homegrown	2006-09-26 22:34
I just braved the heat and moquitoes of... my front yard, to pick a batch of chile tepín peppers. Tepíns are, by many reports, the hottest peppers in the world b by weight, but I don't believe it. They are so small, though, that eating one isn't so bad. They are nearly spherical, and so picking them is easy: you just gently pinch and rotate them and they pop right off. There are still many unripe ones, and several had dried on the plant - the dry ones are harder to pick than the fresh ones. Some people say that dried peppers are hotter than fresh ones - I think that's misleading, because it's almost certainly true by weight - that is, an ounce of dried peppers is hotter than an ounce of fresh peppers, because it takes many more dried peppers to make up an ounce. But taking a fresh pepper and drying it out doesn't make it any hotter, and I suspect that it becomes a little less hot. Those tepíns are hot, and maybe hotter than red habaneros (but maybe not), but because they are so small, they don't have the stopping power that a good habanero has. My red habanero plants are long dead, alas (this picture is from a happier time), so until I can grow new plants from the seeds I jealously guard, it's tepíns for me. Another plant that's thriving in the yard is a kaffir lime (tree?bush?) - the leaves are an ingredient in many Thai dishes, and when you crush them, they smell and tast amazingly good in a citrus-y kind of way. I understand that the plant will eventually produce limes, so I'm looking out for those. I just had to prune the plant, because it was growing like crazy. Not sure how visible they are in the picture, but the plant has nasty inch-and-half long thorns that you have to watch out for. A lot of lime-bearing plants have these.
/food permanent link

2 comments

josey wrote

Coolest person in the world-oh did you mean title of my comment?
Do you or Jane cook a lot of Thai dishes? Also, I'm fascinated to know more about your technique for picking your peppers! :)

josh wrote

testing comment...