Why Did I buy the “Ghost Pepper”?
Posted on | May 1, 2009 | 7 Comments
If you look closely, you'll see a King Cobra
I don’t really know, is the simple answer. I suppose I simply had to have it.
And I suppose it makes me feel better, in that way that four deadbolts and a weapon might make someone feel better when living in a deadly neighborhood.
This, you see, is no ordinary pepper. The Naga Jolokia or Bhut Jolokia pepper is the Guinness Book of Records world-record holder for the hottest pepper in the world. It’s name, in Sanskrit, means King Cobra as people who’d eaten it said it’s bite was akin to being struck by a deadly snake. This, of course, caused people around the world to immediately seek it out for all manner of ingestion.
But what measurement scale, you might ask, do world-record pepper judges use to measure heat – to measure the venom of this snake-bite pepper? It’s called the Scoville scale. Let’s take a moment to talk about it.
Wilbur Scoville invented his scale in 1912 as a measure of heat in peppers accounting for the amount of capsaicin they contain. Capsaicin is the chemical compound that stimulate nerve endings in our skin and taste buds.
To provide some perspective for the insanity of owning, and considering the use of such a pepper, let’s provide some perspective.
Jalapeno = 2500 – 8000 rating
Habanero = 100,000 – 300,000
Bhut Jolokia = 855,000 – 1,050,000
Law enforcement grade pepper spray = 500,000 to 5,300,000
Re-read that for a moment and consider your experiences eating, at the very least, Jalapenos and Habaneros, peppers that most people have had exposure to and that, given your sensitivity to capsaicin, may have caused you extreme discomfort.
Now consider that the Bhut Jolokia is likely 5 times hotter than your hottest-ever pepper experience.
As Wikipedia says on the matter, they are often used to develop smoke bombs that keep elephants at a distance. Ummm, and I’m thinking of eating this?!
When I first bought these, Dan Hayward, the knowledgeable Co-Owner of the Savory Spice Shop in Denver, Boulder and Littleton, Colorado, opened the bottle for me and told me to hover my nose just above the opening. “Smell that,” he said with a wicked grin, “You can tell something crazy is going on with these things.” Dan’s explanation is probably the better than any I can provide. Even as I sit here writing, I can smell their “craziness” through the two casings of plastic bags in which they reside (I store them inside a jar, as well, in my cupboard.) My nose is twitching slightly and my eyes have the faintest itch. Paint thinner doesn’t have this effect on me at distance.
So, what am I going to do with these – besides turning them into the police? I’d love for you, oh great sages of food-o-sphere, to share some ideas. As Dan said, you’d probably need to make an inordinate amount of curry, and then shave a small bit into the batch to create some seriously deadly heat. I’m not sure I’m up for that. I’m looking for non-curry interpretations, something that will sustain some heat, but not kill me or cause the neighbors to go into convulsions.
So, any ideas that don’t involve wearing a hazmat suit? Fortunately, I don’t have any immediate need to keep elephants at bay, but I would like to try to use these as some sort of harissa maybe in the next few weeks – if it keeps large, stampeding animals from my home, all the better.
Rainy Day Steak Sandy: Flatiron Steak with Grilled Leeks and Sheep’s Milk Cheese
Posted on | April 15, 2009 | 2 Comments
Had he eaten this, perhaps T.S. Eliot's poem would have turned out differently
It’s a cold rainy day here in Washington, a shining example of T.S. Eliot’s tortured plea: April is the cruelest month.
I’m guessing, though, that if T.S. turned his attention to a scrummy steak sandy, as another man might say who knows a little something about cold rainy Aprils (Mr. Jamie Oliver), it wouldn’t have seemed quite so bad.
One of my favorite aspects of a steak sandwich is how one rarely plans to make them. They just kind of show up, emanating typically from leftovers or moreovers, and those moments at the dinner table when everyone looks at their plates and then around at each other and nod in agreement “steak sandwiches, tomorrow.”
They are proof positive that one can be creative with ingredients outside the confines of meal planning.
As an aside, a friend stated to me, a few weeks back, that “yes, cooking is easy of you have all these ingredients around.”
Well, my good friend “these ingredients” are merely those that are fresh, healthy (no pesticides, antibiotics, heavy processing) and available, and those that come in the weekly haul from the CSA. It’s amazing what one can do with food if you stick to simple, fresh and available ingredients as well as those products you have taken the time to get to know. And this last facet, that of self-education, isn’t really that difficult. Our country is the most advanced consumer nation in the world. We ask multiple rounds of questions and do academic-level research for most of the purchases we make, what we put on and around our bodies. Yet, when it comes to what we are eating, what we are putting IN our bodies, education somehow becomes inconvenient. Remember, we are what we eat…and as Michael Pollan said so eloquently, “it turns out we are also what we eat, eats.”
But I digress…
My particular foray into the steak sandwich pictured above began with a quick analysis of my fridge after a weekend/early week busy with house guests and multiple dinner parties.
I had several moreovers:
- Leeks (Dupont Circle Farm Market) from Molly’s delicious Leek and Black Pepper Risotto with Truffle Oil (coming soon)
- Grass-fed flatiron steak from a repeat attempt at my chipotle rubbed rib eyes
- Everona Dairy (Virginia-and-proud) Sheep’s milk cheese (Stony Man, made from Everona’s Friesan Sheep)
- Half an organic baguette, just this side of french-toast worthy authentic pain perdue
The leek provided the onion flavor I wanted, and Everona’s sheep’s milk cheese – among my favorite cheese provided what I can only describe as the taste of the farm – nutty, hay and milk, and fresh, sweet air; Everona manages, somehow, to capture all these flavors in their cheese.
I grilled the leeks quickly under the broiler, then sliced the flatiron steak and placed the pieces atop the leeks and atop one half of the baguette. Next, I placed three slices of the sheep milk cheese over the steak and leeks and placed back under the broiler until the cheese melted and browned.
I whipped up a quick mix of horseradish and brown mustard to slather on the other side of the sandwich and, voila; a cup-a-tea later, and steak sandy in hand, I successfully warded off the persistence of the cold and rainy spring day, and resisted the urge to turn to poetry.
Will
Spice Cake and Vanilla Ice Cream with Guinness Toffee Sauce
Posted on | April 13, 2009 | 6 Comments
The slightly bittersweet stout toffee sauce drizzled over ice cream and cake
Webster’s dictionary defines decadent as being characterized by or appealing to self indulgence. Reading this in a dictionary, and absent the presence of a beguiling gustatory temptress, one might understand this definition to carry with it negative connotations; for the very essence of indulgence applied inwardly implies a certain imperfect longing for sinful experience.
But when you get right down to it, words like longing, indulgence, and sin transform into virtuous labels when applied to a dish that appeals precisely to one’s notion of what any good dessert should really be.
I am not a dessert fan, and so when I hear the words decadent applied to this course, I often dismiss it as hyperbole.
Such was not the case with root – the raison de etre – of the dish in the above picture: Guinness Toffee Sauce. Say it again, slowly, sounding out each syllable of each word. That’s how it tastes.
I first saw it one morning, embedded in a note that The Daily Spud had kindly delivered to my inbox, notifying me of a recipe that the Online Pastry Chef – Jenni – had passed on to her. The Spudmeistress, knowing of my particular affinity to cooking with Guinness – really, just an excuse to imbibe it in some way shape or form – thought I might want to give this recipe a try. Her instinct was spot on.
For those of you thinking that Guinness doesn’t sound particularly appetizing as dessert, think again. Stouts are basically strong beers that take on their flavor and coloring from the process of roasting the ingredients – commonly barley, hops, malt, etc. This roasting process gives the beer a dry, nutty almost coffee-like flavor; a flavor profile particularly attuned to dessert duty.
On her blog, Jenni recounted an experience in which she’d served this particular sauce over malted ice cream. She’d heaped high praise on it, and while it sounded incredible, I wasn’t sure i had the time to recreate it exactly.
I was on the spot for a family Easter dinner dessert and I needed something simple that would play well across an age, and palate, range of 55 years.
What came to mind was a simple spice cake and plain-Jane vanilla ice cream, brought to the level of indulgence via this bitter-sweet, ever-so-salty, stout toffee sauce.
My aunt, through some pre-meditated brilliance of dessert presentation, had set out over-sized wine goblets in which to serve the mixture. I placed two-by-two inch squares of the spice cake, and one scoop of vanilla ice cream into the glass and then topped with four tablespoons of the Guinness Toffee sauce.
It was, quite simply, one of the most decadent desserts I’ve ever had.
I won’t recount the recipe here, as Jenni’s instructions are precise and easy to follow. As Jeni often writes on her site, when you begin with sound processes and ingredients, with a strong foundation rooted in solid fundamentals, the possibilities for the application of any given food are endless. My application of this sauce was admittedly modest, but believe me when I write that the potential for this sauce, both savory and sweet, is vast.
For those of you out there who feel adventurous, and want to experiment taking this sauce to some new heights, please write to me recounting your experience and I’ll post it here on Recipe Play.
Stout Toffee Sauce from Online Pastry Chef
Enjoy,
Will
Lavender Roasted Flounder with Garlic Chives and Tomato Brown Butter
Posted on | April 8, 2009 | 6 Comments
A picture is sometimes all you need to create something new
Inspiration. From where does it come? It’s a topic I talk little about, but perhaps should explore further, for it is inspiration that really drives, for me, the what, where, when, how and why of cooking. The Web is abuzz these days with talk of no recipes, short recipes, twecipes and the like, yet for all our sharing of notes in the hallways of the food-o-sphere, it is inspiration that drives us to create – whether the words, lists and step-by-step directions are present or not. And inspiration is deeply personal.
With food, thankfully, inspiration often takes the convenient form of hunger. We need food and crave sustenance; those cravings come from mysterious places. Often times they are base; we crave salt, sweet, acid. Or, they are more complex; we crave memory, comfort, adventure. Whatever the reasons, the simple fact of the matter is that for those of us who feed ourselves, and do it in our own kitchens regularly, we require, we demand, inspiration in order to keep our food interesting. For when we lose inspiration – or don’t know where to find it – we lose interest in food, in the act of creating the valuable, familial experience at the table. It is, however, at the point of pondering creation, of listening to our animal needs for food, that most people flinch; they reach for fast or processed foods and claim “I just don’t have the time.” And this is a sad moment. As we see, more and more each day, our national food health – our culture of collective food tradition – is poor. And for all the ratings booms for food t.v., the proliferation of food blogs, nutritional advice, diet fads and health books, the bitter truth matter is that we, as a country, as a species, need to take more interest in our food – where it comes from and how it’s treated. We need to be inspired to create deeply personal experiences that serve the dual purposes of feeding us and establishing something deeply lasting and binding. The creative and wondrous depths of our minds, the capacity for creative vision, after all, is what separates us from animals eating merely to survive.
Roasted Corriander Mint Potatoes with Curry Mayo
Posted on | April 2, 2009 | 7 Comments
Afternoon Delight
Curry is incredibly addictive. Once the taste for the junk hits you, it’s difficult to escape its clutches. The smell, mostly, is what gets me, but it’s also the randomness of creation – akin, I imagine, to cooking up some magical witches brew. With a mortal and pestle and a few whole spices, curry creations are limitless. Just toast the spices ever so slightly, grind them up and voila, you’ve got a good base for a curry.
Store bought curries are a bit of a mystery to me – rarely am I able to ascertain what, exactly, is in them. That doesn’t mean I’m immune to their convenient call, just that I aspire to make my own more often. And, oh, the reward of a fresh made curries – few smells in my kitchen are as welcome as those of toasted and fresh ground spices that go into these special sauces.
So do yourself a favor, visit the Spice House and order a supply of various curry spices, which can be any combination of the following plus much, much more: caraway coriander, cumin, ginger, nutmeg, fennel, cinnamon, fenugreek, white pepper, arrowroot, turmeric, cardamon, cloves, Tellicherry peppercorns, red pepper and saffron. The flavor combinations are endless.
Also, check out this fabulous curry primer from The Reluctant Gourmet.
Yesterday, hungry and looking for an afternoon snack – and left with a few red potatoes that were quickly going the way of the DoDo- I quickly toasted whole coriander and mustard seeds, ground them up with a pinch of sea salt and mint, then added the magical powder to a pan of oil set to simmer. I quartered and boiled the potatoes in salty water for 5-7 minutes and then drained and added to the oil in the pan with a pinch of curry powder, tossing the mixture a few times before transferring to a baking pan and whacking in the oven under the broiler.
While the potato wedges broiled away, I added a half tablespoon of curry and a small pinch of ground red pepper to a quarter cup of mayo for the topping.
12-15 minutes later – who counts in the afternoon – I pulled the wedges from the oven, let cool ever so slightly and dumped them into a bowl.
Spoon a generous dollop of the curry mayo on top of the spuds, and et voila, a potato snack even the Daily Spud might be proud of.