A Herd of Thundering Carrots

Instructions

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   salt and fresh ground pepper to taste 10 dried apricots, slivered 1/3 cup sliced almonds, toasted Steam carrots for 12 minutes. Stir sugar and cinnamon together until well mixed. Set aside. Melt butter in skillet. Stir in carrots, orange juice, sprinkle with sugar cinnamon mixture. Cook over medium heat until carrots are glazed and sauce is slightly thickened. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in apricots and almonds. Cook 3 minutes.

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   Hunka Hunka Burning Love We had a special guest drop by the other day. Bill Parker was passing through pump jockey down at the Service Station across from the Cheese Shoppe. We’re always delighted to learn new and interesting things from our visitors but Bill’s comments on sitting down to one of our home-cooked meals, set us back a bit. “Not very spicy,” he said, adding more pepper from the pepper mill. “Do you have any Tabasco Sauce or better yet, Sauce From Hell?” The latter, I learned, is a local specialty in his town. It’s prime ingredient is chiles and of course this led to a conversation about these fiery little devils. Bill travels out of his native State a great deal and was well prepared for the relatively bland tastebuds of “foreigners”. He had some Habenero peppers in his carry bag which he generously offered to share with me. One taste and the heat was so intense I nearly fainted. With a gasp, I asked Michael for three things. “Water! 911! Last rites!” Most people would avoid such incendiary peppers. Not Bill and his asbestos- lined fellow gastronomes. Some crave the wave. They crave the heat. Once I had recovered, Bill explained that a true pepper fiend wouldn’t even flinch at the ordinary Jalapeno, considering it child’s play. “Myself, I particularly like the Scotch Bonnet,” said Bill, a native of Louisiana where his mother had introduced him to the taste of spicy food. I’m rather fond of an occasional drink,and the image of a “Scotch bonnet” produced a vision of Bushmill’s neat in a glass with a paper hat on it. It turns out that the Scotch Bonnet is a pepper, a close cousin to the Habanero, related in the same way as the Hatfields and the McCoys, who incidentally at this very time were having a war of their own in my stomach. These two peppers are kings of the Scoville Scale, a system that rates peppers based on capsaicin content, the compound that makes chiles hot. At the bottom of the Scoville is the green bell pepper, with 0 Scoville Heat Units, or “H.U.” The Jalapeno, Bill said, smokes in around 2500 to 5000 H.U.’s. The

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   Habenero and Scotch Bonnet fall into the 100,000 to 300,000 H.U. range. Other hot chiles include the Thai, at 50,000 to 100,000 H.U., and the Pequin, Cayenne, and Tabasco peppers at 30,000 to 50,000 H.U., and the Arbol, 15,000 to 30,000 H.U. So, if you want to take the chile plunge, what do you do with them? Here’s what Bill suggests. Chiles will grow mould in a few short days. Store them in a dry place for up to a week, or preserve them by roasting. Cover with a bit of olive oil. A warning: handle the exotic chiles with care. Some can blister the skin, so wear rubber gloves and do not touch your eyes with hands still contaminated. Insidentally, chile peppers have less nutritional value than sweet peppers but still contain vitamins A,C and E. Roast them, and vitamin levels decrease. Roast Chiles If You Dare Cut a small slit in the chile close to the end to let the steam escape. Place the chile on a baking sheet directly under the broiler and turn with tongs. Or, bake them in a 375F oven for 30 minutes. When the chile darkens and blisters, remove from heat and place in a plastic bag or damp paper towels for 10 or 15 minutes. Remove from bag and peel away skin. Chilies can be frozen in freezer bags for convenient use. When do you use chiles and where? “Anytime, anyplace,” Bill informed us. “Anything you make or eat can be spiced up with a liberal, or conservative, sprinkling of fresh or roasted chiles.” After a breakfast of spicy Heuvos Rancheros, Bill drove away, leaving us to ponder this new information and whether or not our guests could handle the heat. But as my Grandma would say, “If you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen!” Or was that someone else? Never mind.