A Spicy Quest also aims to look at the modern spread of the chili, and what better candidate than the mighty ghost pepper, unknown just two decades ago, today a global celebrity. In fact, the pepper has a cult following, with numerous Twitter accounts, websites, and more dedicated to all things Jolokia. In just over a decade, it has become an international commercial success, made into hot sauces so spicy, a single drop can create fiery pasta sauces or burning tex-mex chile.

Chances are youвЂ™ll find Ghost Pepper product. Just take a walk into your local grocery store or farmers market. The Ghost PepperвЂ™s story is not finished, as it is breaking barriers today. Is it this power, to transform culture, that A Spicy Quest aims to discover. It is, in essence, an ideal migrant, assimilating, adapting seamlessly into the culture until it is mistaken as being purely native. It is an example of how the chili pepper can be uniquely shaped and adapted by each culture that accepts it, partly by the soil, but, more importantly, by the hands of those planting its seeds and harvesting its fruit. It is a unique pepper, specific to the culture and soil of where it grows. 800,000 really doesnвЂ™t make a difference to our tongues). In fact, the Ghost Pepper loses its pungency when it is grown outside of the particular climate of Nagaland and Assam (though 300,000 scovilles vs. Where did the Ghost Pepper come from? What probably happened was that the chili pepper, during its 16 century global trek, arrived through unknown means to northeast India, where it was planted in a unique climate, bred by local hands, and, voila (italic), the spiciest chili pepper in the world. The Bhut Jolokia? The record holder hit a previously unthinkable 1 million scovilles. The common jalapeno scores a meager 8,000. The most well known is the habanero (pictured above), today most commonly grown in the Yucatan region of Mexico, with a scoville score (the most commonly accepted spice-scale) of 200,000. Latin American chilies can pack their own punch. Birds cannot taste capaicin вЂ“ they canвЂ™t feel spice. It was created by chilies to warn off mammals, as their target wasnвЂ™t us, but birds who would spread chili seeds far and wide. The pungency our tonguesВ interpretВ as spiciness comes from a chemical compound known as capaicin. That all changed when the Indian Defence Test Laboratory found that the pepper has a scoville rating that was off the chart.ДЇirst, a little background. It only grows in the northeastern Indian states of Nagaland and Assam, where they have been commonly used in local cooking, but were, until 2000, nearly unknown elsewhere, even in the rest of India. The ghost pepper is from India, not South America. That would be the Naga Bhut Jolokia, the Ghost Pepper, which is considered the spiciest chili pepper in the world according to theВ GuinnessВ Book of World Records. If chili peppers are from South America, then why is the spiciest chili in the world found in India? A seemingly obvious question came into my mind when I first discovered that chili peppers were from South America and not, as I always thought, native to India.

Ghost pepper