Cornish Food Market

Caution: The Naga Chilli will knock your socks off!

November 16, 2011 in In season | 0 comments

Chillies come in all shapes, sizes and colours and degrees of heat, ranging from mild fleshy peppers to the diabolically hot. Indigenous to Central and South America and the West Indies, they had been cultivated for thousands of years before the Spanish conquest, after which time they were introduced to the rest of the world. The explorers of the New World brought back ingredients from one of the world’s oldest cooking traditions that would eventually change the flavours of European and World cooking: tomatoes and peppers, avocados, various beans, vanilla, chocolate and of course red hot chillies. Today around 400 different chillies are grown, and are one of the most widely cultivated crops today, grown from the Far East, China, Japan, Thailand and Indonesia to India to Mexico. The climate in which chillies are grown also affects the heat a chilli will have – unbelievably, the U.K. holds records for cultivating the hottest chillies!

The fiery sensation of chillies is caused by capsaicin, a potent chemical that survives both cooking and freezing. In 1902 Wilbur Scoville developed a method for measuring the strength of capsicum in a given pepper, originally by tasting a diluted version of a pepper and giving it a value. Nowadays it can be done more accurately with the help of computers to rate the peppers in Scoville units, which indicate parts per million of capsaicin. The Scoville scale begins at zero and extends to ever-higher levels as even more potent peppers are developed. In 2007, Guinness World Records certified the Naga (Bhut) Jolokia as the world's hottest chilli pepper, 401.5 times hotter than Tabasco sauce and testing over 1,001,300 Scoville heat units! The honour of being the world’s hottest chilli continues to be challenged among the pepper growing community as tests with more rigorous scientific standards are conducted on the many various peppers vying for "world's hottest" status.

Fresh chillies are very versatile in cooking and can be enjoyed fresh, frozen, roasted, dried, pickled or smoked. But CAUTION! Remember it is vital to take care when handling Naga Jolokia chillies - they can burn your skin, so don't rub your eyes (or anything else!) straight after chopping, and immediately wash your hands and all implements and surfaces.

Besides their flavour and heat, chillies are packed with vitamin A, a potent antioxidant and boost to the immune system. As the pods mature and darken high quantities of vitamin C are gradually replaced with beta carotene, and the capsaicin levels are at their highest – leading some to believe that eating chillies may temporarily speed up the metabolic rate, causing the body to burn off calories at a faster rate. Either way, you certainly do sweat! And as well as being a cooking ingredient, the Naga Jolokia is used to remedy extreme summer heat, presumably by making the consumer sweat. As testament to its unbelievable potency, in north-eastern India, the peppers are even smeared on fences or incorporated in smoke bombs as a safety precaution to keep wild elephants at a distance. It has also been considered suitable for use in the development of some weapons, namely hand grenades and pepper spray!

If you feel ready to confront the heat of the Naga Jolokia pepper, visit www.cornishfoodmarket.co.uk/shop/product/P-RVEG269 and prepare to have your socks knocked off!

Visit www.chillisgalore.co.uk for more information on chillies.