CHILLI INSIGHTS WITH MICHAEL MICHAUD

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Ever since I joined the Guild of Food Writers (GFW), I've always enjoyed the workshops for members. Having spent two of my years on the GFW Committee as Workshops Organiser, I know from first hand what a lot of work goes into setting them up. The best of these workshops offer an insight into another world and Michael Michaud’s Chilli Workshop did just that. Michael’s formidable knowledge of chillies has been acquired through the many years that he and his wife Joy have run their “market garden” in Dorset, growing and selling chillies and chilli seeds through Peppers By Post and, more recently, vegetable and herb seeds through Sea Spring Seeds. On display on the counter was a fascinating, colourful array of their chillies, ranging from the tiny to the huge, a visual clue as to the richness of this subject.

Humorous, gloriously obsessive and knowledgeable, Michael set out to enlighten fellow members. “I’m taking a pedantic approach,” he declared at the start of the evening, “because I want to clear up some misconceptions and make sure that as food writers we write accurately. It is incumbent on us to get it right.” Michael’s first point is that both sweet peppers and chillies are members of the capsicum family. It is, therefore, inaccurate to use the term ‘capsicum’ to mean only sweet peppers. Michael then waved two stems studded with identical-looking tiny, slender chillies. “What can you tell me about these?” “They’re hot,” we responded . “Why?” “ Because they’re small,” we chorused. My position in the front row to take notes meant that I got to be the first guinea pig. Michael handed me one of the small chillies. “You can test this. The way to test a chilli is to break it in half and touch the broken chilli to your tongue.” Warily, I did so; no heat detected; emboldened, I nibbled. Just a mild pepper flavour. I then moved onto the second small chilli. Just touching this to my tongue produced a powerful kick of chilli heat. Point proved; small chillies aren’t necessarily hot. “Size does matter, but not always,” explained Michael.

Michael then moved on the matter of colour in chillies, explaining that chillies change colour as they ripen. Usually, green is the colour of an immature chilli which then matures to red, with the flavour changing as it ripens. “It’s not that simple all the time,” cautioned Michael, “ That’s what makes chillies so interesting.” Chillies, as Michael demonstrated with samples from his display, ripen to many different colours, including yellow, orange and purple. The green comes from chorophyll; the red, yellow and orange from carotenoids, he explained. “Sometimes, but very rarely, the chlorophyll doesn’t disappear, so when you get the green and red pigments together, you get brown.” A beautiful chocolate-brown chilli demonstrated this phenomenon.

How do we distinguish between sweet peppers and chillies, asked Michael. Well, we think of large, thick-fleshed sweet peppers as a vegetable, an ingredient with body to it. Chillies, however, are small and thin-fleshed, used as a flavouring rather than as a vegetable. Right? Well, actually there are large chillies that can be treated as vegetables. “This is a poblano,” said Michael, waving a chilli the size of a red pepper, “rubbish raw, great cooked. They have thick flesh and you can cook with them in the way that you would cook with a sweet pepper. One of my favourites of these thick-fleshed varieties is the Hungarian Hot Wax chilli. That would be one of my desert island chilli. The Mexicans know all about cooking with chillies. They’re really hard to find in the UK and to my mind retailers are missing a trick. There are so many nuances of texture and flavour to this type of chillies that make them fascinating from a culinary point of view.”

Moving on to give us a bit of botany, Michael explained that of the five domesticated species of chilli peppers, the two major species are the Capsicum Annuum (“meaning annual, which is a misnomer as they’re perennial. As a seller of seeds it breaks my heart, but you can over-winter them!”) and Capsicum Sinenses (meaning from China), “I don’t know who came up with these names,” mused Michael, “it’s a misnomer as chillies are a New World plant. The Portuguese did more to spread chillies round the world than any other country.” To find out which chilli belongs to which of these two species, look at the stem and the cap. If it’s smooth, then it’s an Annum; if it has a ridged constriction, then it’s a Cinensis. From the gardener’s point of view, the Annuum are much easier to grow because they mature earlier in the season. “Because we’re based in Dorset we can grow Cinensis successfully, but if you live up north then I’d recommend growing Annuum.”

Naturally no chilli event would be complete without the subject of heat. “I don’t do heat myself,” observed Michael. “but there are a lot of heatgeeks out there. I must say, the obsession with very hot chillies is a macho thing. Our Dorset Naga is very, very, very , very, very hot and we sell lots of them to men. There are loads of Youtube videos out there of young guys eating Dorset Naga.” The heat in chillies is measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU), based on an organoleptic test devised by Wilbur Scoville. To understand how chilli heat works, Michael recommended “Kitchen Chemistry” by Ted Lister with Heston Blumenthal; “It’s a wonderful book. Read it. We should all know what we’re writing about, not just go to Wikepedia.” Michael’s problem with Scoville is “It’s based on dry samples of chillies, so what happens when you eat fresh chillies with their high water content?” Chilli heat varies according to variety, but also within variety. Of three Dorset Nagas grown from the same seed in three different places and all harvested in September one measured 680,000 SHU, another 880,000 SHU and the third an astonishing 1,000,000 SHU. The heat in a chilli is contained in the pithy part of the plant. Kate Hawkins got to sample first the flesh, which is mild, then the pithy part, and testified to the truth of this. So, to reduce the heat content of a chilli simply remove the pith and the seeds which are next to the pith.

Lecture over, Michael demonstrated three “quick and easy” recipes using his beloved chillies. First a Salsa Tabbouleh, inspired by his Lebanese heritage, which saw a jalapeno pepper adding kick to a mix of cucumber, tomato, garlic, fresh coriander and a touch of fine bulgur wheat, dressed with salt, lemon juice and either good-quality rapeseed or olive oil. Next a Spicy Spaghetti Salad, created by a Thai colleague of Michael’s, which saw prik kaw chillies (“little missiles”), pounded with garlic, fish sauce, lime juice and honey to make a dressing into which are “massaged” French beans, tomatoes, grated courgettes and dry-fried peanuts. The final dish, a “favourite” of Michael’s, was Northern Poached Eggs, based on North Africa’s harissa sauce. This consisted of a tasty mixture of onion, garlic, fried Hungarian Hot Wax chillies (“If you can’t get these use sweet red peppers and a little chilli pepper instead”), a generous tablespoon of mixed ground coriander/cumin/caraway, chopped tomatoes, chopped coriander, salt and a pinch of sugar, topped with raw eggs, then covered and cooked for a few minutes until the eggs are set. So, a chilli-themed feast with which to round off the evening. Food for the mind and the body.