Wednesday, September 17, 2008


What's in a color?

I harvested this gorgeous little bright orange chili today from the plant on my patio. It was supposed to be a type of Fresno chili. Apparently it was mislabeled. Bought the plant from Home Depot.
I started getting suspicious a month ago when all the peppers looked oddly truncated. So, I figured they just needed to grow. Or I wasn't fertilizing the plant enough. Then I was gone a few weekends in a row. And today, little bright orange chilies! So I tasted it. Actually, I cut off a sliver and carefully put it on my tongue and immediately spit it out. The heat lasted about 10 minutes. It's an orange habanero. I only had two ripe ones on the plant. So now what? I have 1-1/2 habaneros harvested waiting in my kitchen. I like spicy food and love chilies. But habaneros might be bit much. I have eaten them whole before but it wasn't exactly pleasant. I'll either find a recipe that uses them or give them to a friend. Her husband is a chef.

So apparently habaneros come in many colors: golden yellow, red, green, orange, and even
chocolate! I started looking for recipes...even found a recipe for habanero-infused vodka. But apparently very incendiary and it was recommended that you dilute it. It's probably good that I don't have a huge amount of these little chilies since it could be difficult to use them up. Most recipes call for 1 or even half a chili! And the orange habanero is not the hottest chili in the world anymore...only the third hottest. The Bhut Jolokia or "ghost chili" is now the top chili. It apparently has been measured at over 1 million Scoville units. Yeeha! That's spicy.
cheers,
reb

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