Chilepepper and spice

A new morning

2007-03-05T10:26:00.000+01:00

Good morning! It might be time for this blog to wake up, at least a little bit.

As readers of my personal blog in swedish might have noticed I am still alive and I am also soon to be a parent. Any week now. This chilepepper blog went to sleep almost at the same time as we found out that we were having a baby. One reason was that we suddenly got a lot of other things to think about, and another reason was that I didn't feel very well in the first weeks of pregnancy, so there was no interesting cooking, no hot food at all and basically no energy at all.

Last year's harvest though was really good. We had a lot of jalapeños and habaneros, and a fair amount of other species. We have had a lot of spicy dinners during fall and winter, but we haven't really tried so many new interesting things.

During this time Matli has been doing a lot of work for the swedish chilepepper society, Svenska Chilepeppar Föreningen [sic!]. Their website and also their internal databases for managing members, emails and stuff were really bad, but now the situation is much better. Matli is now also a board member of SCF. If you are swedish and you like hot food I think you should join the club! Give it a try!

Yesterday we finally got our seeds for this year into the dirt, so now we're hoping for another great harvest. We've figured out that this year is the last year we can put our plants just about anywhere. Next year we'll have a one year old kid running around putting fun colored fruits into the mouth...

We'll see if we can keep up any blogging when our baby arrives, but at least we will probably stay at home more than usual this year, and from today and for the rest of the year I am a full time at home parent, even though the baby isn't actually born yet. So we could sum up this by saying that we have some different things growing here, and we'll see what results that might bring!

Growing babies

2006-07-24T18:24:00.001+02:00

Finally we've got some small chile babies in our bushes. There are loads and loads of flowers and hopefully we have enough bugs to pollinate them alright. This summer has been nice for the chile, hot and dry, but since we had a lousy start this spring everything is really late. If the weather will continue with a warm autumn I guess we still can have a large harvest this year. And the three year old jalapeño-plant above, I almost killed it this winter. It was looking dreadful, all covered up with lice. But now, its wonderful! Overall we have had very little problems this year with lice.

Now look at these new babies. Jalapeño, Hungarian and I believe it's a Choclate Scotch Bonnet. Or is it a Habanero Red Savina? It's hard to tell this early and those bushes just keep wrapping around each other. We'll see which color it'll turn out to have later on!

Chile babies on parade

2006-06-11T21:49:00.000+02:00

Lazy times for this blog, yeah I know. Sure, we've eaten lots of hot food, but haven't really had the camera there or tried anything new. And the chile plants are such a dissapointment. They are small and tiny, and they are few. Not many seeds worked at all and we only got three species from this years seed. Really lousy! But the ones we've kept over the winter are doing well, at least most of them, and are already giving fruit! That's great!

Today I replanted the tiny ones in larger pots, because it is finally summer in Sweden, and I hope they'll like it outdoors. I'll put them behind glass soon, but the temperature out is said to be really warm this upcoming week, so they can start their outdoor life actually outdoor. It's easier to keep them wet when I can use the hose.

And yeah, some weeks ago we were back in the US. This time we were in Washington, DC and a shortie in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Great, we now have Velveeta again and can do nice summer quesadilla lunches!

Weekend Cat Blogging #46 - Orange neighbour cat

2006-04-22T19:55:00.000+02:00

Spring is finally here and most of the spare time goes to gardening. Today was warm and sunny, and as so often we got a visitor in the garden. Our neighbour's cat joined the work, but in it's own way. It sure seemed nice to rest in the sun, but someone had to dig and rake and... well...

So because of this cat we can for once join the weekend cat blogging at EatStuff, although we don't have any cat of our own, partially thanks to allergy in the family.

Spring is here!

2006-04-15T19:02:00.000+02:00

What a lovely day of spring! All day working in the garden made me hungry. While I was doing the garden ready for spring and summer Matli was under the car, doing it a bit more silent, hopefully. Well, I got hungry but he was just muttering from under the car. I decided that it was time to cook. Yeah, me, Nikka, did the cooking today. A miracle.

Unfortunately we were so tired and hungry that we forgot to take a picture before we grabbed in! What a shame! Anyway, the food looked kind of beige, but the taste was better than we expected of me! I did someting like this, serves two hungry workers...

Nikka's lime and chile chicken with tagliatelle
Chicken:
2 chicken filets, sliced
some butter
salt & pepper

Sauce:
2 dl crème fraiche
1 dl water
1 lime fruit, juice and peel
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp soy sauce
1 clove of garlic, crushed
2 red chilefruits, piripiri or similar (small but strong) sliced
some cayenne pepper

Pasta:
tagliatelle

Fry the chicken in butter. Add salt and pepper. Cook the pasta.

Mix everything for the sauce except the cayenne pepper in a bowl. Pour it over the chicken and let it simmer for some minutes so it gets a bit thicker. Add some more honey if it's too sour. Add some cayenne pepper for taste and color.

Serve the chicken with the pasta.

Getting it all together again

2006-04-12T22:12:00.000+02:00

The Internet seems to be back, at least most of the time. The husband is back, but mostly asleep since he brought home the flu. Hopefully it is the flu, since I have had a vaccination. I can't feel anything yet, so maybe, maybe I'll make it this time without getting ill.

Nothing really new to write about, but something really old. Now what is this?

It's something we had about a month ago that yet hasn't been blogged about. It's pasta and banana and pork and jalapeños... and all I remember was that it was great, especially the bananas. But what was the trick? Maybe the husband is feeling a bit better and can fill in...

(Don't miss out my other kind of new blog! You'll find it at http://pofthed.blogspot.co m )

So, Matli, can you fill in some here or will we just keep it a forgotten secret?

[Ehrm. I don't remember much about that dish... /Matli]

Offline, a sad story

2006-04-05T16:54:00.000+02:00

Our Internet connection has been a real problem lately. From Friday to Monday we had no connecion at all, and before that it has been really shaky with more downtime than uptime. So, we're alive but a bit offline :-)

Matli will come home again this Friday, and hopefully that will also mean that we will start eating dinners again! I can't say I have had much cooked meals at home while he has been away. Stay tuned.

Chile and pepper bitter choclate

2006-03-25T16:25:00.000+01:00

I could give the chile plants some care, or I could try to fix something to eat for myself. I could also clean up all the mess in our house, or I could take care of some important stuff like the tax form, the choice of how to save for my pension, or just take care of the bills. I could email old friends or do some maintenance of this blog and our other web pages. There is so much to do when your husband is out of town for weeks, you could even take a walk in the lovely sun, or at least go grocery shopping. But all I do is sewing and knitting and eating these choclates we bought at the recent choclate festival here in Linköping. The chile one is great. The pepper one is also fine, but I wouldn't buy that one again. I'm not too fond of the black pepper taste.

Now I'm gonna make myself some waffles since it's the waffle day today. But I don't want to go out, so no jam and cream for me (we're actually out of jam, and we don't normaly keep cream at home) so I'll go for the butter and maple syrup, and dream about my next visit to Ihop. Just two months now until we are in DC!

Some kind of salmon

2006-03-21T22:09:00.000+01:00

Excuses, excuses. So, what have we been up to lately? Work I guess. Matli has been working a lot lately, evenings and everything, and now he's away for three weeks on business, skiing and more business. I have also been caught up by my work, and even more by my sewing and knitting. I wonder why I can't control my hobbies? It's always one of them that takes all the time.

I can't blog at all from my new work, and I can't even read other blogs during the days, so when I get home I try to catch up quickly - and then I try to stay away from the computer. I have a really bad neck and arm right now, so I shouldn't be doing this at all...

Anyway, we have had some nice dinners in the weekends, and I'll try to post some of them here, they are all in the camera, but with the chef gone (somewhere near Prague right now I think?) there will be no recipes. But still, maybe inspiration to someone. This is some kind of salmon with I think a hoisin sauce. I remember it was yummy!

Time for bed, work is calling early tomorrow morning!

As new

2006-03-06T18:26:00.000+01:00

Don't they look like new? Almost no lice left, much fresher bowls, new soil (totally new or partially new, depending on the shape of the old one). They sure look fresh and eager to produce new fruit. I did save a branch vith flowers on the Habañero Red Savina. I don't know if this was a good idea, but I'll give it a go. Maybe we can get some early fruit if it works.

There is already much lighter out, and that gives the chile more daylight hours, so probably they will start to awake from their winter sleep. I'll have to give them nutrition now. And really watch out for lice... I hate lice! Somehow it seems like it's impossible to grow chile without it. There is one way though, and that is to buy some lice eating insects. But I don't want insects in my house! So, that's not happening :-)

Chile takes time

2006-03-04T23:16:00.000+01:00

If you'd count the time spent on chile growing it would probably be less expensive to drive to the nearest well equipped grocery store and buy it. The problem is that we don't have any grocery stores with a reliable supply of different chile species. Today I have replanted four out of eight chile plants which we are trying to keep alive all winter. I started with the smaller ones, so tomorrow, or whenever, I have four lager pots to replant. Basically I just cut them short and change the dirt. It would be better to give them new and bigger pots, but we just don't have room for that, so new dirt with some nutrition added will do. There seems to be a problem with lice now again, so I'm trying to get rid of as much of the old soil as possible if the lice live in it.

Still no sign of any activity in the new plants I planted last weekend. It takes more than a week normally, so I'm not worried. Yet.

Seeds

2006-02-26T22:07:00.000+01:00

This week we recieved our chile seeds from Örtagården and today I have planted them along with some tomatillos, basil and cilantro. Now I'll will have to check them every day and give them love and water. I also have some fuchsias planted, which I never have done before, so I have to look out carefully this year. Oh, I also planted some seeds we bought in Australia. Peppermint eucalyptys tree and some wildflower. We'll see if that will work. To be honest I have too much other stuff on ny mind right now to really feel up to growing anything, but that might have something to do with the fact that there is still 30-40 centimeters of snow outside...

I thought I would have also replanted the chile plants we've kept over winter, along with some other plants, but I didn't have the time today. The seeds took forever to plant. So I guess I know what I'll be doing next weekend.

Chile is candy

2006-02-25T14:57:00.000+01:00

It seems like ICA, one of the largest food chains in Sweden, have noticed that chiles look pretty, since they use them in their adverts. Sometimes that makes a rather funny picture, when the ad is about something totally different. We found this one today when we were doing some shopping...

Lösviktsgodis is sweets you pick what you like, put in a bag and pay by the weight of it. I just can't seem to find an English word for it!

The chile club meeting

2006-02-20T20:41:00.000+01:00

This is going to be a long post, I guess. Well, actually not really. But I'm gonna try to tell you some about the chile club meeting we recently attended. The chili con carne competition which my husband won has already been mentioned, but there were more to the meeting than just the competition.

First there was the actual meeting with the run-through of the agenda and election of boardmembers and stuff. Not too exciting. We drank coffee and ate some nice olive oil bread with Italian ham. The one question we found most interesting was the one about the website. It's really a mess. So we volunteered to help in making it better. We'll see where that will lead. Another big question was about a club t-shirt. We couldn't care less about that one or the colors of the print on it.

The meeting part was rather short anyway, and then began the chili competition. The participants had to finish their chilies by decorating them or whatever, and they were put on the stove. Then the jury began to work. Really a hard job for the jury! They were fun to watch. We saw them getting more and more color on their cheeks.

When the jury had finished there was a wine tasting with Magnus Sjöstedt from Bornicon & Salming. We have tasted wine with him earlier, on a fair in Stockholm. He's good, but this was a bit of an introduction to wine tasting and wine with food. Since we taste a lot of wine with Munskänkarna, a Swedish wine society where we are members, this was a bit too basic for us, but there were some nice wines. It's always nice to taste a Schloss Vollrads.

After some basic talk about the wines it was time to try them with the buffet. We had all the 11 chili con carnes with chips and cheese, and some delicacies. Great. We ate a lot! And after that there were some baked things to have with the coffee. Almost too much!

The meeting continued with some local growers of spices and vegetables telling us a little about their company, and then the number 1 grower of the chile club, Rune Brand from Örtagården told us about what he had been up to lately with chile growing in Africa.

Only ONE thing then remained on the agenda. The presentation of the winner of the chili con carne contest. But that one has already been in this blog, so I guess that's it!

Big trouble

2006-02-08T19:28:00.000+01:00

Of course we like all the things Matli won in the chili competition, but hey, it really gave us big trouble. See how big this is? It's more than three kilos in total, and almost 2 kilos of that is in fact jalapeños. Hey, we like jalapeño, but the expiry date is March 3rd. This year. That's in less than a month! This week we have started out great. Three days in a row with pickled jalapeño friendly food. How long can we keep up? And still, you can't even see yet that we've started! It still looks full.

And when this one is finished we have two more... at least they had better expiry dates...

Chili Chef of the Year

2006-02-05T21:28:00.000+01:00

Today we attended the annual meeting of Svenska Chilepepparföreningen (Swedish Chile pepper Association). I assume Nikka will write more about the meeting. I will however concentrate on the competition part; The Chili Chef of the Year. Yesterday I described the Chili Con Carne I made for the competition. However, some points would also be awarded for the visual appearance of the chili. So this morning I chopped up some thai chiles and made a couple of "chile flowers" to decorate my chili with. Nothing too fancy, but at least something.

There were eleven entries in the competition, covering a broad range of chili types. Both with and without beans, hot and mild, smoked and plain, and even without meat (chili sin carne). After the judges had had their share, we could try all the chilies. I might be a little biased, but I actually liked my own chili the best.

There was also a nice chipotle based chili that I liked a lot. I might try something similar some day. Chipotle gives a very distinct nice smoked flavour to any dish. Another intersting entry had a very marked habanero taste, which was a little surprising, and quite good too. Fairly hot, of course.

I heard some people mentioning that they liked #7 (my entry) the best, but I had no idea about what the judges thought. The chilies were judged on three weighted criteria; taste, heat and appearance. I was a little worried about the heat of my chili, but on the other hand, there should be a good balance between heat and taste (if heat would have been the only criterion, I certainly have some sauces that would have made me the winner.)

At the end of the meeting, a mountain of items was put on a desk. It turned out to be the prizes for the top-three entries. The chipotle-based chili I liked got the third prize. Well-deserved.

The second prize went to Viola Blom, a previous winner of several chile pepper related competitions. Her chili was also very good, and she did of course deservere her prize.

And finally, the winner was announced. It was me!

I hadn't really anticipated this. I knew my chili was good. But I didn't know anything about what the judges would think. And I also knew that there would be several good entries. Yesterday, I thought that my best chance would be if there were very few entries in the competition. So when I found out about the eleven participants, I suspected I wouldn't get any prize at all.

The prize was a huge pile of chile related food items and a book. This includes several kilos of pickled jalapenos. I don't really know what we'll do with this huge amount. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I really enjoyed this competition (don't you always when you win?). Now we know that our favourite chili is appreciated by others than us. That's good to know...

Making Chili

2006-02-04T22:30:00.001+01:00

As Nikka mentioned in this post, tomorrow is the yearly meeting of the swedish chile pepper association. She also mentioned that we will participate in the chili con carne competition. So my task for today was to make two litres of our favourite chili.

Making chili isn't too difficult. Basically, you just need a lot of time, chile pepper, meat and beer. I prefer chilies without beans. I have hade some good chilies with beans, but I generally regard beans as the poor man's substitute for meat. This is an ofted debated issue, so I won't push my point. Beans can at least give a nice visual appearance to chilies, especially when you mix various kinds of beans. Other subjects to argue about is the type of meat (whole chunks or minced?), if tomatoes should be included, if garlic should be included and so on. There are probably people arguing about every aspect of chili cooking... As long as you don't cook bolognese, throw in a can of white beans and call it Chili Con Carne, almost everything is fine with me. (Unfortunately, this is normally what you get when you order chili con carne in Sweden.)

However, I know what kind of chili we like. So this was what I made. Here comes the approximate recipe for two litres, which should be good for six servings.

1.5 kg stewing beef (in ½-1 inch cubes)
0.75 kg minced pork
2 medium sized onions, chopped
salt and pepper
vegetable oil
4-5 crushed garlic cloves
3 tablespoons of chopped jalapeno
3.5 dl ketchup
1.5 beef stock cubes
6 dl beer
9 tablespoons chili powder
3.5 tablespoons cumin (spiskummin, inte kummin!)
0.5 teaspoons dry mustard
1 teaspoon brown sugar (farinsocker)
1 teaspoon oregano
2 tablespoons "Try Me" Tiger Sauce (optional)

Directions:
Brown the beef cubes, minced pork and onions in oil in separate batches. Add salt and pepper according to taste.
Put in a large pot and add all other ingredients except for the optional tiger sauce and stir well.
Bring to a boil. Put on the lid and simmer slowly for 3-4 hours, stirring occasionaly.
When ready, the chili should have a nice thick consistency and the meat chunks should be extremely tender. Add cooking time, and take off the lid if the consistency is too runny. The tiger sauce may be added when the cooking is finished or when serving.

If you make smaller batches, you may have to add more beer or water during the cooking, so keep an eye open.

I recommend serving the chili with tortilla chips, mixed chopped onions, grated cheese and sour cream.

Spicy coffee

2006-02-04T21:50:00.000+01:00

When we go abroad we always try to get some coffee at Starbucks. No Starbucks in Sweden, and that's a shame. This time when we went to Australia we had some hours to kill at London Heathrow on the way down, and that's where we had our first meeting with their special seasonal flavours - this Christmas they were Gingerbread, Creme brulé and Peppermint. If I remember it right now Matli had a Gingerbread latte and I had a Gingerbread mocha since I wanted to be able to sleep on the plane. Later in Australia we had more and more, and lucky as we were we found a coupon in a free tourist guide which gave us two drinks for the price of one at Starbucks, so there was no excuse NOT to have our breakfasts and coffee breaks at Starbucks, almost every day in Sydney.

We did also buy two bottles of the wonderful Gingerbread syrup, so since we got back home we've had gingerbread lattes on the weekends. We will miss it when this second bottle is finished.

Hot Scampi Pasta

2006-01-31T22:30:00.000+01:00

Nikka isn't too fond of shellfish. So when she's away for some reason, it is usually a good opportunity for Matli to cook something based on shellfish. Today was one of those occasions.

I made a tomato and creme fraiche based pasta sauce with scampi, bell peppers, chile peppers and various other spices. It turned out to be super tasty. And quite hot as well. (Some Possible Side Effects sauce brought the heat to the exact right level.)

Chicken Fajitas Cinnamon Style

2006-01-29T20:53:00.000+01:00

So, this Saturday I made my husband do the lovely chicken fajitas with cinnamon. It wasn't hard to make him do them! These fajitas is not so hot, but very flavourful. We have served them to friends and people seem to love them! So do we.

This time we didn't have any guacamole with our fajitas, because the avocados in our supermarket were bad. Too bad. Still, yummy it was!

And here is the recipe as he did them:

Marinade:
finely grated zest and juice of 1.5 lime
1½ tablespoons sugar
½ tablespoons dried oregano
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¾ teaspoon cinnamon

2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1 large onion
1 red bell pepper
1 yellow bell pepper
½ tablespoon chile flakes
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Combine all ingredients for the marinade in a bowl. On some occasions I add a splash of tequila to the marinade. Slice the chicken breasts into ½-inch wide strips and put in the
marinade. Set aside to marinate for at least 30 minutes.

Cut the onion in half and slice it thinly. Remove stems and seeds from the bell peppers, then slice them into ½-inch wide strips.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Stir-fry the marinated chicken (and some of the marinade) for 5-6 minutes, then add peppers, onions and chile flakes and cook for another 3-4 minutes.

Serve with warm tortillas, guacamole, salsa fresca, cheese and sour cream.

Foodie fabrics

2006-01-28T13:10:00.000+01:00

I know, I know, I know... This blog has been sleepy for a while. The reason is that we've been really busy with all kinds of stuff. I worked the last day at my old job this week and will start the new one on Tuesday. Matli has also been busy with work. He went to Italy this Thursday and came back yesterday. In Europe we can do that, business trip abroad just for one night. Last weekend we visited family and friends, so there hasn't been much cooking going on lately.

But the major reason for the lack of time is that I'm totally caugt up in my new hobby - sewing! Well, it's not actually new, but I bought a new sewing machine some weeks ago and now I spend all my time by it or reading patterns and descriptions and such. I guess you know how it is when you have a friend who's really into something, and you start to talk about it, and suddenly it's just like a virus. YOU've caught it, and it's now not only your friend's obsession, but yours too. That's the case with me and the sewing :-) Everything is Linda's fault!

So, is this in any way related to chile? Well, yes it is! I'm gonna sew cushions to the six chairs in our veranda, where we do most of our chile growing and eat most of our meals during the summer. I'm thinking something patchwork style, but I just can't decide! There are so many wonderful foodie fabrics - in the US. Well, not a problem, I'll just order from the Internet. The problem is to decide. All fabrics above are candidates. Are they not lovely? I have to decide soon... My plan is to place an order this weekend!

Chile club meeting

2006-01-19T13:30:00.000+01:00

In two weeks there is a meeting with the chile pepper club (Svenska Chilepepparföreningen) and this year the yearly competition is a chile con carne. Last year it was bread and cake (see the picture above), but we didn't participate in the competition. This year we will. So we have to bring two litres of chile con carne to Stockholm! We have to take the car... and since we take the car we can't try much wine at the wine tasting afterwards, but you can always sip and spit. Anyway, the chili will be judged based on taste and how hot it is. I guess ours will be pretty hot... We'll probably make our standard recipe to make sure it's a good one. Not the right time to try something new.

I hope it will be a good meeting. The one last year was fun. As I said there will be a wine tasting also, and some kind of buffet. This is what it looked like last year!

Not so hot enchiladas

2006-01-15T23:19:00.000+01:00

Yesterday my parents visited for dinner, and I thought we should introduce them to some mexican food. They don't like to eat with their hands, so no fajitas, no tacos, no quesadillas... hm... enchiladas! And they are not really used to our normal level of chile, so... not so hot chicken enchiladas it was. Well, for us at least. I really don't know how hot they thought it was, but they seemed to like it. No picture, the chef was in a hurry.

And after the chicken enchiladas we had bananas gratinated with nuts and brown sugar, served with vanilla icecream. Yum!

Kung Po

2006-01-08T19:47:00.000+01:00

Some days ago Matli wanted to cook something chinese, since we had bought a pack of sichuan pepper at Siam shop. We searched our cookbooks but found nothing really - what a luck there is always the Internet! He found a recipe similar to one I had found in one of our books, just that in the book it had Sichuan in the name but no sichuan pepper in it! Well, it ended up really hot, as it seems like most things do after our last visit to Siam shop, where we also bought some fresh red thai chile peppers. Really hot ones... Anyway, it tasted genuine chinese, we think. We've never been to China but... It had some similarities with the dried pepper dish we had in Singapore, but it wasn't the same. Well, well...

Here is the chef with the recipe!

For two servings you will need:
2 boneless chicken breasts
3 garlic cloves
Fresh ginger (the same amount as the garlic)
1 small red onion
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
12 dried red chiles
1 teaspoon sichuan pepper
A handful roasted peanuts

Marinade:
0.5 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons soy sauce (light)
1 teaspoon medium-dry sherry
1.5 teaspoons potato flour
1 tablespoon water

Sauce:
3 teaspoons sugar
0.75 teaspoons potato flour
2 teaspoons soy sauce (equal amounts light and dark)
3 teaspoons vinegar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon chicken stock cube
1 tablespoon water

Preparation:
1. Mix all ingredients for the marinade in a small bowl. Cut the chicken into 0.5 inch cubes and marinate while preparing the rest.
2. Peel and slice the garlic and ginger in thin slices. Chop the onion into chunks with the same size as the chicken pieces. Break the chile peppers in half and discard some of their seeds.
3. Combine all ingredients for the sauce.
4. Heat the oil in the wok. Add the chile and sichuan peppers and stir-fry for 30 seconds.
5. Add the chicken, stirring constantly. When the chicken pieces has developed some color, throw in the ginger, garlic and onion. Continue to stir-fry until the chicken is cooked through.
6. Add The sauce to the wok. Continue stirring until the sauce has developed some thickness. Finally add the peanuts and serve with rice.

This is how I did it based on what I had at hand. (By the way Nikka, I didn't use any of the thai peppers in this dish :). The sichuan peppers gave a very special flavour. I will certainly use them again.

Hot Som Tum

2006-01-02T20:17:00.000+01:00

Today it was hot. Not outside but in my mouth. When we ate at a Thai restaurant in Sydney we saw something on the menu that we had never heard of. Som Tum. When we got back home we discovered that it was a green papaya salad. Green papaya was said to be hard to find, bur our favourite Thai store had it. We just love Siam Shop! So today we tried it. Besides the green papaya it contained garlic, lime juice, roasted peanuts, red onion, fish sauce, sugar, tomatos... chile.

It was good. Really good actually, but since my husband ignored the instruction to remove the seeds from the chile pepper it was hot. Too hot. It's not often this happens, but in a salad like this there is no dairy products to take off some of the fire. And it's no rice, potato or similar sideorder to eat while giving the mouth some rest. It's just really hot burning salad.

I had to drink milk, eat cheese and finally get rid of the heat by drinking a can of coconut juice. Good to have at home in case of an emergency :-) Matli cooled down by eating ice cream...

Next time he will remove the seeds. Because there will be a next time. It was yummy! Want to try it? Google it. He can't remember exactly how he did anyway. But do remove the seeds (or use a recipe with fewer chile peppers)...

Happy hot new year!

2006-01-01T13:41:00.000+01:00

It's a new year! Yesterday we went to our friends Henrik and Linda for some dinner and fireworks, and we had a nice evening, even though I still feel the jetlag, or if it's just yet another cold I've caught... While we were away in Australia Linda looked after our house, and when we returned we found a nice jar of homemade gingerbread cookies with chile on top! Great! We haven't had much of the Swedish traditional Christmas food at all this year, so these cookies were very welcome! And if you pick one with much pepper on top they are actually really hot. It's good to know that your friends knows your passion! Thank you very much, Linda!

We're back!

2005-12-30T07:50:00.000+01:00

So, back in Sweden. And it is not at all nice. What horrible weather! Winter!? But the summer sales just started! In Sydney that is... Oh, I'm not at all a winter person. I love summer, hot weather and light clothing. And now in the middle of all snow it feels like if Australia was just a dream after all. But we do have all kinds of evidence that we actually were there.

What am I blabbering on about? This is supposed to be about food or growing, and hot stuff should be involved! Ok, back on track, but where to start? Well, our trip started with two days in Singapore. It was a nice but very different place. We had never been to Asia before, so we had a plan to take this chance to taste some of our favourite hot asian food for real and see if it was anything at all like what we can get here at restaurants or what we make in the kitchen at home. So the first night we went to Chinatown and ordered some hot food. We don't even know what we had since there were no names to chose from on the menu. Instead the menu was a photo album with pictures of the food. Or maybe it had some description also, like "chicken" or "beef", but I think that was it.

Prices in Singapore are very low so we ordered four main courses to share. And they were all good, but two of them were great. It's a common way of ordering food in Asia I think, and it is really good, because you often want to try different dishes, or if you are two persons and both want to try two different dishes, but most of all the same dish it almost always ends up with you ordering the same, and that way you'll only have one dish. The sharing way is much better!

Anyway, the Mee Goreng was nice and a bit hot and tasted actually a lot like what we have in our lunch restaurants. I think we also had some sweet and sour pork that was fine but nothing really fantastic, and a dish we've already forgotten what it was (we did keep a diary, but obviously not detailed enough). But we didn't take any pictures of these two.

But our favourite was a dish with lots and lots of dried chiles, and still, not to hot! This is something we would love to do at home. It had some kind of sweet taste, but we couldn't really place it. It wasn't Hoisin sauce, but sweet in the same way. Do you know what it is? Please tell! We've started to google it already and we're going to browse through all our asian cookbooks real soon. We have to have this one again!

Hot kangaroo spotted!

2005-12-25T03:13:00.000+01:00

Well, finally! We are in Sydney and our trip is slowly beginning to end, but still some more days left here. Anyway, yesterday we had a fairly hot kangaroo dish! We forgot to take a picture of it, but maybe we can add a picture of a cute kangaroo instead...? No, that would be too much! So, what we had yesterday was something called Peppered kangaroo loin filet with sweetpotato mash. It was good, but not great. In my mind a bit too much pepper. I'm not so fond of just black pepper, I prefer the chile type, but it was good. The meat was very tender and nice. But it doesn't have a distinct game taste, like most of our game back in Sweden. I guess the kangaroo mostly eats grass, and therefore the food is a bit the same as ordinary beef, for example. But much more tender.

We've had some other hot and nice dishes also while being here and also in Singapore on our way down here, but we'll write more about that when we are back home agin, with pictures and stuff. What else to say about Oz? Well, we really like it here and we've had some wonderful experiences. To mention just a few we've seen and cuddled all kinds of australian animals, we've tasted nice wines, we've gotten married and we've been snorkelling in the Great Barrier Reef. And everything has been really smooth and nice. Perfect vacation!

Hi, it's me again...

2005-12-03T19:24:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the very few updates recently. We've just not had the time. We've both been working like crazy, and I have had my thoughts occupied with a totally different not at all chile related matter. I've quit my job! Well, I have had some meetings and been very nervous, but so I was offered a new job with better salary and great posibilities, so yesterday I resigned my old one. The actual quitting will be sometime next year though. Then I'll start working at Migrationsverket in Norrköping, at the Information Technology department.

And now what, maybe more frequent updates about a chile christmas? Nooooo! Now this blog will take a winter break, because we are going away on a holiday. Far away. We'll tell you all food related stuff about it when we get back. Maybe we'll find some hot kangaroo dish...

Congratulations Rafi and co!

2005-11-17T18:36:00.000+01:00

Apparently Rafi's Spicebox in York, England, has been awarded 'Best shop in York' at the annual York tourism awards! We can only agree! Rafi's was the one thing we liked best about York whatsoever when we visited for a week in June. So congratulations to all involved in Rafi's, you did really earn this award!

(And I did just eat some leftovers from the freezer - Do Piyaza from a Rafi curry pack. Great as always...)

Something really bad happened...

2005-11-13T22:11:00.000+01:00

Today we had filled Jamaican Bell chiles as a starter. They were filled with some kind of cream cheese with taste of chèvre cheese. But when this was to be documented the camera just flashed a green light like crazy. Well, we had to eat before the starter got cold, so that's it. No picture.

What is worse is that it seems like there is a severe problem with the camera. We will call the service center tomorrow and hear what they have to say, but for now it seems like no photos, or just more simple photos from the pocket camera in the next couple of weeks until the camera has been repaired...

:-((

Aji Amarillo

2005-11-07T21:05:00.000+01:00

This is the latest Aji Amarillo harvest. These three were the only ones on a tiny plant. Some day I must learn to not plant in small pots, but when all the large ones are taken and there still are small plants wanting a larger pot rather than to die, then I plant in almost whatever size of pot I can find. And, it's not really so much more work to give water to some more (small) plants. And hey, these three Aji Amarillos look nice! I wouldn't have had them if I had thrown the baby plant away!

Bye, bye my little chile plants...

2005-11-06T18:54:00.000+01:00

The chef is on a business trip, so there is not really much cooking going on in our kitchen this weekend. Instead I have taken care of some chiles and chile plants. You can't expect to get a good harvest every year in Sweden. As I've said before we had yet another lousy summer, and the chiles had no chance to be ready before we had to take them in. We can't have plants everywhere all winter, so by now it's time to harvest what we can, and then throw the least interesting plants away. So today I said bye bye to a small Arizona plant, a small Aji Amarillo plant, two Peruwian Purple plants (that didn't give any fruit that the lice didn't eat) and a big Malaguetta plant that just has been a big lice magnet this year (second year for this plant).

So, some plants less and the living room looks a bit more like a living room that it did just yesterday, but still too many plants left. I think we'll harvest all Jamaican Bell next weekend. The fruity ones are not really good in the freezer, so we have to eat them right away. And to do that we need the chef. So, they get to live yet another week.

And the picture? It's a yellow Hot Lemon and a tiny red Arizona.

Could this be any good?

2005-11-03T21:41:00.000+01:00

Today I found a strange can in my local suburbian grocery store. A can of sweet potato! In Sweden we don't eat sweet potato, but once we bought a fresh one and tried. I don't really remember with what we had it or if I even liked it, but this canned one looked American and interesting. So I bought it. Now what?

How should I use this? Of course I would like to serve it with something hot, but I don't know if that's the right way to eat it. Is it like a sideorder or should I have it instead of potato/rice/pasta? Tell me, tell me, tell me!

Jalapeño harvest again

2005-11-02T14:35:00.000+01:00

Some days ago we harvested our jalapeño. There are still some fruits left to harvest, but I guess this was the large autumn harvest from this plant. This comes from the plant we have had since last summer, which has survived lice and a long winter. It actually gave us fresh jalapeño all last winter. Now all this fruit is in the freezer and the question is if the plant will survive another winter. Just as last year the fruit is very late. Some plants haven't even made flowers yet. We can't keep them all over winter, so we'll see which ones we'll try to save. Some say that chile is an annual plant and that it only can give fruit one year. This is my proof of that being incorrect. But can it handle three years in a row? It's tempting to try. Jalapeño is so useful and nice to always have around.

Strange in orange

2005-11-01T13:44:00.000+01:00

This is weird. This is supposed to be a Chocolate Scotch Bonnet, which is a member of the Habañero family. It is supposed to be brown like chocolate and it also has a taste that reminds of chocolate. But this one is bright orange. Never seen that before. So, has there been some mismatch among the seeds or a cross pollination? We don't know. Now there are some more fruits on this plant, and they also shine in orange, so probably not cross pollination. Something is weird. I guess we will have to try it. And that will be really interesting!

Taco time!

2005-10-31T10:44:00.000+01:00

This Saturday Matli didn't feel like cooking something advanced, and I (as always) didn't feel like cooking at all. But I could go to the store and buy whatever we could need, so all we had to do was to come up with a good idea... and so I thought of tacos! That's probably the first mexican food we made, many years ago, and to be honest - there's not much mexican over tacos the swedish way. Whatever. Tacos in Sweden are popular and they look pretty much like something you could get at Taco Bell or Del Taco (our favourite fast food chain) . It's almost always something you build at the table at your own choice of minced meat, lettuce, diced tomato, diced cucumber, diced onions, pickled jalapeños, some red salsa and some white sauce (sour cream or something similar) and finally grated cheese and almost obvious - taco shells. In some families I've seen corn and olives also, and sometime we have olives, but not always. I don't like corn, so we never have that for tacos. We usually have mayo also, but I haven't seen that anywhere else. And we always add garlic to our white sauce.

Tacos are always great, messy and absolutely unhealthy. Well, all the reds and greens are fine, but as I said, we even add mayo to ours... Lucky for us we don't eat tacos so often anymore, so when we do we can have all the extras that we like. Yum!

Little Bangkok, Linköping, Sweden

2005-10-30T22:08:00.000+01:00

Little Bangkok in Linköping Sweden is a great place for thai food, but they don't have a web site or the menu online, as far as I know. What I do know is that people searching for them have ended up in this blog! Greetings, Linköping! Anyway, I have scanned the menu and here it is. I wish it was this easy with the lunch menu also, but no, have to take a chance there but everything tastes great so it's not really a problem. Just enjoy!

Vegetable, map and opening hours
Appetizers, beef
Chicken
Noodles, seafood, wild things

A little disappointment...

2005-10-30T14:15:00.000+01:00

By now we have very high expectations on the Rafi curries since they've all been absolutely delicious so far. I guess that's why this friday dinner was a bit of a disappointment.

This curry called Moghlai Masala cooked the day before smelled yummy, but it said that cream should be added when served, and so we did. We also added almonds (should have been nuts, but we didn't have any) and saffron. Maybe this kind of curry is just not our favourite, but it just tasted boring. It wasn't supposed to be hot, but we expected it to at least have a lot of mild spices in it. It really didn't. Maybe we added to much cream, but without the cream it would have been very dry and very much just chicken. We won't be ordering this one again. Though, the leftovers will make a perfect mid-week dinner I'm sure, but as a rewarding Friday dinner after a busy week at work it just didn't do it for us.

Some lunch shopping

2005-10-27T13:43:00.000+02:00

Today at my lunch break I took a little shopping tour to take care of some things I needed. Now I realize that I forgot half of them, but at least I got the most important ones done. Anyway, I ended it by walking into a book sale at Åhlens. I should really NOT spend money right now, but there were so many wonderful books about wine and food. I can't make it without buying something! So, I bought a very thick book about wine. Looks pretty much like something for a beginner, but I needed to buy it anyway. There were great pictures and... well, I guess you understand. Have to have it. And so I bought it. Sadly I can't find it online, but it's called "Vin" and I think it's called "Wine" in other countries, and "Le Vin" in some other, other countries. It's written buy an André Dominé, and it's about 3 inches thick. I payed 169 SEK (~$21).

My other bargain is a book about choclate. I love choclate and this book was almost too much. Now I can't concentrate at my work at all. This book is called "Chokladpassion" and is written by a Swede, Jan Hedh. So I don't know if it could be found in other countries than Sweden. Anyway, I found a link about this book and there you'll find some pictures from it. I have to make something from it this weekend. I really must...

I payed 179 SEK for this (~$22) but I actually payed too much. The sales price was only 139 SEK (~$17) but the cashier must have made a mistake. Though, it's no great loss. I joined the club and today was some kind of club day so you got a 50 SEK check for every 300 SEK you payed. And if I would have payed the lower price I would have gotten one check less, and the 50 SEK check was for more than the 40 SEK I lost on the mistake. So, I don't care about all that mess!

Bombay Potato and Do Piyaza Pork

2005-10-25T19:55:00.000+02:00

This is our first Rafi dinner from the lot we got last week. The Bombay Potato wasn't like the one we had earlier when we read the instructions, so we didn't follow them entirely. We did it like last time, a bit more dry with no tomatoes added. The Do Piyaza isn't very hot, but has a lot of interesting indian spices in it.

This.... was..... GREAT! So lovely. Have to stop now, or else I'll start to drool.

Definitly a favourite.

Curry packs from Rafi's!

2005-10-21T17:40:00.000+02:00

Late Monday night we finally got to it and placed an order for curry packs from Rafi's. We had asked our friends to join us and share the expenses. Altogether we ordered 14 curry packs!

On Tuesday afternoon I got an e-mail from Rafi telling me that she had decreased the total number of packs with one, since the shipping would have been the double for the weight of 14 curry packs. Fine! One less is no big deal. And yesterday the packet had arrived in our mailbox when we got home from work!

Our part of the order was 8 packs.

1x Balti
1x Vindaloo extra hot
1x Do piyaza
1x Moghlai
1x Dhansak
1x Xacutti
2x Bombay Aloo

Now we've put everything in the freezer except for one Bombay Aloo that we'll make gorgeous Bombay Potato from and the Do piyaza (Twice as much onion) pack that we'll make this weekend. Ah, we can hardly wait! A pity we didn't have the rest of the ingredients at home yesterday, so we could have tasted it tonight...

The last of phaal

2005-10-16T21:01:00.000+02:00

This is a picture of Phaal. We had the last portions from the freezer last week, and now we're totally out of Rafi's curries. It's really time to make an order. The big question is which curry packs we'll choose...

Hot Sauces

2005-10-12T14:40:00.000+02:00

First row from the left:
Dave's Insanity Sauce, Dave's Roasted Garlic Sauce, Tiger Sauce (is this really a hot sauce? Really?), Tabasco Chipotle, Tabasco Habanero, Cholula Hot Sauce, Blair's Sudden Death Sauce, Blair's Possible Side Effects Sauce, Jump Up and Kiss Me Sauce, Jamaican Hell Fire Sauce
Back row from the left:
Huy Fong Sriracha Sauce, Lucullus Sweet Chili Sauce, Heinz Chili Sauce, Unknown Sriracha Sauce

There is something special about hot sauces. Normally the ones we use the most in all kind of ways are the fairly mild chile sauces, like Heinz or the Sriracha sauce from Huy Fong or the Sweet Chili Sauce that is great with almost everything, especially everything woked. But still we tend to buy other hot sauces when we get the chance. Really hot sauces. Amazingly hot sauces. These are the sauces I found in our kitchen... A favourite is the Jump up and kiss me-sauce. Great with omelette! Try it!

Slow Food Fast

2005-10-09T16:23:00.000+02:00

In Linköping there is a place called Matkällaren ("the food cellar") with the device "slow food fast". It's a takeaway for lunches, gourmet dinners and delicatessen. This Friday we thought we should buy some food there, for no special reason at all. We have only tried it once before when we had an anniversery. It was great then, and it was great now.

This time I started with the main course. Some meat and some potato. They had fillet of lamb and fillet of beef. We had beef the last time, so I went for the lamb. To this I picked out a potato cake with blue cheese and spinach and a red wine sauce. Then I picked out some small rolls of chorizo and some red meat (I have forgotten the name) for a starter. And as a dessert I had to take the pyramid of choclate mousse with crushed nougat. I just couldn't resist it.

For this food I payed a total of SEK 275 (US$ 35). What I had to do at home was to put the lamb and the potato in the oven. The lamb for 8 minutes and the potato for 15 minutes. And of course to put everything on platters, and for the starter I added some decorational stuff to make it look less dull. We had a bottle of Faustino I with this. It was a perfect choice.

The food was great, and we fell in love with the dessert. We would have been happy if we had been served this food at a star restaurant. The quality is so high and the price is less than one portion would have cost if eating out. The concept is great and we'll be buing food there again.

Though, it was no chile or any spices in this except for garlic and some sweet chili sauce for decoration, but hey, you can't eat hot every day.

Lovely Red Savina Salmon

2005-10-08T14:15:00.000+02:00

We had been taking a bit lately about a favourite dish of ours containing lots and lots of Habañero Red Savina, but still, surprisingly enough, not so very hot. Well, if we say something is not so very hot you should probably think of the fact that we are a bit crazy. But anyway, with the amount of Red Savina ("the world's hottest chile" according to the commonly used Scoville scale) it should turn out really burning and impossible to enjoy, but it's the opposite in this case. It has the burning taste, but also lovely lime taste. When we got a question recently about Habañero dishes, we decided that it was time to make this salmon once again.

We had a bottle of Chablis Premier Cru Côte de Jouan from Jean-Marc Brocard, and this was a good choice! Not only is this a wonderful wine, but it could also stand up against the food and not be beaten by the capsicum of the chile. That's cool.

Another great thing about this dish is that we serve it with our favourite pasta, Risoni. If you haven't tried Risoni, do! It's not even like other pasta, because it's a bit slimy and... well that didn't sount to good, did it? Just try it. It's hard to describe.

And here is Matli with the recipe:

OK. This dish is quite simple. You start by marinating some salmon filets. Then you prepare a habanero-lime butter which you serve together with the grilled or fried salmon and the pasta (or whatever you like).

For the marinade you will need (for two servings):

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 cup orange juice
1 1/2 tbsp lime juice
1/2 tbsp tequila
1/2 tbsp grated lime zest
1 medium habañero pepper, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced

Stir together these ingredients in a small bowl. Marinate two salmon steaks or filets for 2-4 hours, turning frequently. You may want to reserve some marinade to use as a basting sauce.

For the habañero-lime butter you will need the following:

1/4 cup butter, softened
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp salt
1 tablespoon lime juice
1-2 medium habañero peppers, finely chopped
2 tsp grated lime zest

Mix together, cover and refrigerate.

Prepare two servings of risoni (or other pasta, or potatoes, or rice or whatever you like) as directed. You may add a dash of turmeric and some of the marinade to the cooking water for the risoni if you want a less dull appearance of the dish.

Lightly oil a grate for the grill or your favorite frying pan. Cook the salmon for 5 to 8 minutes per side (you shouldn't make it as black as I did this time). Serve with the risoni and butter.

Special spice cake

2005-10-04T21:10:00.000+02:00

Today I had to bring some kind om cake to work, for a project meeting. It was my turn, and I wanted to do something special, as always. I did a choclate-jalapeño-kahlua cake, made of fine choclate, but... it didn't turn out very special or spicy. It tasted good, but ho heat whatsoever. I should have put more spice in it, but I didn't want to overdo it since I don't know how much my co-workers can take. Probably not so much. I would have given you the recipe if I would have thought it was worth it. Just add some chile and some kahlua to your favourite choclate cake instead. I bet it'll turn out at least as good as this one.

Anyway, I also gave the cake a little decoration. Some years ago some bloke served a cheesecake spiced up with some drug (marijuana?) at his last day of work. Everyone that ate of it went crazy, ill or just tired, and it was big news in national press. Since then we've been joking about "special spices" almost everytime someone brings something home baked to work, or at least if it looks a bit strange.

Since my cake had some special spice in it (though capsicum is legal!) I gave it a little decorational hint...

(Sorry about the lousy picture. I did the decoration at work and the only camera I had was the one in my cell phone)

A little harvest

2005-10-02T11:04:00.000+02:00

The lice had taken over the only chile plant, a small jalapeño plant, that I had put in the kitchen. It was either a lot of toxic or to let it go. I choose the latter not to risk any of my other non chile plants. But still, now I have to keep an eye on the orchids, my hoya and my minature orange tree. I dont want them to be infected.

Though I had to harvest (and kill the plant :-( ) earlier than I would have wanted I got a good harvest, but mostly green. Jalapeño is great green AND it's also great red! It's probably most common green I'd guess, since the only pickled ones you can buy at least in Sweden are green, but red has a nice and more mature taste. We still have our large plant in the livingroom/greenhouse, so if we don't get any lice invation there we could maybe harvest som red ones there later. Anyway, here is the kitchen harvest.

Saturday Mex

2005-09-28T22:22:00.000+02:00

As always we wanted something tasty last Saturday. And we didn't really want to buy a lot of stuff. From time to time we try to use what we've got instead of buying a lot and then have to throw stuff away. Still, we had to buy some stuff, but nothing expensive. The really yummy dinner contained as a starter our favourite, Salsa Fresca, inspired of the recipe from Eat the Heat by Jonas Borssén, our favourite chef. Then we had some kind of mex gratin with fried tortilla slices, cheeses and sausage. I'll now introduce you to my own chef, Matli, who will contribute to these posts from time to time with the actual recipes of what we eat :-)

OK, here we go. The Salsa Fresca is a quite basic tomato based salsa. You will need the following ingredients for a small bowl of salsa:

4 small ripe tomatoes (or two plum tomatoes), diced
2-3 spring onions, finely sliced
1 large garlic clove, roasted and mashed
1 jalapeno, finely chopped (don't remove the seeds)
1 tbsp of olive oil
Juice from half a lime
A bunch of cilantro
Some salt

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl, and put in the refrigerator for at least 10 minutes. We usually eat this as a starter together with tortilla chips. But it also works well to accompany various mex or tex-mex dishes.

For the tortilla pie, you will need the following for two large servings:
1 tbsp vegetable oil
300 g ground pork
1-2 sliced spicy sausages, e.g. chorizo
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
A pinch of ground cloves
A pinch of freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp sherry
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
4-5 tortillas (I had planned on using corn tortillas, but only wheat tortillas were available in our store)
oil for frying
1 1/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese
3/4 cup creme fraiche

The pie is served with a sauce, for which you will need the following ingredients:
1 cup small tomatoes
2 tbsp water
1/2 vegetable stock cube
1 jalapeno, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove
small bunch of parsley
1/4 cup creme fraiche

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Heat the oil in a saucepan. Add the pork and garlic. Stir until the meat has browned. Stir in the sausages, oregano, cinnamon, cloves and pepper. Cook for 4 more minutes while stirring. Then add sherry sugar and salt. Stir for 3-4 minutes and then remove the pan from heat.

Cut the tortillas into strips (2 cm (3/4 inch) wide). Pour the oil into a frying pan and heat to 190°C (375°F). Fry the tortilla strips until crisp and golden brown.

Spread half the pork and sausage mixture in a baking dish. Top with half the tortilla strips and some grated cheese. Then add dollops of creme fraiche. Repeat the layers. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the sauce. Put all the ingredients except the creme fraiche in a food processor or blender. Process until fairly smooth. Put into a saucepan, bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Finally stir the creme fraiche into the sauce and add some salt and pepper.

Pour the sauce on top of the pie and serve immediately, sprinkled with some parsley.

Phaal

2005-09-28T22:06:00.000+02:00

Hey, we've forgotten to tell you about our phaal...

Matli did cook the phaal curry last Thursday night, and we had it with fresh cilantro and rice for dinner last Friday. It should be even hotter than Vindaloo, so I was a bit frightend, but nah! It wasn't that hot! I'd say that the Vindaloo we made from a Rafi curry pack was way hotter than this Phaal. Nevertheless, it tasted really good. Still, I don't think we'll order it again. We are definitly going to choose Bombay Potato when we place our next order, and if we pick something more we've already tried I think it'll be the Vindaloo. Simple and great.

And we've also found a great beer to all the indian food. It's Cobra. A good choice, because there are few wines that can cope with the spices and the chile in indian food.

Shape and color

2005-09-27T22:32:00.000+02:00

This is Jamaican Bell. Said to be nice to fill with cheese. It should be harvested when red, så maybe this is what we'll be having this weekend?

Fish curry from last Sunday

2005-09-25T13:35:00.000+02:00

Last Sunday we had this really thick and creamy fish curry for dinner. It was as lovely as it looks. The problem is that it's been a lot of creamy stuff lately. We can't continue like that. It's time to shape up a little bit, so for today we'll have something less fat. Yesterday we had a fantastic mexican dinner, which wasn't really low-fat in any way, but more about that later. Here is a pic of the rich and creamy fish curry we won't be having again for some time now...

Little yellow bastard

2005-09-25T11:18:00.000+02:00

The 10th I showed you some green chiles not ready for harvest. It was some of our Hot Lemon. Well, now this little bastard is getting ready, which we can see at this picture. Some of the fruit have turned yellow. Now we have to figure out the best way to use this lemonish chile. It's the first year of this chile for us, so we have no idea. We have to search the Internet for some information. But it sure looks yummy all yellow among the green leaves.

Great chicken at Little Bangkok

2005-09-22T21:10:00.000+02:00

There is a fairly new thai restaurant in town (Linköping, Sweden, that is), by the same people that have had the takeaway thai restaurant Wokaway for some years now. Little Bangkok is the name, and the food is great. Today I had some kind of fairly dry chicken made with red dry chile peppers, which was served with rice and a hot sauce. This place is a bit different than most lunch restaurants in town. The food is actually spicy when said to be! Well, you don't get burned, but there is spice and they use a lot of chile pepper. If it was less expensive I could eat there several days every week. It's a bit high price for lunch, but from time to time it is definitly worth it.

Now I'm waiting for my fiancé to start preparing tomorrow's dinner. Our last chile paste pack from Rafi's, UK. Now we have to make a new order :-)

And to survive the lovely smell from the kitchen I'll go to bed. Tomorrow is Phaal curry time!

...and some spicy food

2005-09-17T23:25:00.000+02:00

And for dinner we had an improvised mex dinner made of what we had at home. It turned out really yummy and a bit spicy. It contained some of our anaheim chile and some chipotle we had at home. Chipotle has a nice smoke flavour, which is great with most food.

Lazy Saturday

2005-09-17T23:07:00.000+02:00

Today I had a lazy Saturday. All the chile plants have been taken care of and are happy in the living room. The problem is space. Now the room looks more like a greenhouse than anything else. There are still some plants waiting for us to figure out a better place for them, but they are warm and sheltered from the weather. That's the most important thing right now. Now we only have to look out for bugs and lices, so we don't get a boost of that, like we had another year when we had to take them in early.

After taken care of the chile I took care of some apples from the garden. I made a wonderful apple cake, in american style. It was so easy, I still remember the recipe in my head. There were no spice in it more than cinnamon, so it really doesn't belong here, but... I will make an exception!

Really easy and tasty Apple pie
5 apples cut into really thin slices
cinnamon

1 cup plain flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla sugar
½ tsp salt
1 egg
100 g melted butter

Put all the apple slices in a pie dish and add some cinnamon. Mix all the dry stuff in a bowl, and then add the melted butter and the egg (beaten). Stir until you have a nice dough. Put the dough over the apples and push it until it covers everything. Then add some cinnamon again.

Bake for 40 minutes in 200 degrees celsius in the lower part of the oven. Serve with vanilla sauce.

Below

2005-09-16T21:29:00.000+02:00

Last night the temperature went below zero. Winter is here, or at least autumn. So now we have to save our chile plants. Some of them have already been taken care of, and they are now warm and safe in our living room. The rest will be taken care of tomorrow. They don't like when it's cold, but they all look like if they have survived. I hope that's the whole truth...

Harvest? Not yet...

2005-09-10T23:35:00.000+02:00

It's not really time to harvest yet, but some of our chile plants have beautiful fruit. Some green, some more yellow and some are purple. Still no red ones, we're waiting for that. I wonder if this Hot Lemon is ready to harvest yet. It's green, but maybe that's how it should be harvested? I would have guessed it should turn more yellow, since it's called Hot Lemon, but of course it doesn't have to be yellow to taste lemonish. Maybe it's time to try it soon?

Panang thai

2005-09-09T20:57:00.000+02:00

Today we had a spicy dinner. It was a panang curry made without any recipe, but it contained curry paste, chicken, pineapple, almonds, star anise, cilantro and jalapeño (from our own harvest, and found on a picture here about a week ago :-)

As always with thai food it tasted great. We love the thai cuisine. And it had a nice hot feeling, on the lips and in the belly. To this we had a glass of Tokay Pinot Gris from Bestheim, Alsace, France. A perfect start of the weekend.

Takeout

2005-09-03T19:27:00.000+02:00

Today we bought some "Beef Bontana" and "Chicken Bontana" from Texas Longhorn and it tasted delicious. Hungry as we were we jumped at it when we got home, so there were no pictures taken of it. But it consisted of tortilla chips, cheese, black beans, onion, pickled jalapeños and of cource beef or chicken. Great! Not so spicy though, but you can't have it hot every day.

Disaster help after Katrina

2005-09-03T10:26:00.000+02:00

Many people in New Orleans and it's surroundings are in need of help. Do think about making a donation. It's easy to donate using paypal, I just did this. Just because this disaster has happened in a fairly rich country doesn't mean that the people in need are rich and can help themselves. Use your heart.

Business trip

2005-08-30T23:00:00.000+02:00

I'm going away for some business. Hopefully I get some nice food in Stockholm, there is a slight chance. I'm back Thursday evening. And then I'll have some indian food from our freezer :-)

Jalapeño

2005-08-29T22:22:00.000+02:00

Harvest from or oldest jalapeño plant, which has given us lovely fruit since last summer.

Chili

2005-08-28T22:09:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we had chili for dinner. This is one of our favourite dishes, and the smell of chili cooking for three hours can be very frustrating! We always do a no bean chili. We have tried different recipes, but we have a favourite, and yesterday that was what we had. And as always it tasted delicious. We eat the chili with tortilla chips, onion mix, swedish sour cream, grated cheese, some tiger sauce and cold Corona beer. Great!

Rhubarb, Cinnamon and Chile Crumble Cake

2005-08-27T17:07:00.000+02:00

Today I wanted to bake something spicy, and I wanted to use some of our rhubarb. We have plenty of it and soon the apples will be ready and then we'll probably focus on apples for a while. So the plan was rhubarb, and more like a cake than a pie. Couldn't find any good recipe though, so I started with a recipe for an apple cake, and made some... well, many changes in it. It turned out well, although I could have used more chile powder. The cake is really big... we'll see if we have to invite someone to taste it. We shouldn't eat all of it ourselves :-)

Here comes my recipe:
Rhubarb, Cinnamon and Chile Crumble Cake

Rhubarb layer
3-4 rhubarbs cut into thin slices (about 2-2½ cups)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp chile powder
1 tbsp sugar

Cake layer
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup (250 g) butter
1 1/4 cups (250g) sugar
4 eggs
4 cups (450 g) flour
2½ tsp baking powder

Crumble layer
3/4 cup (175 g) raw sugar
1 1/4 cup (125 g) flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
4½ tbsp (65 g) dried coconut
½ cup (115g) butter

Grease a springform. Preheat the oven to 180 C (350 F).

Mix everything for the rhubarb layer in a bowl. Set aside.

Mix everything for the crumble layer except for the butter in another bowl. Then add the butter and make it crumbly using your hands. Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar for the cake layer. Then add the eggs, one at a time, and beat it well after each addition.

Mix the flour and the baking powder and then sift half of it in, stir, and add the rest of it. Stir until smooth.

Spread half the cake mixture evenly into the form. Then add all the rhubarb. Sprinkle over half the crumble topping. Spread the remaining cake mixture over the topping, and finally put the rest of the topping on top.

Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or maybe a little more. Cover the cake with foil if it seems to get too dark.

Serve with whipped cream.

Spices

2005-08-25T20:45:00.000+02:00

Today I went to buy some spices at my lunch break. We try to buy our spices in some of the orient stores in town instead of buying the small and expensive glass jars found in our regular supermarkets. There isn't a great variety of spices in Linköping, but at Orientlivs you find the most basic ones, like chile powder, cinnamon and cumin which is exactly what I bought today.

Our plan was to make chili tomorrow night, to bring to a chili chef competition on Saturday in Stockholm, but unfortunately the event was cancelled. It was the five year anniversiry of the swedish chilepepper society, Svenska Chilepepparföreningen, but it seems like there were too few persons that had accepted the invitation so the event will not take place now, but hopefully later on.

Really sad, but maybe we'll make the chili on Saturday instead. Even though there is no competition around, it's always great to have some real hot and spicy chili for dinner! I'm getting hungry just thinking about it, even though we just had dinner (Macaroni & Cheese, which I noticed earlier today that also Anne is a big fan of!).

Self dicipline? Nah!

2005-08-24T22:25:00.000+02:00

Didn't find anything else to bake quick and easy, so I cheated. I made the shortbread cookies aven though they hadn't been overnight in my freezer. And it worked just fine! They're yummy!

I made three rolls of the dough, and now I have tried the first one. The other ones get to rest in the freezer a bit longer ;-)

They're not extremly spicy in any way, and I'll probably add more chile next time I'll make them (for sure, there is a next time) but the aftertaste is warm and full and very enjoyable! We ate them still a bit warm, first just the cakes and then with some vanilla ice-cream. Both worked fine. The chocolate taste reminded us a bit of Oreos, but with a bit more spice. Try them! They are easy and taste great! And we ate all of them... as I said, self dicipline isn't really our thing.

"Chocolate chilli shortbread"

2005-08-24T20:45:00.000+02:00

Today I was in the mood for some baking, and I wanted to try these cookies from a blog I sometimes read. Chocolate and chile is often a very good match, so I'm very curious about the result. Unfortunately the dough should be in the freezer until tomorrow, so no cookies for us tonight :-(

I hadn't read the recipe so carefully that I had noticed this before I already had decided to try them, so now I'm thinking if there is something else I could make, to get something tasty tonight! But I ran out of eggs and butter. So, what can I do. I have to figure something out. I want cake and I want it now! And I want something spicy! Have to go and check out the kitchen again...

Red Savina of 2004

2005-08-23T17:53:00.000+02:00

It's still many weeks to harvest for most of our chile. The rainy and cold July wasn't what we wanted, and many of our plants haven't even started to bloom yet. Others have green chiles, and some of them are fine like that while others tastes better fully red. Some of those late plants are our Habañero Red Savinas, said to be the hottest chile in the world. Yeah, they are pretty hot. But not only that. They also have a very fruity flavour, and all the habañeros are easy to recognize. But here is a picture of what is to come. It's our Red Savina harvest of 2004! Not all of it, but the result of one day's harvest. We still have many chiles in the freezer since last year. Even though harvest was late (lousy summer last year too), we had a good result, especially from the different habañeros.

Vindaloo Masala from Rafi's Spice Box

2005-08-22T18:07:00.000+02:00

I rarely cook, I leave that to my fiancé who is a natural talent in the kitchen. That will probably stop me some from publishing recipes here in the blog. Due to copyright issues I can't just copy my favourites from our books or favourite websites, at least not more than occasionally, and I could never write down the stuff than my fiancé just makes up from his head. What I can do is to link to recipes we love and to great stuff to try out if you like hot and spicy food, and today I'll give you a really good piece of advice...

Rafi's Spice Box is a spice shop in York and Suffolk, UK. Never been to Suffolk, but in June we stayed a week in lovely York, and we totally fell in love... with the spice shop! The concept is great. You can not only buy the ordinary products and spices, but you can also buy curry packs ready to cook, just by adding 1 kilogram of ingredients of your choice. We bought four curry packs, Patia Masala, Vindaloo Masala, Phaal Masala and Malay Rendang. The nice young man who put the curry packs together without even looking at a recipe and as we could see from non labeled jars also gave us a sample of the Bombay Potato to take home with us.

We have now made all these curries except from the Phaal Masala (which is said to be the hottest). And they are all totally adorable. Each pack has given us three great dinners, and tonight we'll eat some Vindaloo Masala from the freezer with some fresh coriander on top.

Since we live in Sweden we can't go back to the spice shop, but you can order your curry packs on the Internet, even internationally! So now we are going to place an order soon for more curry packs. Even though it's not so hard to make great indian food from scratch it's nice to have these pre-made curries to cook.

Beautiful Arizona

2005-08-21T10:23:00.000+02:00

Chilepepper comes in different shape and color, and so does also its leaves and flowers. Here is a picture of one of our Arizona plants. It has no chilepeppers yet, harvest will be late this lousy Swedish summer, but it has these small beautiful purple flowers, and multicolored leaves in purple and green. Isn't it lovely?

There's a new hot blog in town!

2005-08-20T19:54:00.000+02:00

This is my second blog, but my first written in English. My other blog is about daily stuff with a technology theme, but this will be something else. This blog will focus on chilepepper, hot and spicy food and other related things. There will be pictures and reports from our chile plants, there will be recipes and other useful hints when it comes to hot food, and it will probably also give some reviews of different chile flavours or hot products. We'll see what will fit in under the subject of chilepepper and spice.