I must give Nigella Lawson credit for this recipe. I read about this a few years back in one of her cookbooks and have wanted to try it for a few years now. Of course, when the time came for me to make it -- namely a friend coming for dinner and no dessert planned but ice cream and a punnet of peppers in the fridge -- I couldn't find the recipe online (including on her website) so I improvised.
Nigella's premise was that this fiery, spicy syrup would turn floral and mellow in contact with the ice cream. I was skeptical but this actually worked. L. equated this dessert to eating melted Red Hots over ice cream.
1 cup water
1½ cups sugar
6 or 7 fresh red cayenne peppers
Wash the chilies and chop them finely. Do not touch your face while you are doing so and either wear disposable gloves or wash your hands very well afterwards. If you seed the chilies, you can eat them with the ice cream. If you don't strain them out of the syrup before serving as they will be too spicy to consume, but keep them to use as described below.
Measure the water into a small saucepan. Add the sugar and stir to combine. Bring to a boil, stirring from time to time to make sure that the sugar has dissolved.
Once the sugar water has come to a boil, add the chilies and simmer for 10 minutes.
Pour the syrup into a clean container. Let cool, cover and refrigerate until needed.
Drizzle over either vanilla or chocolate ice cream.
Use the leftover cayenne pepper slices to make candied cayenne pepper. This is as simple as mixing the slices of cayenne pepper that cooked in the syrup with a couple of tablespoons of the leftover syrup, covering them, placing them in the fridge, and checking on them every few days as they crystallize. Once the cayenne pepper slices have a shiny, crunchy sugar shell it is time to use them. I used mine in a fantastic Pumpkin Dip and they added pops of spice and sugar to the mix when they were stirred in, and were certainly pretty as part of the garnish before I did so.
Comments