Bhut Jolokia

So I know it is no longer the hottest chile on the planet. I don't really care about that. I became fascinated with the ghost chile a while ago due to the hype of it being the hottest. Sure, it is usually around three times hotter than a habenero, but the flavor is what interests me. I love a habenero for the flavor. So delightfully fruity and sweet. Of course, you have to take the heat with the sweetness, but that is merely a minor drawback. I am wondering if the ghost chile will be the same and I cannot wait to dig into the pepper to find out. Now off to find a recipe.

I purchased my pepper at the Ballard farmers' market from Alvarez Farms from Yakima. They usually have a large assortment of chilies and they are organic. With no time or luck finding a recipe, I went to an old faithful that Jennifer and I use with the habenero.  This recipe, which we drop the tortillas from (and the mint) is a great topping for vanilla ice cream. So after finally procuring a pint of ice cream, I made the sauce. Not before having a few bites of the chile raw of course. After the first bite (about one square cm of flesh), I felt it compared equally to the habenero. The second bit was a different story. I got the hiccups, and felt he heat in my upper sinus as well as my chest. Something I had not felt before. I quickly grabbed a spoonful of yogurt to mellow it, but it was too late. The sauce combined with ice cream however, was quite mellow with mild heat. Hard to place a definition on the taste of the Bhut Jolokia too. I though upon initial bite that it might taste like a cherry. But when laying down to sleep after eating it, I thought perhaps apricot? It had a sweet taste that reminded me of a tree fruit, although I could not place which one. Once in the pineapple sauce, it did not express flavor as well. Perhaps I didn't use enough?

Chile Harvest

So for weeks I have been attempting to harvest the chilies. I had a plant of fully red cayenne, and some ripe Bulgarian Carrot as well. I didn't have much hope for the jalapenos to turn red, and surprisingly the last of the corno di toro weren't going to ripen either. But it is mid October, and I should be lucky I am getting a harvest at all, with the minimal time I've put into the garden this year.

In previous years I wind up making lots of salsa at the end of the season with my remaining tomatoes. Last year I pickled two pints of jalapenos at the end of the season, and dried the cayenne. This year I went for pepper jelly. I searched the Internet for recipes and found they used a lot of sugar. (What's with that?) I haven't cared to do the research for the science behind lots of sugar in canning. Perhaps there is none? Anyway I had to search to find a low sugar recipe and found one decent one on the Ball website.Most of the recipes on the Internet are weak, and call for a bulk to be bell peppers. I wanted to use only hotter chilies and modified the recipe accordingly. Also, my harvest did not yield as much as expected, and I had to half the recipe. (Actually a little less than half.)

I split and seeded the fruit by hand, but used the food processor for the mincing. Rubber gloves are nice for handling that many chilies as well. I started with about a dozen each of cayenne and jalapeno, and about a half dozen each of  Bulgarian Carrot and Corno di Toro. The Corno di Toro making up about one cup of minced, while the others combined to make another cup of minced fruit. I shorted the vinegar and sugar a bit from the half recipe on the website, and also just used a heaping tablespoon of the low sugar pectin. From what I could taste off the spatula before canning, it was delicious. I probably won't last a week before I pop one jar open. And for reference, I was able to mostly fill four half pint jars with the result.