Food: The red hot chilli peppers

Mark Hix

SCOTCH BONNET, jalapeno, and snub nose sound innocent enough. In fact, they're all members of the chilli family, and the pretty scotch bonnet is one of the fiercest and fieriest of the red hot peppers.

One or other of these chillis plays an important part in many a national dish, from Thailand to India and in the USA's deep South. I must admit that, though I like the spiciness of chilli, I've always found the heat a bit of a worry. Some mad chilli freaks get off on it, but you'd never find me ordering a vindaloo or eating chillies for a bet.

One way of getting that chilli hit - and allowing people to choose how much heat to add to what they're eating - is from a bottle, and in the UK the best known bottled chilli sauce is probably Tabasco. This comes in many different guises, from the original hot red pepper sauce to the green pepper sauce, habanero and garlic. Smokey chipotle pepper sauce is the latest addition.

I discovered a whole lot more about Tabasco and the local cuisine on a recent trip to Avery Island off Louisiana. The island has been in the Avery/McIlhenny family for the past 175 years and it's where Tabasco originated. Edmund McIlhenny, a fifth generation American of Scottish Irish descent, married Mary Eliza Avery, whose family owned a sugar plantation on the island. Edmund, a keen gardener, tended the plantation's vegetable garden. Of several varieties of peppers planted there, his favourite was one given to him a few years ago by a friend returning from Mexico.

The civil war forced the couple off the island, but when they returned in 1865 they found the pepper plants had flourished and developed an extra piquancy. Edmund's experiments with these fiery peppers led to the development of a recipe for a pepper sauce. Since the first 350 bottles were released in 1869, Tabasco - a Central American Indian word meaning "land where the soil is humid" - has become world-famous and is the trademark of the McIlhenny Company.

The sauce consists of crushed ripe peppers mixed with local salt. This mixture is aged in crockery jars for 30 days. French wine vinegar is added, and it's aged for a further 30 days. The narrow- necked bottles, corked and dipped in green sealing wax, haven't changed since Edmund invented them.

Tabasco inevitably plays its part in the local cuisine, which consists of Cajun and Creole styles. Cajun is the local, robust country cooking with generally hot, peppery flavours. Local dishes like gumbo, jambalayas and etouffees can contain a variety of ingredients - duck, chicken, pork, crawfish (locals call them mud bugs) or crayfish as we know them, and various sausages. Creole cooking was developed and influenced by the French and Spanish settlers who introduced refinements to the existing cooking. Sauces became more fragrant with the use of herbs and spices which were hard to come by in the countryside.

Creole also divides into haute Creole, with luxury dishes such as the famous Oysters Rockefeller, and lower Creole with dishes like red beans and rice. As in most countries the cuisine has evolved, and over the past 12 years Cajun and Creole have merged into Louisiana Food. Whatever you call it, it wouldn't be the same without a splash of chilli sauce ...

Chicken and smoked sausage jambalaya

Serves 4-6

Louisiana's famous jambalayas can be made with almost anything from seafood to game and quite often a mixture from land and sea. As it's closely related to paella, it seems likely that jambalaya was introduced by Spanish settlers. The origin of the word itself shows the other influences at work, as it is thought to be made up of bits from France - jambon and la - mixed with the word ya which means rice in many West African dialects.

Jambalaya can be as luxurious or as humble as you wish but like risottos you must start with a good flavoured stock or broth as they call it. Adding smoked sausage (andouille in the local vernacular) gives a nice savoury touch. Look for smoked bratwurst or a Polish- type sausage in the supermarket. Tomatoes also feature in some recipes, so once you have made it a few times you can create your own jambalaya.

500g chicken thighs, boned and skinned and cut into 4

1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed

2 sticks of celery, peeled if necessary and cut into rough 1cm dice

1 green pepper, seeded and cut into rough 1cm dice

12tsp cayenne pepper

2tsp chopped thyme leaves

1 bay leaf

Vegetable oil for frying

200g smoked sausage, halved lengthways and cut into 1cm pieces

5 or 6 dashes of Tabasco sauce or more if you wish

1litre chicken stock and a little more if necessary

2tsp tomato puree f

200g long grain rice

4 spring onions, chopped

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Season the chicken thighs with salt and pepper and saute them in vegetable oil on a high heat. Give them about 4-5 minutes on each side until nicely coloured. Remove from the pan and put to one side. In a large, thick-bottomed, covered saucepan, with a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil, gently cook the onion, garlic, celery and green pepper with the cayenne pepper, thyme and bay leaf for 5-6 minutes without colouring. Add the chicken, sausage, Tabasco, chicken stock and tomato puree, season with salt and pepper and cook on a low heat with the lid on for 30 minutes.

Add the rice and spring onions, stir well and simmer on a low heat with a lid on for a further 30 minutes, stirring every so often until the stock has been almost absorbed and the rice is cooked. The consistency should be a little wet. Add more stock and even a knob of butter at the end for a silky finish. Re-season if necessary and serve immediately.

Oysters Rockefeller

Serves 4

Apparently this dish was invented or discovered, as the case may be, at Antoines restaurant in New Orleans. I've always been puzzled by the correct ingredients, as it seems to change from cookbook to cookbook. Oysters are a fixture, obviously, but bacon, cheese and aniseed or fennel-flavoured spirit seem to crop up in some versions, even absinthe. The spinach or greens are either pureed or remain in leaf form. One version we tried incorporated the blended spinach in the sauce which was then spooned over the oysters in the shell. Another had no shells, chopped spinach and a creamy sauce. I prefer the pureed version - much simpler and to the point.

12 large oysters, opened, juices and shells reserved

A good knob of butter

2 rashers of rindless, streaky bacon, finely chopped

2 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped

150g spinach, picked, washed and cooked in boiling salted water for 3 minutes

A few sprigs of chervil

A few sprigs of parsley

A few sprigs of dill or fennel

200ml double cream

1tbsp grated Parmesan

1tbsp Ricard, pastis or absinthe

A few drops of Tabasco

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, gently cook the bacon in the butter for 2-3 minutes without colouring. Remove with a slotted spoon and put to one side. In the same pan cook the shallots for a couple minutes without colouring then add the well-drained spinach, chervil, parsley, oyster juices and cream. Season with salt and pepper and simmer for 2 minutes with a lid on, giving the occasional stir. Blend in a liquidiser until smooth then transfer to a clean pan. Bring back to the boil and drop the oysters into the sauce for 1 minute. Remove them with a slotted spoon draining any sauce back into the pan and put the oysters back into the shell and keep them warm in a low oven. Add the Parmesan, bacon, Ricard and Tabasco to the sauce and bring back to the boil. The sauce should be coating consistency, if not simmer it until it has thickened.

To serve spoon the sauce over the oysters in their shells. As you've already opened a bottle for the sauce, serve with pastis or absinthe.

Shrimp and okra gumbo

Serves 4-6

Probably the best known dish to come out of Louisiana. Gumbo is the name for okra in what's now the Congo. Okra is an essential ingredient for thickening. For a file gumbo, dried and powdered sassafras leaves - from trees native to the United States - are used as a thickening agent. For you okra haters, put off by the slimy canned variety in the local tandoori, don't worry. It's cooked for so long that you hardly notice it's there. Like jambalaya you can make this hearty gumbo soup or stew out of almost anything, as a main course or as a starter. It's traditionally served with cooked rice in it but as a soup I prefer it without.

A gumbo is always thickened with a roux made with oil and flour unlike our butter and flour method which seems odd to most classically trained cooks, but it works and in fact you wouldn't know the difference. Note that what we call prawns are what Americans know as shrimp.

for the stock

500g raw prawns preferably with their heads on

1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped

3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed

1tbsp vegetable oil

1tbsp tomato paste

A few sprigs of thyme

1 glass of white wine

10 black peppercorns

12tsp fennel seeds

2 litres fish stock (a good cube will do)

for the gumbo

3tbsp vegetable oil plus an extra one

4tbsp plain flour

1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 stick of celery, peeled if stringy and chopped into 12cm dice

1 green pepper, seeded and chopped into 12cm dice

200g okra, trimmed and thinly sliced

1 220g can chopped tomatoes, drained and the flesh chopped over a little

A few splashes of Tabasco

First make the stock. Remove the heads and shells from the prawns, de-vein them by running a knife down the back of the prawn and remove the black vein, then give them a wash. Put the meat in the fridge.

Chop the heads and shells up a bit and with the onion and garlic fry them in the vegetable oil on a high heat for a few minutes until they begin to colour. Add the tomato puree, white wine, peppercorns, fennel seeds and stock, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 1 hour. Remove from the heat and strain through a sieve, pushing as much through as possible with the back of a large spoon or ladle.

Meanwhile make the roux. In a heavy-bottomed pan, heat 3 tablespoons of the vegetable oil and stir in the flour. Cook on a low heat for 4-5 minutes, stirring every so often until the mixture turns a sandy colour. Remove from the heat and put to one side.

Heat the remaining tablespoon of vegetable oil in a heavy- bottomed saucepan and fry the onion, celery, green pepper and okra for 3-4 minutes until they soften. Add the roux, stir well and gradually add the shrimp (oops - I mean prawn) stock, canned tomatoes and juice. Season with a little salt and pepper, add a few drops of Tabasco and simmer for 1 hour. Add the prawns and cook for a further 5 minutes. Before serving, check the seasoning and add a little more Tabasco if you wish. E

Clockwise from top: Chicken and smoked sausage jambalaya; shrimp and okra gumbo; oysters Rockefeller

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