I love love love my little son so much! Yesterday he didn't want to go to the rec center per usual; he wanted to go to the little market and buy produce. :D He picked out some stuff, and we COOKED IT!!! How idyllic is that!!! (Idyllic... wrong word. Pastoral? Er... anyway) He picked out a huge jalapeno pepper with which to spice up our aloo gobi, then picked out all the potatoes while I picked out the tomatoes. I am normally quite the big fat chicken about cooking with fresh hot peppers, preferring the certainty of my 1/2 tsp dose of red cayenne powder. Still, there's nothing like the fresh green flavor of a fresh pepper to liven up a dish, and I knew it wouldn't be very hot since it was so big, so I decided to try it!
My suspicions proved correct when Wonderful Son picked it up and TOOK A BITE OUT OF THE END, ZOMG!!!!!!! I watched him intently, asking, "How is it???" He looked thoughtful, then announced, "Good." WHEW! (It was, of course, spicier toward the stem end, a good chunk of which I excised before cooking).
The dish was delish, and a lovely afternoon was had by all! As mild as that pepper was (for a jalapeno) though, I STILL managed to give my fingertips pepper-burns during prep. I suppose gloves are what the pros use? Or perhaps a larger dose of Deal With It? Anyone with hot pepper experience, please weigh in!
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I totally don't do hot stuff. I think it comes from an experience I had as a child where I got some Tabasco sauce on my fingers then picked my nose...
Yeah, you're supposed to use gloves, like the thin clear plastic kind.
I don't, because I hate wearing gloves. If it gets really bad, I put the hand holding the pepper in a plastic baggie instead. Frequent handwashing also helps.
But the BEST thing to do is to get one of those Cuisinart small electric food processor/chopper things. It's fast, it's relatively cheap, and your fingers won't sting!
My partner chopped up some chilis once, and then without thinking, rubbed eyes. BAD IDEA!! While partner cried and screamed, I frantically googled "antidotes, capsicum", but nothing really worked. It was frantic and memorable.
Awww, I love reading this! What a special afternoon of shopping and cooking and LOVE!!
Oh yeah, gloves are a good thing. I've managed to burn my eyes with jalapeno juice. It didn't help that I had contacts in, so it got kind of stuck in there until I washed my hands (again) and got the contact out.
A friend of mine touched another very sensitive body area after thinking that she had thoroughly washed off jalapeno juice. She regretted that as well.
Not particularly relevant to this post but just to say this; I got behind with reading your blog and have just had a perfectly enjoyable time catching up with your posts.
Trivia point (might be so obvious it's not worth saying - but equally, might be wrong!!) I was really interested to hear that the 'hotness' of chili, which is not actually hot in degree C, is because it stimulates the temperature receptors in our tongue/skin. So we literally can't tell the difference between chili hot and burning temperature hot.
Sounds like you had a great time! It's never too early to start teaching kids to cook.
I'e been cooking with jalapenos for about 30 years, but I've never been burned and never used gloves. No idea why. I do clean them under cold water; maybe that helps?
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