Hot Stuff!

I thought it was about time that I explained the title of my blog to you! Basically, I am a chilli nut. Addict, freak, devotee, maniac - there are lots of ways to describe it, but whichever way you look at it, I'm hooked!

It must have started in childhood. My mum is Hungarian and always put spices in things like stews as we were growing up. Even though the '70's wasn't a culinary hotspot we still had curries - albeit made with apples, sultanas and a spoonful of mass-produced "curry powder". That was all that was available in those days:(

Then, in the 1980's, an Indian restaurant opened in our village. It was new and adventurous and we loved it, ended up eating there as a family almost every Friday night for at least a decade. I started with chicken Kashmir and the occasional korma, then tried to be a bit more adventurous and ended up thinking a madras gave quite a decent kick!

But my university days firmly cemented my love-affair with curry and chillies. My group of friends loved nothing more than hot food, and we lived in Birmingham so had a vast selection of Indian restaurants to chose from. Needless to say there were beer-fueled incidents where we might have encouraged the consumption of hotter and hotter dishes, and we even devised the term "technical curry" (or TC for short) which was basically a trip to The Dilshad stone-cold sober to taste the food properly. In those days it was definitely a student hangout by the way, nowhere near as posh as it looks now!

And it then evolved. I learnt how to grow chillies, pickle them, dry them; discovered more ways to use them, shared seeds with friends and with the advent of the internet came even more information and chilli-shopping and cooking opportunities. So it's no surprise that 2012 finds me firmly hooked. To the extent that when we got a new kitchen a couple of years ago, we chose the artwork around chillies. I even have a ristra hung on the back of our loo door! It's rare that I go a day without eating chilli in at least 1 meal, and my favourite snack is still a Pataks chilli pickle sandwich.

I'll leave you with a photo of my favourite corner of my kitchen; and next week I'll snap my current stash of chill-related products - if I can get them all in the same shot! Happy chilli-eating folks!

The picture on the left is captioned "Pain is Good" and comes from a limited edition chilli sauce label. On the right is a framed article from The Guardian in 1991, entitled "Blowing hot and a little chilli". And several bottles of chilli oil and sauces somewhere on the middle shelf!