Blandness begone!
Every now and then the local branch of tegut (a German grocery store chain) surprises me with exotic fruits, herbs and as two days ago, chile peppers. It's a pity that these items appear and disappear from the shelves in matter of days and ever hardly show up again. So one has to carpe diem and buy them as long as there's some left. That's exactly what I did as I noticed the nice package of assorted peppers depicted above.
The package contents was the following, in order of ascending heat level: 2 long yellow Dutch chiles (left), 1 Jalapeno (tilde failing on the n here, the green one in the middle), 1 Fresno (big red one in the middle), a few Thai chiles (bottom right and at the top) and one Habanero (top right). If you're looking for more info on chile peppers there's a great site, UK chile head, with an incredibly rich and well done varieties database. I'm quite sure I know what I want to make with most of the chiles apart from the Habanero. Any suggestions? It's gonna be a hot week ;-)!
No suggestions, sadly, but I just wanted to wish you luck! The peppers look beautiful, and as long as you watch the seeds, you should be able to hang onto at least some of your taste buds!
Posted by: emily b. hunt | February 06, 2004 at 02:36 PM
:-) Thanks, emily. I have to say my tastebuds are quite well trained, I'm more worried about Daniela's... hopefully she will not get me arrested for tastebud-icide ;-)
Posted by: Alberto | February 06, 2004 at 05:21 PM
sorry, no suggestions either... but just wanted to say: very pretty pic... beautiful colors : )
Posted by: Renee | February 06, 2004 at 05:48 PM
keep the chilli seeds and grow them. they make attractive plants in the kitchen. granny would grow them but because we consume chilli in huge amounts, we always end up buying them from the market! she grows her own thai chillis. be careful when you eat those small chillis. they are very very hot! she eats them at every meal by putting small slices and some soy sauce in a little sauce dish. we then eat a small slice with our meals. to make the soy sauce more spicy, press down on the chillis to get the juice into the soy sauce.
i agree with emily. the seeds are the hottest part of the plant. if you remove the seeds, your dish will not be so hot.
to cool down your mouth, take some sugar. amazing stuff is sugar! :)
as for the habanero, how about a mexican dish? :)
Posted by: Wena | February 07, 2004 at 03:49 AM
Renee: thanks, although I think afterwards that the blue dish makes the other colours a bit too "intense"
Wena: I had some of the Thai chiles, you're right! One of my next posts will describe the comeout of this encounter in more detail :-). I used to grow my own chiles too but I still have loads frozen as I only use them sparingly. Also I don't have that much space for plants and I'm planning on growing some new herbs so no chile plants for the moment. Now if I had my own garden....
Posted by: Alberto | February 08, 2004 at 03:23 PM