Chilli & Hop Festival 2014

Ok, I was far more interested in drinking beer than taking photos this year, so visually stimulating this post is not (although most of the photos that I do have are fab - thanks to Kelly Cook).

Nor does this post provide much of an insight into the festival, the chilli eating champs, chillies or hops.

It does however provide some insight into why lunch with Mum on Sunday was cancelled and the car sat at Hallertau until 4pm.

Now that I've made this sound an incredibly insightful and worthy read...

The Chilli & Hop Festival is an annual event at Hallertau - a brewery/pub/restaurant in Coatesville which is a regular venue for us for a Sunday pint of vino (I'm going to pretend that was supposed to say pint or vino). It has great food, in a great setting, with great beer on tap and is the location for this great event. Those couple of loyal readers of mine will know we went last year and surprisingly were feeling worse for wear following that too...

Last year the festival hosted the finals of the NZ Chilli Eating Champs and was held in July so proved a slightly darker, rainier and colder day but still one to remember (mostly).

This year certainly topped it - fantastic band, great beer, delicious food, not too shabby company and an absolute stunner from the weather gods.

Being earlier in the year, the first round of the Chilli Eating Champs was held and, well to be honest, I don't know how anyone who participated is still alive.

The heat that El and I went to last year had a lovely looking chilli con carne, a little soup number and some pretty mean chicken wings. This year they ate whole chillies. And more whole chillies. Oh and a triple chilli taco. And washed it down with more chillies.

And when I say chillies, I mean Carolina Reapers. We grew Reapers this year and I can barely look at them, let alone touch one. The last mental thing I ate was about an eighth of a Trinidad Scorpion and I cursed Elliot for making me do it.

For those of you who have not eaten any part of a super hot, words simply cannot explain how hot these things are. I and haven't gone near a Reaper.

I guess the contestants did get a fairly easy first few rounds - a mere Bishop's Crown, a teeny tiny Cobán , a golden Habanero the size of a small cat (I had a great view once I pushed past the kids to get up front).

About twelve contestants kicked off, and slowly but surely they started bowing out through the rounds.

Then the big guns - the 7 Pod first which cut the field down to three determined and uncomfortable contestants looking longingly at the yoghurt and beer in their direct eye line.

The trio were given two Reapers to down in the final round and, well, HoTtt ASs Chillies Paul, Amber Alert and Chilli Willy could not be separated. The sunglasses could not hide the tears and absolute pain, but they had done it.

The three way tie went down as a first in the championships' history. An absolute beast of an effort by all three.

As a bonus, Chilli Willy turns out to be an old friend from high school I have not seen in yonks. I am sure he appreciated seeing me at my finest... Well done mate (and Rewa hard!)

There was a great story on Campbell Live which follows reporter Lachlan Forsyth learning about the comp, entering the comp, and giving well a damned good effort before ending his time in the comp spewing into a bucket on national television.

The New Zealand Herald also covered the champs - story here.

There are also some great photos on NZ Chilli Eating Champs and HOTtt ASs Chillies' Facebook pages.
Here and here.

There are heats up and down the county - head along for a great night out (Chilli Eating Champs website above will have the dets).

The Chilli Eating Champs were on for a couple of hours but before that we were treated to some sweet beats from The Gramophone Band while sampling all the different beers on offer. Trying all the different varieties and then having a whiskey cocktail was most definitely not a stupid idea.

Yes, the whiskey and beer cocktail with plum jam, bitters and lemon was shaken in style by the handsome bar tender and we all shared a toast and a sip. Delicious. Slightly too sweet for a couple and I could probably only have one, but a nice change from the lager.

The beverages washed down the amazing pulled pork taco from The Lucky Taco Truck -a flour tortilla topped with pork tossed in a delicious barbeque sauce, a bit of shredded red cabbage, a splash of lime and sprig of coriander then smothered in Habaenero sauce by me - amazing. Pulled pork. Hot sauce. Can't really go wrong.

The chilli dog from the award winning Grey Lynn Butchery was another treat. My white shoes may not have survived my hotdog eating skills but it was delicious with some nice heat.

Then of course there is only one thing needed at 8pm when you have been drinking since 2... JALAPENO POPPERS!! I have written about Hallertau's poppers before - just eat them already. They are super super good. Period.

In between the eating and cheering the chilli loving freaks we checked out the always fantastic Fire Dragon Chillies stall, said hi to Clint and the great peeps there, visited the HoTtt ASs Chillies stall run by Chilli Eating Round 1 Champion Paul Smith who has made some crazy good Banana and Bhut Jolokia sauce that had to be bought. What really was great about the day was getting to meet and chat to some other fantastic chilli heads - you don't seem to run into them often in everyday life.

Additions to the hot sauce collection

So the time had come. People were making their way home, the contestants were round the back having a chuck and a taxi was ordered. While we waited??? fries of course. And the daunting realisation you know what is to come tomorrow.

Worth it? Hell yeah. We will be back next year without a doubt.

Cheers!

Elliot's been a'tinkerin

Rockwool, aeration cloner and Kratky hydroponics have become part of my everyday vocabulary.

I also no longer have much of a dining table, a spare room and even less of a deck.

I also have to hear Elliot declare that he is "a scientist" every other day. He has cloning, germinating and hydroponics on the go. I do however get amazing lettuces and basil that grow insanely quickly and to epic proportions.

Have actually just cut a whole lot of it to give away

Elliot wanted to try his hand at cloning (this equals becoming a scientist apparently) so that in future we can clone the best chilli plants and we won't have to worry about cross contamination which you get with growing from seeds you save. With cloning you can pick the best plants to grow again and you don't have to keep buying seedlings or seeds and wait to see if they will germinate.

It also means you can over-winter the chilli plants you want to keep growing and you just have to worry about tending to these mini versions rather than a huge plant outside in the cold and frost.

So Elliot is trying two cloning methods with some chillies and basil to see how they go. Firstly, he cut a nice strong bit of basil and put it in a jiffy pellet with some cloning solution. You then wait for it to start to grow roots which you can see on the sides of the pellet. You can then plant it out normally. This has worked really well and the clones have been transferred to the hydroponic system.

Elliot used the gel (there are powder ones too)

The clones

Planted out into the hydroponic system once roots had formed
The lettuces at the front have been frown from seed

This cloning method was clearly too easy and boring for Elliot who decided to make an aeration cloner. In this contraption holes are cut in the lid of a container and the plant cuttings are placed in a rubber circle to hold it in place and are suspended in the lid. Cloning solution is dabbed on the cut end of the plant and the container is filled half way with water. A sprinkler-type system is fashioned so that the end of the plants gets sprayed with water. This ensures the cutting gets water and air. It has worked extremely well and they have put out some big roots start. Again, you can then plant the clones out normally once the roots are big enough.

 Decent roots so ready to plant out

The hydroponics set up we have going on is super easy. Unlike the last system which had tubing and the water pumping through the bottom of the tubes (circulating system), in this set up holes are cut into the lid of a big container, the seedlings are washed of any soil and then placed in net pots and filled with perlite. The container is filled with water and nutrients are added and the water just stays stagnant (non-circulating system). The roots grow out of the pots and as soon as they hit the water, they take off and you can barely believe how fast this stuff grows.

And then you understand why the leaves are so ginormous 

The plants and leaves are huge and we are working hard to keep the demand up with the supply. To understand how fast these grow, below are photos taken every day for seven days.

To improve the hydroponic process slightly and the annoyance of having to wash the soil of the delicate roots of the seedlings, the germination Elliot is now doing is into rockwool cubes which are great for hydroponics as once the seed has germinated you can put the cube straight into a net pot to go into hydroponics. The cubes are soaked in water for about half an hour then the seeds are placed in the cube and then put in the seed propagator. Once they have germinated they go into the light box.

We have also always tended to buy seedlings so it is nice to give the whole process a go. As well as germinating lettuce and basil, we have decided to give coriander a go.

Tray of rockwool cubes

Jiffy pellet and rockwool cube germination

Another trip to Switched on Gardener (by myself I might add) was necessary to buy the rockwool cubes. This proved an entertaining ordeal as always as I had to take a photo to send to Elliot to determine what size cubes to get and had to deal with the shop worker's extreme paranoia that I did not accidentally get him in the picture. Three assurances later, I was allowed to send it.

Elliot has done most of the above by extensive researching on the internet. Apparently people really only use cloning methods to grow things far more exciting than basil and chillies. We are such geeks. Geeks with huge basil though.

Bear in mind I have child's hands

We've made batches and batches of pesto to use it up. Luckily pesto mayo potato salad makes an amazing BBQ accompaniment. And pesto, bacon and cheese scrolls are surprisingly easy; not so surprisingly tasty.

And of course you can not beat it with homegrown tomatoes or on a pizza.

We seriously do have an abundance of the stuff, so any pesto lovers, hit me up.

Update: I now have no dining table left at all as Elliot, in true tinkerer style, has decided to use the rest of the table to build a computer. As you do.

Jalapeno poppers

The day had come. The day we had dreamed of. We had jalapenos big enough. We had cheese in the fridge. We had tummies to fill and we had a grotty Waitangi Day indoors.

The day saw a flurry of activity in the Dally/Brooks household with me whipping up a number of things in the kitchen and Elliot tinkering away with plant cloning, seed propagating and hydroponic system tendering.

Our new hydroponic system.
Blog on this coming soon...

The popper process started last weekend when Elliot and I had jalapeno poppers at Hallertau (the only place in Auckland I have found them) and the next day decided it was finally time to make our own so that we didn't have to make the half hour trip and spend $14 just to a get a taste of these again.

The Hallertau poppers were still slightly crunchy but definitely not as much as a raw jalapeno so we thought we should pickle the jalapenos slightly before using them for poppers. Raw jalapenos are also fairly bitter so really think they need pickling or maybe blanching first before being able to eat them.

We already had a jar of jalapenos pickling so decided we could just hollow some freshly picked ones out and chuck them in the jar for a couple of days ready to fill n fry.

So we cut the tops off six medium sized jalapenos and hollowed out the placenta and seeds and plopped them into the pickling jar.

Four days later they were the perfect firmness and didn't have the bitter taste of raw ones so we were good to go. They were drained on paper towels to remove the excess pickling liquid while the rest of the ingredients were prepped.

2 Tb cream cheese
2 Tb grated cheddar cheese
1 egg
2 Tb milk
A bit of flour
Some panko breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper

Mix the cream cheese and cheddar cheese together. Add the salt and pepper to taste. Put the egg and milk whisked together in one shallow bowl, the flour in another and the breadcrumbs in another - forming a production line.

Fill the jalapenos the best way you know how - there was no way we were getting this in with a spoon so I put it in a small sandwich bag and cut a corner off to make a piping bag.

Dredge the filled jalapenos firstly in egg, then into the flour then into the egg again and lastly into the breadcrumbs.

While doing that heat about 1cm of vegetable oil in a saucepan (or use a deep fryer or frying pan) until very hot. I'm not one for all those fancy thermometers and what not, so when the oil looks nice and shiny chuck a few breadcrumbs in and if they fry quickly and turn brown the oil is ready.

Very carefully place the jalapenos in the oil (we did three at a time so not to overcrowd the pan) and flip over after they turn golden brown on the bottom. Make sure all sides are nice and brown (including the top) and remove and drain on paper towels. Note the whole frying process took about two minutes - they do not need long at all.

Eat immediately with chipotle mayo (chipotle sauce and mayo mixed together - if you have read this blog before you will we always have some on hand).

Words cannot express how amazing these are. They were hot and crunchy and spicy and salty and just incredible. The coating was a lot better and crispier than the Hallertau ones and the mixture was awesome and creamy and cheesy and they are incredibly moreish.

Thank goodness we have more jalapenos on the way. I'm in love.