First, Harald Zoschke in Germany sent me the hilarious card at the left after asking me to model the 'Bhut Jolokia' tie.  This imagery caused a ruckus among my female friends, ranging from "OMG! That is one for the archives!" (Martha "Body Bueno" Doster), to "Are those your real boobs?" (Lois "Cave Dweller" Manno) to "There are so many things that are just wrong with this pic, Dave!" (Melanie "Cold Water" Yunk).  I replied, "But I love my new panties, my new nail color, and my implants."  Then I emailed the card to Pat Chapman, the King of Curries in England, and he sent the following report about our upcoming event, "The Pope of Peppers Meets the King of Curries," in London on May 16.

 

Reuters, London, 0922 GMT; 02-05/2010

Sales of Sports Illustrated soared as tens of thousands of extra copies were printed to cope with astonishing demand following the near exposure of America's latest sex icon, the Pope of Peppers.  The magazine owners admitted that they had never known anything like it, and that the cover design would be nominated for the 'Less is More' Award.  

Security was stepped up to hold back the crowds of adulating admirers who took to the Miami seas in boats of all shapes and sizes in the hope of catching sight of the new icon. Wearing his new papal uniform aboard a cruise ship of hot repute, the Pope revealed he has tied up a deal with the King of Curries in England, which will result in a visit there in May following his highly awaited tour of Italy.  

Asked how this would affect relationships with the Vatican, the Pope said "I do not have plans to visit my namesake.  But I hear Benedict will pay a visit to England after my own."  This was confirmed by the Vatican who were obliged to hastily plan their first papal visit to Britain since 1982. The media on both sides of the pond are buzzing with anticipation. Asked how cash-strapped UK would handle two popes in one year, the Bank of England expected to step up its quantative easing to produce the extra finance need to handle the visit. Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated "Printing money is easy.  Providing we don't run out of paper."   President Obama said a decision may be made by the end of his term. British security chiefs said measures will be put in place to handle the expected crowd. "We will bring back our troops from Afghanistan, if we have any left by then."   The palace declined to confirm whether royalty will attend, stating her majesty was not amused, but they did intimate that the King had been alerted.  

When quizzed, the King confirmed that negotiations were ongoing between the Albuquerque papal office and his own regal office in Haslemere, Surrey. They expected to announce a US/UK Fiery Food Pope-meets-King summit soon. "A lot depends on what happens when DeWitt removes that tie," he said. Happy Birthday Pappa.

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Editor's Note:  Our company, Sunbelt Shows, Inc. is joining forces with Bel Soley, Inc. to assist in rebuilding the Haitian economy.  I am urging my readers to contact Brian and render any assistance to this project that you can.

Brian Hays writes: I am the Chairman of Bel Soley, which is a company dedicated to development in Haiti by building for-profit enterprises for the sale of agricultural products domestically and for export. See www.belsoley.com. We have a U.S. distribution company based in Boston and a Haitian subsidiary that operates primarily in the southern part of the country (Les Cayes), with a country manager located in Port au Prince. [He and his family are OK.] We grow some of our own crops and buy other crops from small farmers. We started exporting mangos, breadfruit and hot peppers last year and were just ramping up our pepper exports when the earthquake hit. We are producing several thousand pounds of peppers a week now. Our hot peppers are habaneros from imported seed and the local hot pepper, a habanero variety called 'Piment Bouk'. Our target was to get to ship out 24,000 pounds per month by the end of the year. As you can imagine, all exports from the country have stopped for now. Port au Prince is the only real port of debarkation in Haiti. With the government destroyed and transportation over-burdened, we do not know when we can begin shipping again - although we are optimistic.
We are selling our crops locally, but the current regional market is questionable and we don't know if the market can absorb the volume. Domestic distribution beyond the immediate locale is doubtful. Furthermore, our business model is based on export income. So you can see the problem.

It has always been part of our business plan to make a good quality and truly uniquely Haitian pepper sauce.  All the pepper sauce sold in Haiti now is either Tabasco or Louisiana Hot Sauce. We know there is a good domestic market and with something different and of good quality, there should be an export market as well. But our plan was to move into pepper sauce later this year, after our fresh pepper export business was better established. Because of the earthquake, we would like to accelerate our move into the sauce business. By making sauce or mash from the peppers, we will be able to save our crops and also begin to provide edible foodstuffs to the domestic market, which is already showing signs of food shortages. As I mentioned, mangos, papayas, bananas and pineapples are readily available as a base and we can easily grow carrots. We have or can grow a range of more exotic tropical fruits as well, including passion fruit, soursop, sapote, acerola (Barbados Cherry), tamarind and more as flavorings.

Depending on the cost, we believe that we have adequate capital to set up the hot sauce operation, including bottling.We think we have found away to import equipment into the country (by by-passing Port au Prince). What we we don't have is information and expertise. Starting a business is difficult in the best of circumstances (I know, have started quite a few), but in this chaotic environment where we know next to nothing about the new business, the only way we can off-set the risk is with good advice and good partners.

* We need recommendations of experts in the business that can advise us on the sauce making process, the bottling process and any other practical, basic opertaions;
* We need recommendations of experts in food safety (we intend to meet all HACCP requirements - not only to allay fears about products from Haiti, but because it is the right way to do things);
* We need recommendations of reliable, honest equipment vendors who will provide the right equipment - not too much or too little - and collateral expertise in setting up and operations.
* We need recommendations of US (or EU) importers of pepper sauce (and fresh peppers too, since we will be back in that business).
* Any other ideas, suggestions or sources of information would be also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for your time and willingness to help. We hope to turn a bad situation into something good. If we can get this done, we will have a few new, exotic pepper sauces from the fiery country of Haiti!

Brian

Brian J. Hays
Chairman, Bel Soley, Inc
703-421-9211 - home office
703-217-6251 - mobile

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My good friend, Rick Browne of "Barbecue America" on PBS, has launched a new project entitled A Century of Restaurants and because he has to travel to 100-year-old (and older!) restaurants all over the country and photograph them, he needs help funding the project.  He has found a publisher and has rounded up about 25% of the funds needed, but needs more help with the production of the book.  I am helping him with a donation and I urge everyone else to assist, especially restaurant people. Here's Rick describing it:

I'm starting an exciting new project that will involve a book and later a TV series about America's oldest restaurants. The book is tentatively titled: A Century of Restaurants, but that may change before it's published. To be specific we'll pick 100 century old restaurants from our list of 213 restaurants located in 50 states, and in fact some are 300 years old, a bunch are over 200, the rest have merely been serving up vittles for ten decades!

In a profession where the failure rate for restaurants is upwards of 60% after 3 to 5 years, these centenarian eateries stand way above their newer competitors. We're going to try and find out why they've outlasted hundreds of thousands of other restaurants by visiting these centenarians in person and talking to the owners, chefs, wait staff, and (perhaps most importantly) customers, as to why they think their restaurant has survived and flourished in one of the most competitive businesses in the country. Oh, and yes, we'll probably grab at bite at most of them as well.

I've launched the project on the Kickstarter website, a site which helps authors, movie makers, artists, and other creative folks find funding for their projects, and I would love you to go there, watch my short video, read about the project, and hopefully be inspired to throw a few bucks our way. Here is the web address.

 

 

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<At left, Mike ferries Renate Zoschke 
around on his cooler train.

We have just learned of the passing of Mike Cates, which is another blow to Hot Shots, the company that lost their leader, Dave Lutes, late last year.  Mike worked for Dave for many years and was a familiar face every year at the National Fiery Foods and Barbecue Show.  We do not as yet have details about his passing, but it was unexpected.  Mike made a lot of friends at the show and would constantly entertain us with his antics.  He will be sorely missed.  Our condolences to his wife and family.

 

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I'm pleased and proud to announce that Emily DeWitt, who is my brother Rick's daughter, has been appointed as food editor of the SuperSite and ScovieAwards.com  She is only our third food editor, following Nancy Gerlach, who retired and lives in Yucatán, and Gwyneth Doland, who went over to the darkside--politics. (She is editor of the New Mexican Independent, a political blog.) Emily's duties include developing recipes for both sites, posting recipes to the databases, styling food shots, and editing recipes supplied by freelancers.  She will also assist me on stage when I do cooking demonstrations, and she's the co-producer of the Scovie Awards.  Welcome aboard, Emily!  Emily is married to Max Cisneros and they have three children: Andrew, Matthew, and Rachael.

 

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I am pleased to be Author of the Day on Cookstr on January 10. It's nice to get a little recognition every now and then! Katie Workman, the editor-in-chief of the site, describes it this way: "Cookstr.com is a new cooking site dedicated to providing our users with great recipes from the best chefs and cookbook authors. It’s still early days for us, and we’re adding more chefs and authors – and more recipes – all the time. We’ll also be adding new features over the next few months. But in the meantime we’re excited to share with you thousands of recipes from cookbooks you know and love, and help you discover wonderful new books and cooks."  I just did a search in their recipe section for "chile pepper" and found 275 recipes, so they're doing an excellent job in our field of interest. "Barbecue" yielded 107 recipes.

 

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We are busy planning our May trip to Italy and England to promote The Complete Chile Pepper Book, which makes me think about how much both of those countries have heated up chile-wise in the past two decades.  Chile pepper growing, both commercially and as a hobby, has exploded, particulary in Italy.  In England, formerly the Land of the Bland, curry has taken over the culinary world and is the primary source of spicy food.  My good friend Pat Chapman, the King of Curries and I are planning an event called The King of Curries Meets the Pope of Peppers, and I will post more information as soon as the details are firmed up.  Meanwhile, I though you might enjoyed some stories and recipes about those two countries and their favorite spicy foods.  See the articles on spicy Italy, here and here and our 12-part series A World of Curries is here.

 

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I spoke over the weekend with Janie Lamson, owner of Cross Country Nurseries and chileplants.com, the largest seller of chile bedding plants with 500 varieties.  She told me about her best-selling varieties from last year, and of them are in the species Capsicum chinense, which has the hottest varieties in the world.  She also told me that her tomato bedding plant sales grew 37%, which doesn't surprise me since chilehead gardeners also also love tomatoes, since they are so compatible in cooking.  Here are Janie's top 5 best sellers.  Order these varieties for April delivery at the link above.

1. 'Bhut Jolokia'

2. 'Red Savina'

3. 'Trinidad Scorpion'

4. 'Fatalii'

5. 'Chocolate Habanero'

 

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With a tip of the hat to Dave Barry...

January: The Food Police declare that food is carcinogenic and urge people to eat cigarettes.
February: Valentine's Day candies are banned by Iran and North Korea.
March: “Chile” is the most tweeted word in Argentina.  Chile responds by recalling its Food Ambassador.
April: In honor of Rachael Ray, April Fool's Day is extended to a week.
May: A resurgent Tang outsells Budweiser.
June: Low-fat wedding cakes are introduced by Weight Watchers.
July: Congress declares pork barbecue as the official food of Independence Day, ousting hot dogs.
August: To avert bankruptcy, the state of California levies a property tax on vineyards in Oregon.
September: The “Top Chef” Chef of the Year is awarded to the late Colonel Sanders.
October: The Food Police order that Halloween candies be replaced by toasted pumpkin seeds.
November: “Turkey” is the most tweeted word in Greece.  In retaliation, the Greek parliament suspends grease shipments to Turkey.
December: Spam sales rocket for Christmas after a vaccine is developed for swine flu.

 

 

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Here in New York, the temperature has taken a nosedive for the winter, which makes me wonder, is that why I'm seeing so many scorching hot cocktails around town these days? As a major hub of mixology, I’ve noticed that Manhattan’s finest bartenders have been flirting with habanero-infused vodkas, rare chiles and even hot-sauce in their newest cocktail concoctions. These peppery tipples have been popping up on diverse drink menus around the city. I think I’ve spotted a hot trend.

At Mari Vanna, the gorgeous NYC outpost of the chic Moscow-based dinner club, more than 15 vodkas are infusing behind the bar at any given time, including a scorching hot pepper vodka along with a sinus-clearing horseradish infused vodka (pictured above). "We infuse Mari Vanna's pepper vodka with a ton of red jalapeño peppers and the horseradish vodka with a bunch of sliced horseradish roots.  The ingredients sit in the jar of vodka for seven days to really soak up the flavor.  One sip of either of these spicy infusions, but particularly the pepper one, and any cold or flu should be wiped away!  It'll clear you right up," said Tatiana Brunetti, owner of Mari Vanna.

Could super-spicy infused vodka cocktails kill the common cold? I pondered this very question over a Piquant Bloody Mary at Brooklyn’s newest Southwestern-themed restaurant, Piquant. Made with house-infused orange habenero vodka, tomato juice, cilantro, horseradish, fresh lime juice and plenty of hot sauce, this slow-burning bloody managed to spice up my brunch routine. I'm not sure if it managed to kill any viruses I may have been harboring, however.

At La Esquina, the no longer ‘secret’ Mexican speakeasy-style eatery, a shockingly refreshing, beer based cocktail has appeared on the menu. Called the Michelada, this chill drink is made with Mexican beer and chipotle puree, served over ice with a dash of lime and a salted rim—adding a subtle kick to your refreshing pint.

Even some of Manhattan’s most upscale hotels—including the Surrey—have a spicy cocktail to offer. Bar Pleiades (pictured), a luxe black and white lounge located on the ground floor of the recently refurbished hotel, offers a spicy/sweet cocktail called the Southern Fashion created by Canadian mixologist Cameron Bogue. The Southern Fashion is “a bourbon based drink that I infuse with Espelette, a chile from the northern Basque region in France [that] is a favorite to many chefs as it packs quite a bit of flavor without being too hot,” noted the passionate-about-peppers Bogue. Whether you like a little, or a lot, of heat, super-spicy cocktails are sure to warm up imbibers this winter. Cheers!

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