CHILLI PEPPER
UNG-AANG TALAY
Bhut jolokia, the super hot ghost chilli from Assam, has a sweet and almost floral-like fragrance. |
Some months back the media were full of news about an Assamese chilli pepper called the bhut jolokia, or ghost chilli, that was said to be so hot that our own phrik khee nuu suan and phrik kalieng were mere pussycats by comparison. Lab tests came up with a Scoville heat rating of over a million as compared with 100,000 or so for our supposed horsekillers.
Ung-aang Talay's curiosity was aroused and, happily, soon satisfied. A good friend who writes about food for The Wall Street Journal went to Assam to get the lowdown on bhut jolokia and returned to Bangkok with several bags of fresh pods, one of which he presented U-a T. That very evening the chilli-bearing friend, U-a T, and a third table companion adjourned to the Ruean Rot restaurant, where the phat khrueang kaeng dishes are especially good, and asked the kitchen to cook up a serving with a couple of the Assamese peppers thrown in.
One thing that U-a T noticed right away was that the fragrance of the peppers, sweet and almost floral like that of freshly-picked phrik khee nuu, blended well with and enhanced the aroma of the dish. Kitchen experiments U-a T had tried some years back with Mexican habanero chillies flopped because, despite their potent bite, their smoky, rather acrid smell just didn't work in Thai dishes. There was no such problem with the bhut jolokia.
Their fine flavour was evident at ultra-cautious first bite, but while appreciating it U-a T was surprised and a little disappointed that the anticipated nuclear blast didn't take place. There wasn't much time to brood about it though, because unlike the stronger local chillies, the imports unleashed their Scoville units slowly. After a minute or so the heat became really intense, not only on the tongue but also the lips and anywhere else that came on contact with the peppers, and the effect lasted for well over an hour.
A real find, not only for chilli-macho masochists but also for Thai cooks who would certainly be able to find creative ways to introduce them into traditional Thai dishes. But would they grow in Thailand. And if so, would the peppers be as hot as the Assamese ones? U-a T dried some of the choicer-looking pods and a green-thumbed friend planted them in pots, mentioning later that just handling the dried pods had caused his hands to burn.
Research on the Internet sent mixed signals as to what the plants might be expected to come up with in the rainy and humid Bangkok environment. An online chilli seed vendor offering bhut jolokia seeds reported that, "Dr Paul Bosland of the CPI grew the bhut jolokia from seed in the desert climate of Southern New Mexico and confirmed its incredible heat, culminating in the Guinness World Book Record Award for the hottest chilli in the world. The analysis revealed that it possessed an extremely high heat level indeed, a whopping 1,001,304 Scoville Heat Units."
Not encouraging. But the Wikipedia entry on the chilli countered with the statement that "a 2005 Indian study that compared the percentage availability of capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin in bhut jolokia peppers grown in both Tezpur (Assam) and Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh) showed that the heat of the pepper is decreased by over 50 percent in Gwalior's more arid climate (similar temperatures but less humid, much lower rainfall)."
And soil chemistry plays just as important a part as climate. U-a T once grew phrik khee nuu in Washington, DC using seeds from Thailand. The plants flourished and produced great numbers of pods that looked gorgeous but weren't much spicier than marshmallows. Would Bangkok soil neuter the bhut jolokia in the same way?
Before long, all of the seeds had sprouted, and although the plants matured slowly, after a month and a half they were producing flowers and pods. Finally, a couple of them turned bright red, and looked exactly like the imports that had spawned them. U-a T harvested them and sent one of them to the kitchen to be carefully fried with chicken as a phat phrik dish.
There was no need to have worried; the pepper was easily as hot as the ones brought in from Assam, and had an even finer aroma (perhaps because it was freshly picked). Both the scent and the taste of the pepper are so well suited to Thai cooking that it is tempting to wonder if this same chilli, or a very similar one, might already exist somewhere in Thailand.
An old cookbook in U-a T's collection, compiled during the 1920s, lists many varieties of chilli unheard of now. Might one of them be a close relative of the bhut jolokia?
Whatever the case, the bhut jolokia has much more to offer than just a record-breaking Scoville rating. Maybe some enterprising farmers might consider growing it here commercially, and then turning it over to cooks to assimilate into our constantly expanding and diversifying cuisine.
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