BWR Classic: Trying the World's Hottest Pepper

Another favorite from the archive for your reading pleasure. Since this initial experience, I've kept a bottle of ghost pepper hot sauce available whenever I want to relive the joys of the naga jolokia.

* * *

At the Downtown Farmers Market I spotted a table operated by Sparkling River out of Mount Olive, Arkansas. They were selling peppers of varying strengths, and one basket contained the legendary Bhut Jolokia, also known by the name Naga Jolokia. It's become famous since its 2007 Guinness Record for the world's hottest pepper. I purchased three and let them sit in the kitchen for a day while I worked up the courage to try them.

"Afternoon, Homer. Care for some chili? I've added an extra ingredient just for you. The merciless peppers of Quetzlzacatenango! Grown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum." --Chief Wiggum in The Simpsons episode "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Homer"

The history of this pepper is fairly recent and fascinating, from the studies conducted by the Indian Defense Research Laboratory to its use as an elephant repellent. It tops a million on the Scoville Scale, much hotter than habaneros or anything you'll normally encounter unless a police officer maces you.

I used the pepper in two ways. First, I chopped one up--seeds and all--and combined it with a thick spice paste to coat a lamb tenderloin. This was allowed to marinate overnight before grilling over fire. I thought about calling this recipe a rattlesnake, a lightning bolt, or Satan's spleen. My buddy Paul suggested the apt moniker "Shepherd's Sin". While definitely hot and tasty, it was not pain inducing. In fact, I'd happily recommend such a dish at an Indian restaurant.

For the second experiment, I tried one pepper straight. As in, rinse off the wrinkled bastard and chomp down. Paul and The Roommate were present to either alert the paramedics or inform my parents that I'd shuffled off this mortal coil.

Kids, don't try this at home. Here's the chain of sensations as best I can recall:

• Surprisingly the first sensation was sweetness, with a carrot flavor. This stage did not last long.
  
• The heat came next, a pretty standard hot pepper sensation, with nice burning around the entire mouth. My eyes watered a bit.
  
• As I chewed, things got strange. It doesn't take long for the heat to get so intense that it's no longer hot and your nerve receptors go sideways. At one point it was kind of cold, like the effect produced by mint. Then it would go back to feeling like a bee sting--not a burn, but a piercing sensation of poison being injected. These sensations (plus several others difficult to describe) came and went in waves. Tears were profuse and my nose was running.
  
• It burned a lot on swallowing. It was difficult to speak more than a word or two at a time. I enjoyed the mild euphoria that comes with hot peppers, though my left foot was tingling and my right arm got itchy. I don't think it was an allergic reaction, but I'm sure my peripheral nervous system was having trouble handling the overload. Whitman's opening line "I sing the body electric" ran through my head, and somehow I knew what it felt like to be a Christmas tree when the lights are switched on.
  
• Residual effects lasted for a few hours. Symptoms included laughing, drastic changes to depth perception, and the occasional sensation that ants were crawling over me.

Somehow after all of that, I actually want another one. Alas, such a shock to the palate can desensitize the tongue, and I don't want to impact my ability to taste wine (or anything else for that matter). Your mileage may vary, but if you choose to cook with or eat these peppers, please be careful.

queue de boeuf à l'haïtienne

When I read the Knipples' book The World in a Skillet, many all of the recipes made me hungry. However, one jumped out as the dish I'd have to try first. I've never had Haitian food before: check. I love oxtails and habaneros: double check. Opportunity to make hot sauce for the first time: check. Eight hours of marinating plus six hours of cooking: be still my beating heart.

Haiti is the western half of the island Hispanola, and notoriously the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It became independent from France in 1804 following a slave rebellion led by Toussaint Louverture. Haiti has had a complicated and sad history that would take far too long to tell here. The US hasn't exactly been a friend of the country for most of the past 200 years, with the embargoes and refusal to acknowledge a sovereign Haiti for most of the 19th century and the US military occupation from 1915-1934. Today, most Haitian immigrants are in South Florida or in large cities like New York. Though I've met a few Haitians in my lifetime, there's not much of a presence either in people or food here in Memphis.

This recipe has three parts: a habanero hot sauce, a marinade, and the actual braising of the oxtails. I made the marinade first. Known as epis, you take herbs and garlic and oil and vinegar and onion and other goodies and make a thin pesto. This can be used either for marinating pieces of meat or as a flavorful punch up to other recipes. The recipe called for parsley as the main herb, but I decided to go with the variation listed in the sidebar and use cilantro instead. Since I'd already alienated several people with the hot peppers and the offal, I decided to go all the way and make myself happy with yet another contentious ingredient. Saturday evening I rinsed the oxtails, covered them in epis and let them sit overnight.

(As an aside, I completely shut down a lane at the grocery store with the purchase of oxtails and habaneros. Neither were labeled, neither had SKUs on the cheat sheet, and clearing up both took a solid 15 minutes as I apologized to the customers behind me and tried to explain to the poor checkout girl why I enjoyed eating chopped up cow tails. This is not the first time this has happened to me, and it won't be the last.)

Making the habanero hot sauce was my next adventure that night. Eight habaneros, a carrot, half an onion, a little white wine vinegar and sugar and the juice of two limes. Blend until smooth. Now, the recipe was responsible and suggested wearing gloves. I've never really had a problem processing peppers before, but I've never made hot sauce or used an open bowl with a stick blender with hot peppers before. Not a great idea. The capsaicin became aerosolized and I got a nice zingy dose to the nose, lungs, and most of my exposed skin. I'm still stinging a bit in places, but the upside is that my sinuses are clearer than they've been since I was born.

I made enough to fill three of these little tubs. One was used with Sunday dinner and the other two were sealed and sent to the CDC in Atlanta and the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia (Вектор).

If you decide to do this, use an enclosed blender or food processor, wear gloves, and maybe goggles and a mask. And if you're in the habit of wiping your hands on a kitchen towel after chopping vegetables, go ahead and toss that towel in the washer before a roommate or family member happens to come by and use it. The resulting sauce is thick and bright--almost unnaturally orange, though I didn't add anything artificial to it. Definitely hot but with that sweet habanero flavor and good balancing from the limes' acidity and the carrot's additional sugar.

I started the third part (the braising) around ten in the morning on Sunday. Put the oxtails in the Dutch oven, add a can of tomato sauce and a little water, and bring to a slow boil. Remove from the stovetop and put the entire thing in the oven for six hours. I skipped the last part involving browning the oxtails with onions and tomato paste--everything was browned and nicely tender and caramelized and any further cooking would just ruin things.

I threw a little turmeric in the rice, and have to say that the meat was incredible. Tender and flavorful and full of intense elements from the bones and fat and everything else. The hot sauce was still good on the second day but milder and fruitier. Julia, having her first encounter with oxtails said, "Tastes like pot roast, but not as stringy." I'm impressed with the recipe but in the future I'll probably roast at a lower temperature and add some things like beer or chicken broth or white wine to the braising liquid. The habanero hot sauce is delicious, but I'm going to need a new set of friends to share that level of heat.

Benito vs. the Naga Jolokia

At the Downtown Farmers Market I spotted a table operated by Sparkling River out of Mount Olive, Arkansas. They were selling peppers of varying strengths, and one basket contained the legendary Bhut Jolokia, also known by the name Naga Jolokia. It's become famous since its 2007 Guinness Record for the world's hottest pepper. I purchased three and let them sit in the kitchen for a day while I worked up the courage to try them.

"Afternoon, Homer. Care for some chili? I've added an extra ingredient just for you. The merciless peppers of Quetzlzacatenango! Grown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum." --Chief Wiggum in The Simpsons episode "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Homer"

The history of this pepper is fairly recent and fascinating, from the studies conducted by the Indian Defense Research Laboratory to its use as an elephant repellent. It tops a million on the Scoville Scale, much hotter than habaneros or anything you'll normally encounter unless a police officer maces you.

I used the pepper in two ways. First, I chopped one up--seeds and all--and combined it with a thick spice paste to coat a lamb tenderloin. This was allowed to marinate overnight before grilling over fire. I thought about calling this recipe a rattlesnake, a lightning bolt, or Satan's spleen. My buddy Paul suggested the apt moniker "Shepherd's Sin". While definitely hot and tasty, it was not pain inducing. In fact, I'd happily recommend such a dish at an Indian restaurant.

For the second experiment, I tried one pepper straight. As in, rinse off the wrinkled bastard and chomp down. Paul and The Roommate were present to either alert the paramedics or inform my parents that I'd shuffled off this mortal coil.

Kids, don't try this at home. Here's the chain of sensations as best I can recall:

• Surprisingly the first sensation was sweetness, with a carrot flavor. This stage did not last long.
  
• The heat came next, a pretty standard hot pepper sensation, with nice burning around the entire mouth. My eyes watered a bit.
  
• As I chewed, things got strange. It doesn't take long for the heat to get so intense that it's no longer hot and your nerve receptors go sideways. At one point it was kind of cold, like the effect produced by mint. Then it would go back to feeling like a bee sting--not a burn, but a piercing sensation of poison being injected. These sensations (plus several others difficult to describe) came and went in waves. Tears were profuse and my nose was running.
  
• It burned a lot on swallowing. It was difficult to speak more than a word or two at a time. I enjoyed the mild euphoria that comes with hot peppers, though my left foot was tingling and my right arm got itchy. I don't think it was an allergic reaction, but I'm sure my peripheral nervous system was having trouble handling the overload. Whitman's opening line "I sing the body electric" ran through my head, and somehow I knew what it felt like to be a Christmas tree when the lights are switched on.
  
• Residual effects lasted for a few hours. Symptoms included laughing, drastic changes to depth perception, and the occasional sensation that ants were crawling over me.

Somehow after all of that, I actually want another one. Alas, such a shock to the palate can desensitize the tongue, and I don't want to impact my ability to taste wine (or anything else for that matter). Your mileage may vary, but if you choose to cook with or eat these peppers, please be careful.

Peppadews

As a child of the 80s, I can remember states like East Germany and South Africa being off limits. Not that my bicycle could take me to either place, but both were vaguely forbidden and later I learned about blockades and walls and embargoes.

The peppadew comes from a random mutation in the fields of South Africa, and unlike the gold or diamonds (or wine, to some extent) of that nation, there's no political considerations involved. This little red pepper is so sweet and cherry-flavored that you'll swear it's been soaked in Kool-Aid. And while there's a burst of sweetness on the front, the peppers have a pleasant bite on the back end. I imagine that stuffed with buffalo mozzarella and a bit of ham and basil these are divine.

I picked these up in the olive bar at a local Kroger. I expect to start seeing peppadews more often--sort of the chipotle of this food fad cycle.