be a next step, like a black paprika, this is what it would taste like. That and just a lovely mild heat, makes this one stunning cherry chilli !

Yours sincerely,

Bart J. Meijer

Sometimes tasting is hard

Dear readers,

Sometimes tasting is hard, and having my head bent over an other chilli a full evening, laptop next to it with not a word typed. I felt rotten all night. Really, I didn't get any taste, I could not compose it to a story.
So I started to get stressed, did want to have a story out tonight, and it was just not going to happen with this chilli. So I tasted an other, and no, not a drop off inspiration. Then you start to doubt, is it the wrong time, am I having a cold? Is this a boring chilli, is it me?

When I took a break, I thought about next weeks Monday growing article I wrote yesterday. Before I can publish it, I need to take pictures. So for that article I read in for about 3 hours, composed an article in 2 hours, read it through and made corrections for about half an hour. Then I sorted what pictures I needed to make, and wrote that down or made notes rather. That is the time some articles take, and I still have to make the pictures.

Its not only that, but also the tasting, it takes time.
Maybe an apology is in order, for it might be that I make tasting sound so easy at times, or composing a dish. Sometimes it is, but most of the times it is not at all that easy. I know that some sauce makers take over a year to compose a sauce they are really happy with, tasting and re tasting. Adapting it a bit, tasting again. And they don''t give up but make a brilliant sauce at the end. One recipe I had took me a year to make it perfect. 3 years later I made it different, with a totally different approach but the same ingredients, and only then it was superb, and finished. You should have seen the faces here! "What have you done with the original recipe???" And all off them loved it.

So sometimes making a story, tasting some things is ever so easy, and sometimes the taste needs to ripen and the story shelved, just waiting for an other day.

Yours sincerely,

Bart J. Meijer

Taste review, Ciliegia Piccante or Baccio de Satana (Satan’s Kiss)

This Italian Heirloom variety was on my “need to have” list last year, one with a growing popularity in the Netherlands. So, got it and grew it. I do have to say, the promise of not too hot, and the words Satan’s kiss triggered to buy them too. Just would love to have a funny little cherry chilli with a bit of a kick.

Beautiful pant and jolly great show and all, but this is not a candy. The first time I bit one in half, I did everything but sing. Good grief, this one lovely looking chilli has a stingy heat and really is more than mild. So I tried this chilli over and over again to get what is so special about them. And I am afraid to say, if found nothing special in them taste wise. It is just your regular boring chilli, that looks superb.

We have tried them with peanut butter filled, with cream cheese, and with anchovies making them a load better. But they are small and full off seeds, so it does take a bit of trouble to be able to use them. I for one will not grow them again for tastes, but will grow them for keeping this heirloom alive. If you do have the patience for cleaning the seeds out, I bet they are wonderful in a pickle or brine. Do use a good herbs and a good bit of garlic and salt to get them some flavour.

It is a stunning looking chilli with a good bit of heat but not a special taste.

Sincerely,

Bart J. Meijer

I had a dream

Hot is not a taste, and it is not all what chillies are about.
The constant hammering about hot hotter hottest, keeps a lot off people away from chillies.
And some people just don't seem to get this. Growers, bloggers and seeds sellers keep hammering on the heat.
People do not want pain, but excitement both in taste and experience. That is what a chilli should be, and has been in the past, in history.

So I had a dream, I wanted to get some taste to the world of chilli.
Now that sounds presumptuous, but I started all this, getting sick of all the hot hotter hottest chilli.
Really, if you ask how a chilli tastes, the answer normally is: Hot, hotter or hottest. Now excuse me, but that has little to do with taste, it is only one aspect. Have you ever given website selling chilli seeds a good look? Did you ever see one with a satisfying taste report to it?

So I had a dream, to taste as many chillies that I can, so if people would ask, they can put a real taste report on their sites.
Now I am working myself through chilli after chilli, and some I had to taste another time again. Had a cold 2 times, so was not able to taste. Still I did a good bunch and writing down as much as possible, some 30 taste reports pending.

Then being almost winter and so, I started to look at the "need to taste" list for next year. This year I had 110 varieties, so what am I going to do this coming season? Looking over varieties, it started to dawn on me, it will be hard to succeed. There are around 4500 varieties, I tasted some 180 this year, getting send from all over the world. So if I get to taste 200 next year, it will take me 22,5 years to taste them all. Ok, so why was I rushing? Can I keep this dream for the next 22 odd years?
So after this epiphany about tasting, I took a 4 days break from tasting, made a good picture while checking seeds with an antique loupe..

About good taste:
Video reviews do soo seldom get my and keep my attention. Low quality with loads of background noise, and nothing else to show for. A lot of them are utter useless, not describing any taste, or have like a 5 minute trailer and 1 minute or so with something that might say something about taste. There are also video's on Youtube about most silly tricks like sticking chilli powder up your nose. Or even tasteless video's about challenges eating 10 chillies, where just one would be enough to spice up a whole cow, with throwing up and all.
Now subscribe to my youtube channel? No! Are you serious ?
Or worse, former car sellers selling the next worse chilli, talking it to heaven with a mouth full of chilli, mentioning certain websites that sell them over and over again. Who is going to believe that? Booho I want to see taste !

So I made 2 episodes of chilli video reviews, that are out of this world silly! I tried to copy the Young Ones from the BBC a bit. Soooo:  Subscribe to my channel !

Really subscribe to my channel !

I mentioned a few video reviewers that I did like in a former post, but I have to tell you it was a huge relief to get pointed out a week ago to the video reviews of Tmudder, and Volker Berlin together with Felix from Pfefferhaus.de
These guys do have taste, and thank God for good video reviews. Rant is over, and I will get back to tasting again soon, please do excuse me for the dip I had.

Yours sincerely

Bart J. Meijer

Taste review Monkey Face chilli

The Monkey face chilli was a medium hot chilli everybody talked about last years, so it was a need to have chilli for me. It was a bit of a slow starter, but that might have been me. I was sort off sold, when I heard it would be a great base chilli for sauces, so well a had to have. Now the plant has a lovely form, grows a bit like a tree. I like that, but I am not in this for looks, I want taste.
It is supposed to have sort of a Monkey Face in it, and I did see a few good photographs, but I didn't really get a good one. So not really a monkey face. Still the somewhat odd form and looks make it to be a great looking odd chilli. Sure I do like a good looking chilli, but I love to have a good taste as well. Now I heard that it was a good one to over-winterer as well, now that were all the pro's known to me.

So I had it grow for a year and last month I had one to taste. It taste is a bit complex, and I had to taste a few before I got it. The heat is direct, no surprises no build, no. You know what you are eating the first bite, so that is good to work with.
Basically it has sweet, a touch of bitter some herbs, fruit, and a wood like tone. Some say it would taste like mango, but then I would rather say a touch of pineapple as it has that wood tone as well. In my terms I would say, it has the sweets of a yellow bell pepper, the pleasant light bitter a red bell pepper has, and some herb with a wood like tone. Herbs between Coriander seeds or Turmeric. It is odd, this is a complex chilli with both fruits and herbs, lovely indeed. Now at the time I don't really know what to combine it with, so I left them to dry.

Dried they are a different ballpark, whole new story indeed. If you have them sundried or very slow natural ripened, they are out of this world !
They will get the sweet taste of sundried tomatoes, the sweet will also start to top over to the liquorice taste that you get in slow natural ripened chillies. The taste will stay complex and lovely and make you wonder what it is you are tasting. Really stunning, like this they can stand on their own making a great powder of flakes, or add them to your table salt grinder. The pleasant taste will linger on for at least 10 minutes, just lovely.

Yours sincerely,

Bart J. Meijer