Joe Blogs

 I was making chilli sauce yesterday with three quarters of a blender full of fresh chilli from the garden, fresh garlic and basil (also from the garden), red grapefruit, three tablespoons of black pepper along with a few other ingredients...

I blended this semi lethal concoction until I had achieved a pourable consistency, removed the lid off the blender to observer the quiet chemical reaction of gases slowly bubbling to the surface reminding me of the mud pools at Rotorua, but fortunately not with the same smell.

With glass receptacles ready and my trusty funnel ready I started pouring the seething liquid into bottle number one.

Because I had so much sauce I chose a large bottle, inserted the funnel and began pouring and that's when it happened!

Not one, but two splashes of this sauce splashed off the edge of the funnel and went directly into both my eyes. The pain was immediate, intense and blinding. In one hand I held the bottle and the other the blender jug. Through the pain I had to get both the bottle and blender jug with a slightly unstable base to the edge of the sink to make sure not a drop of this precious sauce that I had taken ages to prepare was lost.

Even if I could use my hands to wash my eyes, I had been destemming over 100 hot chillies and we know that without about a dozen washes, contact with sensitive areas also leads to an immediate reaction.

Having secured the sauce, I blindly stumbled upstairs and into the shower which I used as a massive eye wash.

I need to add that I was not stoically silent through this... Helen thought there was a wounded buffalo lumbering through the house although Joe took it all in his stride and simply stepped aside.

Eyes washed and pain subsiding; I looked in the mirror to see two of the reddest eyes staring back at me... It's fair to say they looked like the eyes of a person participating in a herbal experiment at Woodstock.

So now I know what it is like to be on the wrong side of a riot cordon in Europe when the capsicum spray is deployed...

But most importantly - how was the sauce?

Needs more salt...

This entry was posted on November 14, 2011 at 8:33 AM and has received 45 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I'm calling this one a B-TLC Sauce - B stands for Basil which comes from our garden and the TLC is Tomato, Lime and Chilli.

Here I make a Tomato Lime Chilli sauce using three of the hottest chillis in the world - 3 bhut jolokia combined with a mixture of milder tabasco, birdseye, hungarian wax and habaneros. I add heaps of garlic and basil from the garden. A simple to make sauce that goes with anything. Heat rating about 8.

Keeping reading to get the recipe for this great sauce...

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This entry was posted on March 8, 2011 at 8:42 AM and has received 136 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

'Tis the dry season in Darwin which approximates for a kind of winter -although a minimum of 27° celcius made it our hottest july night on record. If it keeps this up we will breaking out Neil Diamond and playing "hot August Night". Anyway... normally it is cool and dry and the orchids love it. One particular type I have flowers all year around and thrives on tough love rather than mollycoddling. I provide the odd banana skin and water.

We have two types that are lovely and flower less often. The white one flowers every two years and was a gift for Helen from our dear friend Charmayne.

From Orchids by night

The other one I have managed to split into three plants and these have been located in different parts of the garden.

From Orchids by night

The others (and yes there is a yellow habenaros chilli in the mix with fruit) are here in this web album.

Orchids by night

This entry was posted on July 27, 2010 at 12:07 AM and has received 222 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Well looks like might have the first bit of fruit from the little Jolokia plant given to me by a friend who lives around the corner. It has taken a long time, but I would expect nothing less of the world's hottest chilli.

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/MarkJamesChristie/Chilli_Jolokia#

This entry was posted on January 22, 2009 at 11:41 PM and has received 312 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I bought a chilli sauce from Rapid Creek markets today and thought it was about time I started to rate what was around for Darwin chilli lovers to purchase from either the markets or your local Coles or Woolies store. I am not talking about boutique stuff like Dave's Insanity Sauce which you can buy from http://www.fireworksfoods.com.au/Web/index.html along with a range of other backside burning broth... Just the stuff you grab off the shelf thinking "I'll give that one a go".

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This entry was posted on July 20, 2008 at 9:51 PM and has received 892 views. There are currently 3 comments. Print this entry.

Update - Made the JianBing, or at least an Aussie version of it.

Cooking - Chinese Crepes

We bought a crepe maker today and I made some crepes with Darwin limes, sugar and whipped cream. Not bad if I say so myself. What we really want to try and make are Chinese breakfast crepes called "Jian Bing"

Sure enough courtesy of the Internet you not only have access to the recipe, but a video of someone making them on the street in Shanghai.

I will, with the assistance of Helen or Joe translate this so we can all enjoy Jian Bing

This entry was posted on May 5, 2008 at 8:43 PM and has received 3433 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I have created a number of chilli sauce blends and this one tastes really good and is so simple it is embarressing.

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This entry was posted on April 15, 2008 at 10:51 PM and has received 400 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Even before the last empty carcass of the spiraling whitefly had drifted to the ground, a new scourge struck my chilli plants in Anula. I had heard of the fruit fly, but had never been close to one or had seen what they could do to chilli plants.

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This entry was posted on September 6, 2007 at 5:16 AM and has received 359 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

The Chilli Page

Garden - Chilli

Welcome to my chilli page. People used to tell me that eating chilli was bad for you. We now know that they have heaps of Vitamin C, beta carotene and they raise the metabolic rate and they also taste great with just about anything.

Okay, I have been holding off, but today I finally added a page dedicated to Chillis... I think on this Australia Day Weekend it is the right thing to do. Today I purchased an Orange Habeneros to add to my collection of Red Savina Habeneros along with a Thai chilli called rat-droppings chilli or "prik ku nih" in Thai. Additionally I purchased another plant that has black habeneros style chilli and also has variagated leaves.

A great site that describes the good things about Chillis (they call them Chile) is http://www.peppermania.com/index.html (This guy is a professional)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale (good descriptions and pictures of chillis)

http://users.visi.net/~mandy/pepguide.html

http://www.chillifarm.com/growing_chillies/the_farm.asp

http://www.g6csy.net/chile/index.html (good for recipes)

http://www.thechilliman.com.au/ (An Australian Site)

http://spectre.nmsu.edu/dept/academic.html?i=1272&s=sub (Yes there is a department at New Mexico Uni dedicated to these hot little suckers)

This entry was posted on March 10, 2007 at 6:10 PM and has received 444 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

DPIFM - Spiraling White Fly

Garden - Chilli

Garden - wasp release to combat spiraling whitefly

This entry was posted on March 5, 2007 at 7:33 AM and has received 335 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.