Award wining Mexican restaurant group Wahaca have launched an exciting online drive
to find a chilli fan, with a quirky sense of humour and passion to become the star
of Wahaca’s video, to “demonstrate how to plant your seeds, the fun and games of
pollination and insect defence and harvesting”.

Wahaca is wishing to inpsire the public to grow their own chilli seeds back home in
a fun and easy way

Entrants simply have to send a film of themselves(on their mobiles, digital camera
etc) doing something that brings their chilli passion to life and upload it to the
Wahaca Facebook page and short convincing paragraph as to why they are great.

Deadline for entry is 1st June

Winner will be selected by the Wahaca team and finalists will be chosen by public
vote.

The Prize – a Flip video Camera, Chilli growing tuition, a free meal at Wahaca and
the stage to be a star.

www.wahaca.co.uk

http://blog.wahaca.co.uk/2010/05/are-you-hotter-than-charlie-dimmock-spicier-than-alan-titchmarch-you-could-be-our-chilli-expert/

The first pack that arrived contained a mix of ham, sausage and chorizo all of which looked and smelled absolutely fantastic, the same was true for the fire chorizo, although it had the unmistakable smell and colour of the added chilli.

In between the two packages arriving I also subscribed to Jamie Oliver’s magazine and received his new book as a subscription freebie, and what a great book it is too, I shall be making more from it this week, there are lots of meals with and without chilli that look and sound really tasty.

As it happens in the book there is a recipe for “The best tomato and Chorizo Salad” so decided that testing the book and the chorizo together was a must.

The recipe it’s self was really simple, some fried chorizo, tomatoes, sherry vinegar and herbs all tossed together to make a lovely warm salad, it was suggested that it should be served with ham, goat’s cheese and bread,  so for once I did as suggested and served it with a big hunk of bread, some local goats cheese and a selection of meats that came in the first package from TopTapas.

The result was nothing short of spectacular, the tomato and chorizo salad was sublime, the chorizo being the star of the show, it was packed full of flavour, lovely and soft and had a fantastic chilli heat to it, which was mellowed out by a nice smokey flavour in the backgorund. You could tell the quality of it as soon as it hit the pan, it smelled fantastic and unlike the cheap chorizo you get in the shops it didn’t start spitting and I didn’t find my self having to drain lots of excess fat from the pan. It had just the right balance of spice and seasoning along with just enough fat to keep it moist and delicious.

The other meats I served up with it were fab too, esepcially the ham, I couldn’t get enough of it, it worked really well with the salty, creamy goats cheese. Absolutely spot on.

I enjoyed it while sat on the patio in the sun, I could have quite easily been sat in Spain enjoying the produce from where it came! The perfect summer lunch.

Most if not all of the meats and sausages from top tapas are lovingly hand made and it really does show. If you want to try some of their fabulous produce direct from Spain then check out their website here or follow them on twitter here if you want to try the Jamie oliver recipe then you can buy his book or subscribe to the magazine here use the voucher code jdoes10 and get the book free.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1236701/Revenge-chilli-Why-pepper-seeds-designed-burn-mouth.html

The result was brilliant, a lovely flavour packed curry, my only criticism was it could have done with a bit more chilli, next time I will either use some hotter chillis or increase the number of chillis I used.

The result can be seen below:

Nando’s survey proves that Brits have a taste for heat!

As the winter fast approaches, Brits are cranking up the heat…and we’re not talking central heating and thermal underwear. New National Chilli Week research released today by PERi-PERi professionals Nando’s  reveals how a third of us are now munching on the hot stuff at least once a week, whoever said British food was bland?

Eating far more chilli now than we ever did 10 years ago, stats show how a staggering 98% of us now add spice to our food on a regular basis, with only 2% of cool cucumbers revealing how they don’t eat food spicy at all.

Knowing chilli’s reputed aphrodisiac qualities, nearly 1/2 of those asked admitted they would use it to add some spice to their love life!  Surprisingly, there was a clear split between men and women = showing that both sexes are as eager as each other to use chilli to get steamy under the covers and put some heat back in the bedroom!

Our growing Tongues of Steel is something that has not gone unnoticed by Nando’s Chilli buyer Michael Plumber “In the past year alone we  have seen consumers charge up the heat scale in our restaurants…orders for our Extra Hot chicken has gone up by over a third, with our milder  Lemon & Herb baste slightly reducing…it seems that if people are fancying a bit of spice, they are going the whole hog…no half measures on the Peri-o-meter here!”

As well as the rising sales figures, celebs are increasingly being put on the hot spot, with a host of famous faces being caught in Nando’s restaurants having a quick chilli fix.  JLS, Dizzee Rascal and Pixie Lott are forever waxing lyrical about the spicy chicken, the members of the X-Factor house are using it to lubricate the vocal chords and  Denise Van Outen is a devoted fan “I am a chilli chick…it not only tastes great, but its also known  to give you an extra kick in more ways than one’

Denise is of course referring to the aphrodisiac qualities of the spice, not only giving the taste buds a toasting, research proves   chilli may also work to loosen up the libido, Plumber comments “maybe that’s the reason behind the steady increase, we are just in the mood  for love!

They also sent me some rather cool chilli facts but I will save those for another day.

It said I was a Bhuna..Bhunas contain strong flavours, with little sauce – much like you, who is straightforward, honest and constantly cuts to the chase.

Apparently that sounds just like me ;o)

They have also added a rather handy curry finder which helps you find the nearest curry house to you, this can be found here

I’m a huge curry fan – nearly 5 years living in Bradford opened my eyes to the wide variety avaible, different methods and just how tasty a proper curry is. I am ashamed to say i don’t often make curry, mainly because we have a couple of brilliant local curry houses so we usually just walk down to those.

But as it’s National Curry Week I am going to make a special effort and make my own curry.

The curry I will be cooking comes from Jamie Oliver’s The Return of the Naked Chef, hopefully he won’t mind me putting it below (I will update the post once I have made it to let you know what it’s like. The only changes I am making are Im going to add some extra veg as I quite like veg in my curry and also I plan to make it the night before then leave it in the slow cooker while we are at work.

So here is the recipe, if you are planning on enjoying National Curry week then please let me know what you have planned and how it goes.

Peter’s Lamb Curry (from Jamie’s book The Return of the Naked Chef) – serves 8.

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
• 285ml/1/2 pint stock or water
• 1.5kg/3 1/2lb leg of lamb, diced
• 1 handful of chopped mint and coriander
• 285ml/1/2 pint natural yoghurt
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• lime juice to taste

Hot and Fragrant Rub Mix

• 2 tablespoons fennel seeds
• 2 tablespoons cumin seeds
• 2 tablespoons coriander seeds
• 1/2 tablespoon fenugreek seeds
• 1/2 tablespoon black peppercorns
• 1 clove
• 1/2 a cinnamon stick
• 2 cardamom pods
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

Curry Paste Ingredients

• 5cm/2 inches fresh ginger, peeled
• 2 tennis-ball-sized red onions, peeled
• 10 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 2 fresh chillies, with seeds
• 1 bunch of fresh coriander

Method

Preheat your oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3.

Lightly toast the fragrant rub mix in the oven or under the grill.  Chop the curry paste ingredients roughly, add the rub mix and puree in a food processor.

In a large casserole pan, fry the curry paste mixture in the butter until it goes golden, stirring regularly.  Add the tomatoes and the stock or water.  Bring to the boil, cover with kitchen foil and place in the oven for one and a half hours to intensify the flavour.  Remove the foil and continue to simmer on the stove until it thickens.  This is your basic curry sauce.

Fry the lamb in a little olive oil until golden, then add to the curry sauce and simmer for around 1 hour or until tender.
Sprinkle with chopped coriander and mint and stir in the yoghurt.  Season to taste and add a good squeeze of lime juice.  Serve with spiced breads, steamed basmati rice and lots and lots of cold beer.

Feel free to vary the curry by using diced chicken, prawns or paneer, or vegetables like Swiss chard, spinach, peas, cauliflower, fried aubergine, okra, boiled potatoes, chickpeas or lentils.

The small spicy vegetables have ballooned in popularity in recent years, transforming from a small niche, bought by aficionados, to becoming mainstream, according to trading figures from the research company TNS. In the twelve months to the end of April, £14.5 million of chillies were sold in Britain.

Tesco, the country’s biggest supermarket chain, is taking advantage of the trend to double the number of varieties it stocks from five to ten, selling the Dorset Naga for the first time nationwide.

The world’s hottest chilli is – as its name suggests – cultivated not in the arid heat of southern India or Mexico but in the south west of England under polytunnels.

It measures more than 900,000 units on the Scoville scale, a measure of heat developed during the early years of the twentieth century. Previously, the hottest chilli pepper in The Guinness Book of Records is a Red Savina habanero with a rating of 570,000 Scoville Heat Units.

Sam Wright, Tesco’s chilli buyer said: “Chilli pepper culture in the UK has really come on in the last few years and they are no longer thought of as a culinary novelty.

“In the past we used to primarily stock chilli peppers in areas where there was a large Afro-Caribbean or Asian community but nowadays we sell them in stores right across Britain.”

Consumers are becoming increasingly adventurous in their kitchens experimenting with dishes they have eaten in Indian, Thai and Chinese restaurants, with Anjum Anand’s “Indian Food Made Easy” one of the most successful cook books of the last five years.

A spokesman for Wealmoor, one of the country’s largest importers of chillies, said: “Culinary trends are behind the growth of chillies, but there is much further to go, if you look at how many chillies a British cook uses compared with an Asian cook. They are still poles apart.”

Taken from the Telegraph

India plans hot chilli grenades

Indian scientists say the chillis will immobilise but not kill people

Indian defence scientists are planning to put one of the world’s hottest chilli powders into hand grenades.

They say the devices will be used to control rioters and in counter-insurgency operations.

Researchers say the idea is to replace explosives in small hand grenades with a certain variety of red chilli to immobilise people without killing them.

The chilli, known as Bhut Jolokia, is said to be 1,000 times hotter than commonly used kitchen chilli.

Scientists at India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) are quoted as saying the potent chilli will be used as a food additive for troops operating in cold conditions.

And the powder will also be spread on the fences around army barracks in the hope the strong smell will keep out animals.

Other forms of pepper spray are commonly used for crowd control in many parts of the world.

Taken from the BBC @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8119591.stm

Amongst other things i finally got round to fixing the greenhouse, after some nasty little kids chucked some rather large bricks at it.

I decided to go for clear, solid 3mm, uv protected polycarbonate, which is a bit more expensive than glass but after a bit of hunting around i managed to get a it for less than a 1/4 of most the quotes i had (the most expensive being over £200)

Its much easier to deal with than cheap horticultural glass, which is bloody lethal, even when in whole sheets.

It was a bit more complicated than last time i had to fix broken glass in it as it required removing some of the beading and fixing a crossbar that had been smashed by a big lump of concrete.

Some bits are a bit messy where i managed to get sealent on the glass, but that wil peel off when dried, Im quite proud of my handywork as before we bought the house i could do nothing practical like this.