The Fragrant Chilli is a book for the beginner chillihead, an introduction to a fascinating plant which has been likened to the sun with planets of cooking and gardening techniques, botany, medicine, language, chemistry and folklore revolving around it. Michael Bailes, the author, chillihead extraordinaire and proprietor of The Fragrant Garden Nursery on the New South Wales Central Coast, presents an eclectic and fascinating look at the plant 'discovered' in the West Indies by Christopher Columbus and taken back home to Spain as a spice that would rival black pepper and perhaps break the Dutch stranglehold on the spice trade.
Contact with other chilliheads opens doors to a cornucopia of Information about its world. Did you know that the Cuna Indians of Panama trail strings of chillies behind their canoes to discourage shark attack? That coating ships' hulls with paint or petroleum jelly laced with capsaicin, the active ingredient in the chilli, deters barnacles? That the smoke from burning chillies can be used to fumigate a house against all sorts of bugs?
Along with facts humorous, bizarre and fascinating, Michael Bailes includes serious discussion of the botany of chilli, its chemistry, its medical uses, how to grow his favourite varieties out of the hundreds available, and how to cook with it (including how to make Chilli Sherry, a sovereign remedy for sore throats) -- but concludes that the one thing that chilliheads have taught him is that life should be fun, that one should take risks and carpe capsicum, or 'seize the chilli'!
