hurty

Things I learnt today:

1. If you’re chopping some extremely potent hot green chili peppers from Ghana, it’s not a good idea to pick your nose immediately afterwards.

And that was it, really. Everything else that happened today, I already knew.

Anyhow. Here’s a picture of one of my favourite dishes, the baked rhubarb and ginger cheesecake, which I quickly knocked up at chez blogjam this evening. I’d love to claim it as one of my own inventions, but the recipe comes direct from Waitrose.

My nose still hurts.

17 Comments

  1. try rubbing your eyes or ‘getting a itch down below’ its much worse belive me

  2. Lucky it wasn’t your eye.

  3. I rediscovered this factor when chopping up stuff for a chilli a while back.

    The corollary is this :

    When making chilli (or most other things) chop the onion before chopping the chillis. Otherwise, when your eyes are streaming from the onion, you rub them with chilli-fingers, and man that hurts.

  4. Try going for a piss after chopping the buggers

  5. Rub some veggie oil into our hands before chopping chillies, then wash it off afterwards. Eye rubbing, nose picking and toilet usage are now safe. Hooray!

  6. I think you were lucky there. I mean, you had your whole body to choose from and you went for the nostrils. Just imagine the woe if…

  7. Always remove contact lenses before chopping chillis.

  8. Got to love the level of patronising* going on at that Waitrose recipe website. They hyperlink every word to explain waht it is.

    “CHILL” = To place in the fridge, at a temperature of less than 5°C, to reduce the temperature of food, eg chill the mousse in the fridge for 2 hours before serving.

    Yeah, thanks for that!!

    *it means to talk down to someone

  9. A couple of ideas for dealing with very hot peppers: When I remember beforehand, I pull on a pair of disposable latex gloves to keep my hands clean. No contact, no intense burning pain for hours afterwards. For habanero-type peppers, this is really the way to go.

    If I don’t remember beforehand, I wash my hands normally, then lick my fingers. Yes, I wash them again afterwards. But if they’re the least bit spicy, I know before it causes trouble.

    Also, capcaisin is freely soluble in ethanol solutions. So if you have a bottle of, say, undrinkably bad gin…

  10. The stuff that makes chillis hot is called Capsaicin. It’s measured in Scoville Units, thusly:

    0-100 – most Bell/Sweet pepper varieties.
    500-1000 – New Mexican peppers
    1,000-1,500 – Espanola peppers
    1,000-2,000 – Ancho Pasilla peppers
    1,000-2,500 – Cascabel Cherry peppers
    2,500-5,000 – Jalapeno Mirasol peppers
    5,000-15,000 – Serrano peppers
    15,000-30,000 – de Arbol peppers
    30,000-50,000 – Cayenne Tabasco peppers
    50,000-100,000 – Chiltepin/Chipotle peppers
    100,000-350,000 – Scotch Bonnet Thai peppers
    200,000 to 500,000 – Habanero peppers
    Around 16,000,000 Scoville Units is Pure Capsaicin

    So now you know.

    Kuzzer

  11. Once you’d learned that particular lesson I wouldn’t imagine anything else that happened today was of any importance anyway.

  12. Atleast you were only picking your nose and not participating in the act we have been discussing on my Blog this week….

    ~Milady

    “It burns, burns, burns.
    That ring of fire”

  13. Interesting to see the hotness levels of chillis laid out like that. I once gave my unwitting best friend a scotch bonnet to eat raw, pretending it was some nice sweet little tit-bit……..

  14. Hey! congrats! I’ve just seen Kittenwar and Cats in Sinks on the top of the list of recommended websites in Yahoo’s Attachments!

    I’ve just had a go at Kittenwar, and deciding over some of those cuteis have been the hardest thing I’ve had to do all day! Nice one x

  15. I can think of a word which rhymes with rankers.
    rhubarb is in season, we have tonnes of it in the garden and I never thought it was possible but I am getting a little taste-fatigued of rhubarb and ginger crumble. Or stewed rhubarb with a huge dollop of honey and ginger ice cream.
    This takes the biscuit though, looks yummy.

  16. I made the mistake of adding one habanero pepper to my curry chicken. It’s been a while. i forgot how hot they could be.

    yes i feel your pain.

  17. I sneezed from it when i’ve tried to