[CH] Fire in the hole! The hottest chili is ready for theworld
Linda Hutchinson (lipant@sympatico.ca)
Wed, 1 Aug 2007 22:00:32 -0400
Forwarded from Clipping Cooking Lists
Linda
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From: Jamie R
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Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 5:54 PM
Subject: [Cooking-Info] Fire in the hole! The hottest chili is ready for
theworld
Fire in the hole! The hottest chili is ready for the world
By TIM SULLIVAN, The Associated Press | Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Times & Democrat
CHANGPOOL, India - The farmer, a quiet man with an easy smile, has spent a
lifetime eating a chili pepper with a strange name and a vicious bite. His
mother stirred them into sauces. His wife puts them out for dinner raw,
blood-red morsels of pain to be nibbled - carefully, very carefully - with
whatever she's serving.
Around here, in the hills of northeastern India, it's called the "bhut
jolokia" - the "ghost chili." Anyone who has tried it, they say, could end
up an apparition.
"It is so hot you can't even imagine," said the farmer, Digonta Saikia,
working in his fields in the midday sun, his face nearly invisible behind an
enormous straw hat. "When you eat it, it's like dying."
Outsiders, he insisted, shouldn't even try it. "If you eat one," he told a
visitor, "you will not be able to leave this place."
The rest of the world, though, should prepare itself.
Because in this remote Indian region facing bloody insurgencies, widespread
poverty and a major industry - tea farming - in deep decline, hope has come
in the form of this thumb-sized chili pepper with frightening potency and a
superlative rating: the spiciest chili in the world. A few months ago,
Guinness World Records made it official.
If you think you've had a hotter chili pepper, you're wrong.
The smallest morsels can flavor a sauce so intensely it's barely edible.
Eating a raw sliver causes watering eyes and a runny nose. An entire chili
is an all-out assault on the senses, akin to swigging a cocktail of battery
acid and glass shards.
For generations, though, it's been loved in India's northeast, eaten as a
spice, a cure for stomach troubles and, seemingly paradoxically, a way to
fight the crippling summer heat.
Now, though, with scientific proof that barreled the bhut jolokia into the
record books - it has more than 1,000,000 Scoville units, the scientific
measurement of a chili's spiciness - northeast India is taking its chili to
the outside world.
Exporters are eagerly courting the international community of rabid
chili-lovers, a group that has traded stories for years about a mysterious,
powerful Indian chili. Farmers are planting new fields of bhut jolokias,
government officials are talking about development programs.
Chances are no one will get rich. But in a region where good news is a
rarity, the world record status has meant a lot of pride - and a little more
business.
"It has got tremendous potential," says Leena Saikia, the managing director
of Frontal AgriTech, a food business in the northeastern state of Assam that
has been in the forefront of bhut jolokia exports.
Last year, her company shipped out barely a ton of the chilis. This year,
amid the surge in publicity, the goal is 10 tons to nearly a dozen
countries. "We're getting so many inquiries," says Saikia, whose name is
common in Assam, and who is unrelated to the farmer. "We'll be giving
employment to so many people."
For now, at least, transport issues and a tangle of government regulations
mean most exports are of dried bhut jolokias and chili paste. But, Saikia
added, the paste can be used for everything from hot sauces to tear gas.
Because the heat is so concentrated, food manufacturers in need of seasoning
can use far less bhut jolokia than they would normal chilis.
India's northeast, a cluster of seven states that hangs off the country's
eastern edge, is a place where most people are ethnically closer to China
and Myanmar than the rest of India. It's a deeply troubled area, often
neglected by the central government in New Delhi, where more than two dozen
ethnic militant groups are fighting the Indian government and one another.
Many areas remain largely off-limits to foreigners and few days pass without
at least one killing.
In Assam, the wealthiest of the region's states, the long-dominant tea
industry is facing falling prices and rising costs, and one-third of the
population lives below the poverty line. Attacks by the state's main
militant group, the United Liberation Front of Asom, and retaliatory
government crackdowns, have brutalized the region.
"Maybe this bhut jolokia can help change things here," says Ranjana Bhuyan,
a high-school teacher shopping for vegetables in the Assamese town of Jorhat
on a recent evening. Like most people here, she normally mixes bhut jolokias
into sauces, or pickles them as a sort of spicy relish, but also likes to
eat tiny pieces raw, enjoying the flavor and the sharp jolt.
"People have been eating this forever," she says.
Only in the past few years, though, has the rest of the world even heard of
it. The first reports filtered out in 2000, when the government's
Assam-based Defense Research Laboratory announced the bhut jolokia as the
world's hottest chili. But their tests, reportedly done during research on
tear gas, took years to be corroborated.
The confirmation came earlier this year from New Mexico State University's
Chile Pepper Institute, where spiciness is a religion. The institute got its
first bhut jolokia seeds in 2001, but it took years to grow enough peppers
for testing.
Their results, backed up by two independent labs and heralded by Guinness,
were astonishing.
A chili's spiciness can be scientifically measured by calculating its
content of capsaicin, the chemical that gives a pepper its bite, and
counting its Scoville units.
And how hot is the bhut jolokia?
As a way of comparison: Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000
Scoville units. Your basic jalapeno pepper measures anywhere from 2,500 to
8,000. The previous record holder, the Red Savina habanero, was tested at up
to 580,000 Scovilles.
The bhut jolokia crushed those contenders, testing at 1,001,304 Scoville
units.
While small amounts of bhut jolokia are grown in a few other places,
including Sri Lanka and Bangladesh (and a similar variety, the Dorset Naga,
in England), horticulturists say the gentle sloping hills, heat and humidity
of the Indian northeast make it the ideal greenhouse.
The pepper is known by any number of names across India's northeast. It's
the "poison chili" in some areas, the "king of the chilis" in others. Just
to the south of Assam is Nagaland, it's eaten in nearly every meal. As a
result, it is often called the Naga mircha - the "Naga chili."
Still, getting your hands on a fresh bhut jolokia is difficult except in a
handful of northeastern towns. A few specialty companies in the United
States and Britain sell dried chilis and seeds, but the plants are painfully
fragile, susceptible to many pests and diseases, and very difficult to grow.
So it may take a while before farmers outside this region are able to grow
the bulbous, wrinkled pepper on a large scale.
For now, outside of a few exports, the bhut jolokia will remain with the
people who have eaten it for centuries.
Said Saikia, the farmer. "It has become a part of our culture."