"habanero" news and stories

Photo: nicisme, Flickr.

As delicate a fruit as it appears photographed above, the red chili is a fiery ingredient that adds heaps of heat with just a few potent morsels. Domesticated thousands of years ago in South-of-the-Border cooking, the chili is now starting to make an appearance in sweet dishes and drinks in trendy restaurants and bars across the country.

In some of our favorite examples, Mario Batali's Osteria Mozza serves a tequila cocktail with smoked salt and candied chili; the Food Network created a Habanero Lime Cheesecake; and Ice Cream Ireland has posted a recipe for Candied Chili Peppers. We think the pepper is an exciting ingredient for everything from the infusion of spirits to adding kick to salsas, dressings, desserts, etc. Leave us comments letting us know where -- and in what dishes -- you've encountered them!

Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool to get a shot at having your photos featured in Feast Your Eyes.

Given the mixed reviews I've heard about the food at Lonesome Dove, the recently opened New York City outpost of cowboy chef Tim Love's acclaimed Fort Worth restaurant, I'll reserve judgment until I eat there. The one specialty at the Dove that does whet my appetite is the jalapeño margarita that I read about in The New York Times yesterday.
The Times piece begins with an account of adverse effects, including passing out, that have been caused by what I think should be labeled extreme cocktails that are served at elsewhere on the East Coast. These include martinis made with habañero-infused Absolut, you get the idea. I'm not exactly lining up to try such libations, but I'm pretty sure that the worst I'd suffer from is a burning mouth and lips, perhaps a runny nose.

Back to Chef Love's cocktail creation. Since hot spice and margaritas are such perfect mates, he wanted to embody that combination in a drink. So he decided to a muddle a jalapeño along with the traditional margarita ingredients. I can't wait to try it. I just hope it's not made with the milder TAM variety that's hit the market in recent years. No, word as to whether the fiery cocktial was used as a palate cleanser at the jalapeño eating contest held yesterday at the State Fair of Texas.

Source

A British couple has grown what they claim to be the hottest variety of chili pepper in the world. Dubbed the Dorset Naga, the pepper has apparently tested at between 876,000 and 970,000 Scoville heat units, according to The Telegraph. For comparison, common habanero peppers clock in at about 200,000-300,000 SHUs and jalapeños are in the low thousands. The Dorset Naga was developed by Michael and Joy Michaud in Dorset. On their website, they trace the origin of their chili to the Bangladeshi Naga Morich. Still, Dorset Naga is hotter than that, and the Michaud's aren't quite sure why. Their site features several articles about similar strains of absurdly hot peppers. According to the Telegraph article, there isn't a whole lot you can do with the Dorset Naga. Some of the Michaud's customers have actually complained that the peppers were too hot to cook with. A chef quoted in the article says that some people simply brush their foods with the pepper before eating.

Gather 'round, men, for the spicy food cook-off. You don't want to miss this one; it could save your life.

Capsaicin, the chemical in hot peppers (particularly cayenne and habenero) that makes them hot, literally stops prostate cancer cells in their tracks. Really. They actually commit suicide (apoptosis), leading to an eighty percent reduction in the size of the tumors compared with the mice spared from the hot stuff.

This is great news, but not really a surprise that the cancer cells commit suicide when exposed to the capsaicin. After all, haven't there been times you've wanted to kill yourself when eating those nuclear-hot buffalo wings or that seven-alarm chili? Makes perfect sense to me.

Source

Most habanero hot sauces are strictly one-note affairs. That note being an A sharp in the key of aaaargh. That's because they usually use habanero extracts and those that do use fresh peppers often don't include much else.

Years ago I tasted a habanero sauce that was quite different: Dirty Dick's Hot Pepper Sauce. Not because of the use of fresh habaneros but rather such ingredients as bananas and sultanas that lend the reddish brown sauce a tropical flavor. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the National Barbecue Association recently gave Dirty Dick's a first-place Award of Excellence in the Hot Sauce/Anything Goes category. The sauce's name begs the question of whether they meant to enter under Anything Goes or both!