REcently I have discovered the Dorset Naga Chillie, Bhut Jolokia or Ghost Pepper dependant on your location.

I (and dont judge me on this) ordered a takeaway from my local Bangladeshi restauraunt and chose a Naga Curry dish. I have to say this was one of the best flavoured curry dishes I have ever had!! This primarily came down to the Naga Chillie used in it. It was fruity and searingly hot but in a way that did not overpower any of the other elements within the dish. I was converted!!

My 'Q' is....Can anyone point me to further recipes using this amazing pepper. I would most grateful.

I am tempted to use some of the Mamta recipes and make the substitue as by way of experimentation, which I am not adverse to. But thought I'd pick the wider brain storage out there for tips.

many thanks

Delme.

No reason why you can't use it in other recipes as long as you don't mind the heat ! - Remember some recipes my require more than a few chillies to get the flavour of the chilli as well as the heat.

Try them out and see what you think (I'd be tempted to use less chilli though when using the hotter types)

Steve

Hello Delme

I personally do not eat very hot food. For me, too many chillies destroy the other subtle flavours of spices. I do however appreciate that many people like hot food and I don't see any reason why you shouldn't substitute the chillies in my recipes (or any other recipes for that matter), with Dorset Naga Chillie, Bhut Jolokia or Ghost Pepper.

Best wishes

Mamta

Hopefully Andrew will see this as he knows his nagas from his scotch bonnets!

B Jhalokia goes very well with lamb curry but I ask them (Bengali restaurant)to prepare the dish medium and not hot so that the other spices are not overpowered.

I'm not too fussed on the flavour of the bhut jolokia chillies. Last year I grew them - along with other super hots such as the naga morich, bih jolokia and the Dorset naga - and I still have a lot of them in the freezer. I use them from time to time, but I think the Dorset naga has a much nicer flavour. It works sometimes, but I don't think the chinense variety of chillies belong in Indian cookery. They have a unique flavour that works better in Caribbean and Mexican cookery. When cooking Indian I tend to use the annum variety of chillies for the most part, although I have used whole hot lemon chillies (baccatum variety) in vegetable biriyanis before now and they worked well.

To cut a story short, and from my understanding, the Dorset naga is meant to be some kind of hybrid created by two people in Dorset who bought a naga morich plant from somewhere. However, there is an area in India where the naga morich grows but there is meant to be another variety of super hot that tastes slightly different and grows a number of miles away from where the naga morich grows, this is pepper is 'meant' to be a rarer variety and less heard of. All I can go on is what I read, but this would make some sense because the chinense variety is a distinct flavour (scotch bonnets and habs et cetera), but the Dorset naga - in my opinion - doesn't really taste like the other chinense varieties, hence the fact I think it works well in some 'curries'. So, is the Dorset naga a hybrid of the naga morich and something else, or was the plant these people bought this 'rarer' variety of super hot that is meant to grow in some place in India? Dunno.

On a slightly different note, my tepin plants are a year old this year and are starting to set fruits. Tepin is a wild variety of chilli that grows in certain parts of the Americas. It's meant to be really hot and the fruits are round. They start of green like other peppers but turn purple when ripe. I have never tried them before but I am excited, yeah, sad I know LOL! Apparently the plants are hard to grow, which I can understand because the problem I have noticed with them is that the flowers keep dropping off. But I have a few fruits on the plants and the plants themselves are nearly six-foot tall. I doubt yer interested but I will keep you informed. Apparently in some places where these plants grow the locals pickle the chillies. So I might try that.

I remember mentioning on here a few months ago that I had planted some seeds from dried red chillies that I have in my spice cupboard. The plants are doing really well but I have no idea what the variety is. I seem to remember Lapis mentioning that she would probably know what variety they were, and if I posted a picture of the plants when they are fruiting that she may be able to identify them. So once the plants set fruits I will post a picture and hopefully someone can identify them for me.

Hi All,

Many thanks for the posts in response to my question, much appreciated. I will proceed under caution with this variety. I agree that this variety could well go nicely in the 'Mexican' recipes but I have a stack of Ancho - Habenero - Serrano already so I will save the experiments for that cuisine until later.

Once again thanks all.

Delme.

Andrew,

the tepin I have (according to the label on the packet) are very small, and red, and not round. ???

Although I never bought the seeds from this website, these are the tepin chillies that I have. I thought they turned purple but maybe it's red after all :-) I will soon find out.

Oh God Andrew, these are the chillies my dad used to grow. He ate very little chillies himself but used them to tease his chilli eater friends, betting them that they could not eat a whole chilli. Only conditon was that they had to chew it with food (in the manner Indians eat fresh, green chillies with food), not swallow it whole. I never knew anyone who achievd this!

I hope no one munches into them Andrew, mistaking them for a cherry tomato!

Yes, I have heard that they are blisteringly hot. The plants have a few green ones on at the moment. Once they get a little bigger I will take some pictures and link to them.

I have heard that the heat from these is very intense but also very short lived, but I will be able to tell you more once I have tried one for myself.

I'm not exactly sure how big the pods grow to because the plants didn't produce any fruits at all last year ? it's normal for the plants to produce very little if any fruit in their first year.

Mamta, can you remember the size of the pods when they are ripe?