Chilli-Labor/atory

China schätzt frische Zutaten – wie man am Fisch, frisch vom Markt, leicht merkt:
China values fresh ingredients – as you can tell from the fish, fresh from the market:

In anderer Form braucht man ihn dann allerdings…
It’s needed in a slightly different form, however…

… und erhält ausgezeichnetes Essen.
… to give an excellent dish.

Rezept folgt. Der hier verwendete Fisch sind übrigens Karauschen

Stumbled across some really nice reporting of a trip to Assam/Nagaland on the trail of the Bhut Jolokia / Naga Jolokia pepper, the new record-holder with regards to pungency.

Article by Karen Coates on her website, here (pdf), further pictures by Jerry Redfern here.

Getting chocolate in China is not as difficult as some seem to think.

Dove chocolates can be found rather easily, and they are good enough to satisfy a quick craving. Though, admittedly, I’m a chocoholic, not a chocolate snob, so I’ll eat most things chocolate-y enough…

Yet, for finding really good chocolates, one has to find one’s “dealers.” Hence, a word of advice:
I’m not sure if it’s just because I have good relations to them, but Xocolat, Austria’s preeminent chocolate store, will ship internationally. The website is just in German, but if you can understand (or find something interesting just so), try to ask nicely… For me, they certainly have been of great help, and I wanted to acknowledge that also in this way.
Coppeneur is one of my favorite chocolate makers. They produce excellent truffles, creative truffle bars (including some with – at least some – chile pepper and other spices), and high-class “normal” bars. CandyAndMore first put me off because they also offer many other (not so high-class, in my opinion) sweets, but then I tried them anyways – good thing, as they offer the widest selection of Coppeneur’s products and have excellent customer service, to boot.

After all this commercialism, some news from the sweet heat-front:

• Montezuma’s has (had?) a milk chocolate bar with lime and chile pepper. As far as I can remember the taste of that, it tastes just like Cowgirl Chocolate‘s (also former, it seems) Lime/Tequila truffles…
  Now, all seem to be going for dark chocolate in that…
• Akesson’s is not going for chile pepper (yet, maybe), but producing their own cacao and black pepper, and using both in chocolates. I had some of their “75% Trinitario cocoa & black pepper,” which is very dark, very strong, and well worth sampling

Both makers’ chocolates are hard to get, but Xocolat does (sometimes) offer them.