• Another tale of hot peppers, fingernails, and searing pain. Someone needs to create the perfect pepper preparer.
  
• A tasty recipe for aioli fiends: Grilled Asparagus with Lamb and Mustard Aioli.
• Yesterday, I went out for some great sushi, but maybe I should've gone here -- Toronto sushi joint review: Toshi Sushi.
• Wine and barbecues ... the perfect match? Montgras Reserva 2006 Carmenère, Chakana 2007 Malbec, Lockwood Vineyard 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon, Aresti Winemakers' 2004 Assemblage, and Georges Duboeuf Chateau de Javernand 2006 Chiroubles.
  

Looking for ways to bring relief to your burning fingers after mincing hot peppers?

This one is a little different from the regular Food Porn Daily pic I normally pick. I went searching for pepper images and when I came across this one, it struck me as particularly beautiful, with that vast tangle of hot red peppers and the women with the smiling faces. The flavor potential (as well as the amount of heat) contained in that pile of peppers is hard to even imagine.

If you have gorgeous travel/food pictures, join us over at the Slashfood Flickr group and add them to the pool. We'd love to see them!

London's Thai Cottage put the pow in nam prik pao on Wednesday when fumes from a huge pot of dry cooking bird's eye chilies sparked a terror alert that led police to break down the restaurant's door. Firefighters emerged from the eatery with a pot containing nine pounds of smoking peppers.

Soho residents had complained of a chemical burning their throats and the London Fire Brigade quickly dispatched a chemical response team. When I was a kid my chilihead father had the brilliant idea of making his own hot oil in the house by frying peppers in oil. So I can attest to the fact that vapors from smoking chilies do indeed take one's breath away. Thank god dear old Dad didn't use anywhere near nine pounds.

I will say however that smoking peppers do not smell at all like a chemical. Chef Chalemchai Tangjariyapoon agrees, "I was making a spicy dip with extra-hot chillies that are deliberately burnt. To us, it smells like burnt chili and it is slightly unusual."

Back in February I blogged about Anandita Dutta Tamuly, a 25-year-old Indian woman with an uncanny ability to chow down on massive amounts of the world's hottest pepper. She's been known to gobble 60 bhut Jolokia, or ghost peppers, in two minutes, and even plans a bid to smash the Guinness Record for pepper eating.

But what happens when a mild-mannered journalist goes toe to toe with the spicy behemoth? Not by eating 60, but rather by attempting to consume a single ghost chili in one sitting at the behest of his editor. Said journalist was not me; it was AP writer Tim Sullivan. It all started out innocently enough with a single pepper and the necessary accompaniments of an open beer, a bowl of yogurt and a few slices of bread. For the first few seconds Sullivan felt fine. Sadly his fireproof palate was short-lived.

He describes the "gastronomic mugging" that seared his tongue and sparked a coughing fit. Since Sullivan had to finish the pepper, he soldiered on started chewing quickly and swallowing. As if it needed to pointed out, he notes this is not the way ghost peppers are normally eaten. And with good reason, Sullivan details a sinus clearing, eye-watering, searing heat that none of his coolants seemed to help with except the beer. After 20 minutes he had recovered the ability to speak and lived to tell the tale and called his wife who laughed at him.

What's the hottest thing you've ever eaten? And what are your favorite ways to put out the fire? I'll go first. Once I was in a Peruvian restaurant and ordered my ceviche picante and was not satisfied with the heat level. When I asked for some aji, or hot sauce, and the waiter brought it in the back, I should have known something was wrong.

When he returned the entire plate was covered in little ribbons of hot pepper. In the spirit of he-men, gringos and hot pepper lovers everywhere I knew I had to eat the whole thing. Man was it hot. I felt as if a red-hot poker had been driven into the center of my tongue. My lips burned so much that when I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face and rinse my mouth out they were an angry, inflamed red.

Masochists and chile-heads have a British stockbroker to thank for unleashing Naga Snake Bite Sauce on the world. The fiery brew is made from what some claim is the world's hottest pepper. According to the sauce's creator, Mark McMullan, the naga morich chili clocks in at a breathtaking 1,598,227 Scoville Heat Units, beating out the bhut jolokia chili. In any case the dorset naga hasn't been certified by Guinness, while the bhut jolokia has.

The finer points of world records aside, one thing's for sure McMullan has created one blisteringly hot sauce. To give an idea, the dorset naga is 300 times hotter than a jalapeno. The pepper's name derives from the naga, a snakelike creature from Indian mythology. This may explain why the label claims the sauce is "Like drinking cobra venom." I don't think cobra venom is spicy, but it's certainly deadly.

Somehow between the excitement of Chinese New Year and the Winter Olympics I managed to miss this one. In addition to being the Year of the Dog, 2006 has been dubbed the Year of the Chile Pepper by the National Garden Bureau. I'm glad the organization has seen fit to recognize the hot pepper as its Vegetable of the Year, but as far as I'm concerned, I devote every tear, er year, of my life to the piquant little devils. That said, the NGB has gathered a lot of great growing tips and history, including the fact both Washington and Jefferson grew cayennes.

[photo: smallfarms]