How tastes change. Going back five years, I hardly remember ever cooking with chillies, but today I use them nearly every week.
How tastes change. Going back five years, I hardly remember ever cooking with chillies, but now I use them nearly every week. They're so easy to grow from seed, but you can buy young plants from garden centres, like the pretty 'Medusa' (pictured) I bought last year. It was attractive enough to sit on the window sill as a compact pot plant, but had the added benefit of producing small chillies, too.
One of our favourite recipes is fragrant Thai prawns, and although the recipe suggests using just one fresh red chilli, we never find this is enough. Each time I make it I add more chillies – first two, then three – but despite being really tasty it isn't quite hot enough. Perhaps the lime, coriander, ginger and lemongrass counteract the heat of the chilli.
This year a new chilli variety caught my eye. It's called 'Bhut Jolokia Fiery Furnace', and claims to be the world's hottest chilli.
The heat of chillies is measured on the Scoville scale, and this variety comes in at an impressive 1,000,000. Compare this with some other popular chillies:
Hungarian Hot Wax: around 9,000
Tabasco: around 50,000
Scotch Bonnet: around 200,000
I sowed 'Bhut Jolokia Fiery Furnace' seeds a couple of weeks ago, and the seedlings are up. By August or early September I hope to be picking my first chillis, but do I dare eat them? Perhaps my delicious fragrant Thai prawns are actually fine as they are.
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