Hot stuff !

The hottest show in town was in Albuquerque this last weekend as chilliheads from all over the USA gathered to pay homage to the humble chilli. Now I quite like chillis but there is a limit and there’s no way you’d find me within 10 metres of a new product which featured at the annual Fiery Foods and Barbeque Show. It's called New Mexico Scorpion Chile, a new breed with a particularly nasty bite, and it's the explosive ingredient in a namesake salsa also debuting this week. How hot is the Scorpion chile? It's capable of eating through skin, clothing and plastic. That's how hot. Currently, the hottest chile on record is India's Bhut Jolokia with a 600,000 to 800,000 Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) rating, the internationally accepted measure of the fire power of chile peppers. The Scorpion has a 1.1 million SHU rating. El Pinto Scorpion Salsa made its debut on Friday at the show and the makers of the 550-jar, limited edition batch wore respirators and gloves. So why would anyone want to ingest this stuff? I’ve no bloody idea!

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Here's a great clip from British comedy duo, Mitchell and Webb. The age of casual dining is coming to an end and the snooty waiter is returning to take over from those idiots who insist on hunkering down at your table to take the order. FeedBlitz subscribers may have to visit the site to view.

I'm reading: Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Dilly Diner of the Week

The Flying Chicken is this week's Dilly Diner. Situated in Bangkok, this is one of those restaurants that you definitely don't seek out when you're looking for a gourmet experience but if you've got a camera handy and are looking for a bit of fun and don't mind having to pay for some fairly grim food then The Flying Chicken is certainly the place for you.
A roomy outdoor cafe, the Flying Chicken features a wide, open seating pavilion, and like many cafe/restaurants of its kind, features a stage where young women in garishly colorful evening gowns take turn singing Thai love songs to the accompaniment of a synthesizer "band." But all that pales into insignificance when the real cabaret starts when they fling chickens, high up in the air, while they're still on fire. Flying chickens you wanted and flying chickens is what you get as they are projected via a spring powered catupult, doused in brandy and flaming to be caught by waiting waiters ( well isn't that what waiters do ? ). But to make the whole spectacle even more bizarre the waiters are perched on unicycles which they peddle over to your table to deliver your bird. There's more but even I can't get these surreal images out of my head so I'm going to lie down for a while!

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That Was The Week That Was

A scorcher of a week in Cape Town and appropriately ice cream was in the news all over the world. Multinational Nestle announced the launch of peelable ice cream in the form of an innovative, fun and unusual ice cream stick, which is about to be rolled out across the globe this year, after its successful launch in Thailand as Eskimo Monkey.Eaten like a banana, the playful experience starts by taking a bite from the top of the peelable jelly shell, which is then rolled down like a banana skin to reveal an ice cream core.

Meanwhile in the UK there’ll be no more mother’s milk ice cream for customers of The Icecreamists, after local government officials confiscated ice cream made from human breast milk. The action came on Monday, when representatives of Westminster City Council removed the offending dairy products from the central London store. The infamous "Baby Gaga" ice cream was launched last week amid a flurry of press attention. A number of complaints arrived at the City Council's door questioning the sale of edibles made from bodily fluids, and the myriad health hazards this could entail. It was these complaints that prompted the confiscation of the ice cream. Officials from the Council said that the product is now being thoroughly tested with full cooperation from the producers, The Icecreamists. Although the company insists that the milk was screened in line with blood donor requirements before it was processed, this further testing and guidance from the UK's Food Standards Agency will be needed before it can be put back on the market.

And in the US this week Ben & Jerry’s announced a new flavor called "Late Night Snack in partnership with late night talk show host Jimmy Fallon — a vanilla bean ice cream with a salty caramel swirl and fudge-covered potato chip clusters. However the following night famed San Francisco-based ice cream shop Humphry Slocombe tweeted: "Wow, nice new flavor Ben & Jerry. When's the last time you had dinner @Sporksf?" Turns out that Spork Restaurant in San Francisco exclusively serves the "After School Special" ice cream produced by Humphry Slocombe which has nearly the identical ingredients: "Chocolate-covered Ridge potato chips swirled with caramel in Tahitian Vanilla." Apparently it's the restaurant's top-selling dessert and was created over two years ago. To note: Ben & Jerry's uses kettle chips instead of ridged chips, which is a minor difference. Of course we can’t really blame good guys Ben and Jerry, they’re long gone and the company is in the hands of another of those multinationals – Unilever.

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Well done and you're done for.

I've never understood why people like well done meat. It stands to reason that the more you cook the meat, the more moisture you are going to remove, making the meat dryer and hence tougher and unpalatable. Get invited to a braai and let one of those bozos loose on the grill who picked up his basic cooking skills at the local crematorium and you're likely to end up with more than a burnt offering, you'll also run the very real risk of increasing your chances of getting stomach cancer.
We've known for a long time of the carcinogenic chemicals formed during the cooking process of muscle meats from beef, lamb, chicken, pork and even fish but it's not much fun tossing a tomato or two onto the coals and so we've tended to largely ignore what the doctors have been telling us but it seems that the risk is not so much red meat as the intensely high temperatures and prolonged cooking time . It really doesn't matter whether you cook over open coals, in a pan or under a grill, it's high temperature for prolonged periods that's the problem. Research indicates that having your meat medium to well done as opposed to rare will increase your risk of stomach cancer threefold.
So it seems that if you can't or won't limit your intake of red meat then you should perhaps look to a potjie for your Sunday lunch but if you really can't get by without standing around the fire, sipping cold beer and arguing about the rugby then cook your steaks rare or medium rare only - you'll actually enjoy them better, you know it makes sense. If chicken is your poison of choice then steam or poach it gently in advance, allow it to cool down in the cooking liquor and just reheat on the braai, once again it will actually taste better and you won't end up with a black exterior and a raw interior. For fish, wrap in a sealed foil envelope with herbs, a little white wine and butter if you dare and gently cook on the side of the fire. When you open the envelope the escaping steam will smell incredible and the fish will be divine. You don't have to forsake the braai, you've just got to cook more cleverly.

I'm reading: Well done and you're done for.

Keeping abreast of the latest trend

How do you sell ice cream in London in the middle of winter? It’s simple, you dream up an outrageous flavour that’s sure to upset someone and then bask in the publicity and public outcry whilst apologising all the way to the bank. Matt O'Connor, the founder and owner of The Icecreamists, came up with a real tit of a flavour from which he milked the maximum publicity until the men from the council told him he’d made a boob and he had to drop the flavour Baby Gaga, made from real human breast milk with a hint of Madagascar vanilla pods and lemon zest. The local councillor said: "Following two complaints from members of the public and concerns from the Health Protection Agency and Food Standards Agency, Westminster Council officers visited the premises on Friday and removed all ice cream being sold as containing breast milk. The business owner has agreed to stop producing and selling the ice cream. Selling foodstuffs made from another person's bodily fluids can lead to viruses being passed on and in this case, potentially hepatitis. As the local authority we will support small businesses and applaud innovative ideas wherever possible, but we must protect the health of consumers." I reckon we must also steer clear of bozos like this out to make a quick buck!

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Nuke the buggers!

If you know the right people you'll still be enjoying one of the Cape's greatest treasures, the Cape Crayfish or spiny lobster, either free or at much more realistic prices than those charged by fishmongers and seafood restaurants. The problem for most people is just how do you go about causing the demise of these feisty fellows in a reasonably humane manner. I must be honest here, it's never been a problem to me, a sharp knife to the jugular or in this case, to the crown of the head and they're dispatched immediately. But there are some more sensitive souls out there who have no qualms about chowing on crustaceans but lack the steely nerve required to murder the beasties. They try all sorts of non confrontational methods such as entombing them in the deepfreeze to make them relax - relax ? at minus 20 C ? Or another favourite is to start them off in cold water and gradually raise the temperature - sort of the pescatorian equivalent of being burnt at the stake !
Well help is at hand. Forget these old wives methods and embrace modern technology, nuke the buggers. A revolutionary new system has been developed which is claimed to be a humane, simple and effective way to stun and kill shellfish prior to cooking - invest in The Crustastun, the world's first Electronic Crustacean Stunner. Simply by applying a stun of 110 v - 2-5 amps, there follows an immediate interruption in the functioning of the nervous system thus rendering it incapable of receiving stimuli and thus by definition it cannot feel any pain or suffer distress. So effectively you just pop them in the box, close the lid and push the button, voila. Of course at some point you will have to remove the now limp bodies and take that sharp kinife to the back of their skull but you'll probably be feeling a lot better about it now.
Of course the question is what to do with your Crustastun during the closed season and those other odd occasions that you're not guzzling on crayfish. We have recently been plagued in our neighbourhood with a series of housebreaking incidents so I reckon I'll invest in a few and place them conveniently near unprotected windows around the house.

I'm reading: Nuke the buggers!