Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Hot


This is a large pile of jalapeno peppers that I photographed when I visited Ranch Market featured on September 8th. Jalapeno peppers are used in Spanish as well as Asian cooking and I’m sure most of my readers have experienced them in some form; maybe as the ubiquitous Jalapeno Popper.
A few years ago, I decided to make some Asian style stuffed jalapenos for a dinner party and was preparing them a day ahead. I knew all the precautions about handling them such as not touching your face or eyes. I am a decent cook and I've used many types of chilies in cooking before. However, I had never processed so many at one time and I foolishly did the stem removal and seeding with bare hands. It took about 15 minutes into the job for the pain to set in and a full 10 hours for the pain to subside. My hands quite literally felt as though they were on fire. The story gets even funnier since I was going out to dinner with friends that same night. I had to dine while alternating wet towels over each hand. The chef in the restaurant felt sorry for me and had the waiter bring me a bowl of milk to soak my hands in while I ate. I might not have been the life of the party that night, but I certainly gave the group much to laugh about. I’ll never do that again. I now keep a box of latex gloves in the kitchen cupboard and use them when ever chopping or seeding any kind of chili.

5 comments:

Sally said...

oooh! You know those little tiny hot red pppers? I once wiped my lips after cutting one up, and it burned for hours. Thanks goodness it wasn't my eye!
Sydney Daily Photo

b.c. said...

oh sorry about the hands on fire, that was nice of the chef...a good story and a great photo!

J. David said...

I hate to do it, but to quote Paris Hilton, "That's hot!"

JaamZIN said...

not exactly like this...but we have similar paprika in Hungary

Susie of Arabia said...

I didn't realize that just handling them with your bare hands would do that! I knew about not touching your eyes, but I guess I have never handled that many hot peppers at once either. My husband always eats every meal taking a bite of food and then a bite of hot pepper, and so on. The hotter the better!