Typically, if you want to promote a food item, the last thing you do is suggest that it's a biohazard. Except in the up-is-down world of hot-pepper enthusiasts. Only to them would the next sentence come as anything other than a run-for-your-lives warning: The Indian government has reportedly been stockpiling mass quantities of a certain pepper for crowd control and anti-terrorist weaponry.
That hot enough for ya?
Actually, that's a siren song to hot-pepper connoisseurs in Nashville, where local entrepreneurs are warming to demand for what currently stands as the hottest pepper on earth. That would be the bhut jolokia, nicknamed by Westerners "the ghost chili," which grows in Bangladesh and the Assam region of northwest India.
In 2005, researchers at New Mexico State University conducted a test to measure the heat of the ghost chili, then little known outside Asia. Using the measurement units known as Scovilles — which indicate how many times the pepper extract must be diluted with sugar water before it no longer burns the tongue — the record holder for the world's hottest pepper to date had been the Red Savina habanero, which tested as high as 580,000 units.
The ghost chili, by comparison, reached a colon-searing 1,001,304 Scovilles — as much as 400 times the heat of traditional Tabasco sauce. Fresh, at its strongest potency, it induces reactions ranging from uncontrollable eye watering and sweating to intense pain, triggering a panicky rush of pleasurable endorphins from the brain to compensate. Oddly, according to local spice supplier Charlie Tambellini, that's part of its appeal.
"For a lot of sober people, that's their kick," says Tambellini, whose Further Foods stand at the Nashville Farmers' Market every weekend has become a magnet for local pepperheads. "It becomes an out-of-body experience." At its most intense, he says, "your body goes numb and your whole brain freezes up. You feel like you're in space."
Last year, Tambellini laid in a shipment of dried bhut jolokia pods from India. In his East Tennessee spice kitchen — helped by friends in gas masks — the Franklin resident powdered a batch of the dried chilies. He left covered with an infernal dust that caused a world of hurt in the moment, then reactivated in hot water when Tambellini showered.
Nevertheless, he used the powder along with ingredients such as papaya, lime juice and passion fruit to create a sweet, addictively fiery sauce with a Caribbean tang. At $13, it's easily the most expensive of Tambellini's homemade condiments. But one tiny orange dot on a cube of bread delivers a mule-kick to the taste buds. Tambellini recommends using only one dried pepper for a batch of chili, advising that sautéing the diced pepper ahead of time in some olive oil will activate more of its heat.
At Ben Smythe's stand at the Woodbine Farmers Market, which just closed for the season, neighborhood kids from the Coleman Park playground made a giggly ritual of daring each other to taste his samples. Is heat all the ghost chili has going for it?
Smythe says no, praising a complex flavor that's "smoky, [reminiscent of] orange peel, leathery — almost like tobacco." The Belcourt staffer and musician peddles a homemade sauce and spice sprinkle called Banjamin's Ghost Pepper "Elixer," savory where Tambellini's sauce is fruity. Not only does he put it on everything — he suggests newbies try it lightly on eggs, hot chicken or red beans and rice — he's experimenting with fireball candies that add ghost chili to the traditional onslaught of cinnamon.
In the event of a taste-bud 911, Smythe recommends yogurt or orange juice (or any citrus beverage) to cool down relatively quickly. In time for Christmas, he's offering two new ghost-pepper products: a tag-team habanero/ghost pepper seasoning and a curry that honors the plant's Indian roots. That will have to do until next season — when he hopes to cultivate his own plants with area growers.
"Everybody has a fascination with their limits," Smythe says. "With some people it's running marathons; others see who can drive their car faster." Evidently nobody wants to give up the ghost.
Tambellini's products are available at www.furtherfoodsonline.com. For Smythe's, contact banselixer@gmail.com.
Email arts@nashvillescene.com.
