Indian Military to Weaponize the Ghost Chili

The Indian military has a new weapon against terrorism: the world's hottest chili.

After conducting tests, the military has decided to use the thumb-sized "bhut jolokia," or "ghost chili," to make tear gas-like hand grenades to immobilize suspects, defense officials said Tuesday.

The bhut jolokia was accepted by Guinness World Records in 2007 as the world's spiciest chili. It is grown and eaten in India's northeast for its taste, as a cure for stomach troubles and a way to fight the crippling summer heat.

It has more than 1,000,000 Scoville units, the scientific measurement of a chili's spiciness. Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units, while jalapeno peppers measure anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000.

"The chili grenade has been found fit for use after trials in Indian defense laboratories, a fact confirmed by scientists at the Defense Research and Development Organization," Col. R. Kalia, a defense spokesman in the northeastern state of Assam, told The Associated Press.

"This is definitely going to be an effective nontoxic weapon because its pungent smell can choke terrorists and force them out of their hide-outs," R. B. Srivastava, the director of the Life Sciences Department at the New Delhi headquarters of the DRDO said.

Srivastava, who led a defense research laboratory in Assam, said trials are also on to produce bhut jolokia-based aerosol sprays to be used by women against attackers and for the police to control and disperse mobs.

Read the full story from APNews here.

Top Chef Trends for 2010: Desserts

The National Restaurant Association asked more than 1800 Chefs what they felt were going to be the most trendy items going into 2010. Here is a snapshot of their results.

1 Bite-size/mini desserts
2 Artisan/house-made ice cream
3 Dessert flights/combos
4 Savory desserts
5 Gelato/sorbet

For a complete list of the survey go to the National Restaurant Association Website at www.restaurant.org

Pepsico Develops Designer Salt

Later this month, at a pilot manufacturing plant here, PepsiCo Inc. plans to start churning out batches of a secret new ingredient to make its Lay's potato chips healthier.

The ingredient is a new "designer salt" whose crystals are shaped and sized in a way that reduces the amount of sodium consumers ingest when they munch. PepsiCo hopes the powdery salt, which it is still studying and testing with consumers, will cut sodium levels 25% in its Lay's Classic potato chips. The new salt could help reduce sodium levels even further in seasoned Lay's chips like Sour Cream & Onion, PepsiCo said, and it could be used in other products like Cheetos and Quaker bars.

At an investor conference Monday in New York, the company said it is committed to cutting its products' average sodium per serving by 25% by 2015 and saturated fat and added sugar by 15% and 25%, respectively, this decade.

The designer salt is one of the latest and most intricate efforts yet by a food company to vault ahead of concerns among government officials about the possible health effects of the widespread use of sodium in processed foods.

Eating too much salt can contribute to high blood pressure, increasing the risk of heart disease. Most Americans consume about twice their recommended limit daily, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pressure is growing on U.S. food companies to act, because most of the salt Americans consume is in processed foods. In January, New York City, as well as other cities and health organizations, called for restaurants and makers of packaged foods to cut salt 25% within the next five years.

Sodium intake recommendations may also be lowered substantially in new U.S. dietary guidelines this year. And First Lady Michelle Obama is pressing food companies to cut fat, salt and sugar in their products.

The new salt represents PepsiCo's latest step to cut back on unhealthy ingredients in big sellers like soda and potato chips. The company has also switched from frying its potato chips in transfats to using sunflower oil, and it has boosted spending to $414 million in 2009 from $282 million in 2006 for product development. To lead the research effort, it has hired health experts and scientists, including Mehmood Khan, a former Mayo Clinic endocrinologist, and Derek Yach, a former World Health Organization chronic diseases chief.

By 2015, PepsiCo aims to cut sodium in its salty snacks 25%. "What we want to do with our "fun for you" products is to make them the healthiest "fun for you" products," Chairman Indra Nooyi said. "We want our potato chips to be fried in the healthiest oils with the lowest salt."

Cutting salt out of foods is difficult because it adds body to foods as well as enhancing flavor. In addition, little is understood about how salt is perceived on the tongue.

PepsiCo said it has had to dig deeper than other food makers that have reduced sodium by gradually removing salt, using salt substitutes or grinding salt into small particles that contact the tongue in more places.

That's because salt is one of only three ingredients in Lay's Classic potato chips (the others: potatoes and oil). Reducing the amount or using substitutes would alter the chips' flavor, said Greg Yep, a global research and development vice president.

So PepsiCo had to come up with a way to deliver the same saltiness while reducing sodium. Prodded by a U.K. government salt-reduction campaign, it first slashed sodium 25% in its seasoned Walkers crisps in 2006, replacing some of the salt with other seasonings and using smaller salt particles.

But those methods couldn't be used on plain Lay's chips, which couldn't mask the changes with seasonings. The smaller particles gave a hit of saltiness that was intense but too fleeting.

Instead, working with scientists at about a dozen academic institutions and companies in Europe and the U.S., PepsiCo studied different shapes of salt crystals to try to find one that would dissolve more efficiently on the tongue. Normally, only about 20% of the salt on a chip actually dissolves on the tongue before the chip is chewed and swallowed, and the remaining 80% is swallowed without contributing to the taste, said Dr. Khan, who oversees PepsiCo's long-term research.

PepsiCo wanted a salt that would replicate the traditional "salt curve," delivering an initial spike of saltiness, then a body of flavor and lingering sensation, said Dr. Yep, who joined the company in June 2009 from Swiss flavor company Givaudan SA.

"We have to think of the whole eating experience—not just the physical product, but what's actually happening when the consumer eats the product," Dr. Yep explained.

The result was a slightly powdery ingredient that tastes like regular salt. Small groups of U.S. and U.K. consumers couldn't tell the difference when comparing the two salts on chips last summer, PepsiCo said. PepsiCo declined to give details while the new salt is in development.

PepsiCo is gearing up pilot manufacturing at its Frito-Lay headquarters so that it can conduct wider consumer testing and fine tune the technology.

It could take two more years before the new salt is introduced, Dr. Yep said. In the meantime, PepsiCo is reducing the salt in new versions of seasoned Lay's such as Sour Cream & Onion this year by an average of 25% by switching to natural ingredients and rebalancing other flavors so that less sodium is needed.

Read the whole story from the Wall Street Journal here.

Buffalo Chicken Cornbread with Blue Cheese Salad

Back by popular demand "Cornbread". Yesterday I did a brief overview of types of cornbread just to get around to the bacon and cheddar corn muffin recipes. But I mentioned the National Cornbread Festival and that got everyone excited and anxious for more cornbread ideas. Well here is the 2009 Festival's 1st place winning recipe from Sonya Goergen of Moorhead, MN.

Ingredients
Crisco® No-Stick Cooking Spray
Cornbread
1 large egg
3/4 cup milk
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1(6.5 oz.) pkg. Martha White® Yellow Cornbread Mix
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
2 cups fully cooked frozen boneless buffalo-style hot wings, thawed and diced
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
Salad
1/2 small head of lettuce, chopped
1 cup sliced celery
1/2 red onion, sliced
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
2/3 cup blue cheese salad dressing
1/2 cup tomatoes, diced
Chopped cilantro

Directions
Heat oven to 400°F. Spray 10 1/2-inch Lodge® cast iron skillet with no-stick cooking spray. Stir egg, milk and oil together. Add cornbread mix, Cheddar cheese, 1/2 cup blue cheese, diced hot wings, red pepper flakes and 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro. Stir until well blended. Pour mixture into prepared skillet, spreading evenly. Bake 20 to 30 minutes until golden brown. Remove from oven. Cool.
Combine lettuce, celery, red onion and 1/2 cup cheese crumbles. Toss with blue cheese dressing. Cut cornbread into 8 wedges. Top each wedge with an even amount of salad. Garnish with diced tomatoes and cilantro.
8 servings

Corn Muffins with Bacon and Cheddar Cheese

Cornbread is a generic name for any number of quick breads (a bread leavened by an acid-base reaction, rather than by yeast) containing cornmeal. It is baked, fried or, rarely, steamed. Steamed cornbreads are mushy, chewier and more akin to cornmeal pudding than what most consider to be traditional cornbread.

In the United States, Northern and Southern corn bread are different because they generally use different types of corn meal and baking techniques. A preference for sweetness and adding sugar or molasses can be found in both regions, but saltier tastes are sometimes more common in the South, and thus favor the addition of frying the bread with such additions as cracklins. Sometimes, cornbread is crumbled and served with cold milk similar to cold cereal. In Texas, the Mexican influence has spawned a hearty cornbread made with fresh or creamed corn kernels, jalapeño peppers and topped with shredded cheese.

Skillet-baked cornbread (often simply called skillet bread or hoecake depending on the container it's cooked in) is a traditional staple of rural cuisine in the United States, especially in the Southern United States which involves heating bacon drippings, lard or other oil in a heavy, well-seasoned cast iron skillet in an oven, and then pouring a batter made from cornmeal, egg and buttermilk directly into the hot grease. The mixture is returned to the oven to bake into a large, crumbly and sometimes very moist cake with a crunchy crust. This bread will tend to be dense, meant more as an accompaniment than as a bread meant to stand on its own. In addition to the skillet method, such cornbread can also be made in sticks, muffins or loaves.

A slightly different variety, cooked in a simple baking dish, is associated with northern US cuisine; it tends to be sweeter and lighter than southern-style cornbread; the batter for northern-style cornbread is very similar to and sometimes interchangeable with that of a corn muffin. A typical contemporary northern U.S. cornbread (referred to in the South as "Yankee Cornbread") recipe contains half wheat flour, half cornmeal, milk or buttermilk, eggs, leavening agent, salt, and usually sugar, resulting in a bread that is somewhat lighter and sweeter than its more traditional southern counterpart. In the border states and parts of the Upper South, a cross between the two traditions is known as "light cornbread."

Unlike fried variants of cornbread, baked cornbread is a quick bread that is dependent on an egg-based protein matrix for its structure (though the addition of wheat flour adds gluten to increase its cohesiveness). The baking process gelatinizes the starch in the cornmeal, but still often leaves some hard starch to give the finished product a distinctive sandiness not typical of breads made from other grains.

Corn pone (sometimes referred to as "Indian pone") is a type of cornbread made from a thick, malleable cornmeal dough and baked in a specific type of iron pan over an open fire (such as a frontiersman would use), using butter, margarine, or cooking oil.

One frying method involves pouring a small amount of liquid batter made with boiling water and self-rising cornmeal (cornmeal with soda or some other chemical leavener added) into a skillet of hot oil, and allowing the crust to turn golden and crunchy while the center of the batter cooks into a crumbly, mushy bread. These small (3-4" diameter) fried breads are soft and very rich. Sometimes, to ensure the consistency of the bread, a small amount of wheat flour is added to the batter. This type of cornbread is often known as "hot water" or "scald meal" cornbread and is unique to the American South.

Pouring a batter similar to that of skillet-fried cornbread, but slightly thinner, into hot grease atop a griddle or a skillet produces a pancake-like bread called a jonnycake. This type of cornbread is prevalent in New England, particularly in Rhode Island, and also in the American Midwest and the American South.

A thicker buttermilk-based batter which is deep-fried rather than pan-fried, forms the hushpuppy, a common accompaniment to fried fish and other seafood in the South. Hushpuppy recipes vary from state to state, some including onion seasoning, chopped onions, beer, or jalapeños are used. Fried properly, the hushpuppy will be moist and yellow or white on the inside, while crunchy and medium to dark brown on the outside.

Don't forget to mark your calendars for the National Cornbread Festival in South Pittsburg Tennessee. This annual event is the last week of April every year. And what a catchy tune they had written for themselves.

Bacon and Cheddar Cheese Corn Muffins

Flour 1 1/2 Cups
Yellow cornmeal 1/2 Cusps
Sugar (optional) 2TBS
Baking powder 3 tsp
Salt 1/4 tsp
Corn kernels, fresh 3/4 Cups
Bacon slices, cooked crisp, chopped 4 each
Cheddar cheese, diced 3/4 Cups
Milk 1 Cups
Vegetable oil 1/4 Cups
Egg, beaten 1 each

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F

2. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cornmeal, sugar (if using), baking powder and salt. Mix well. Stir in the corn, bacon and cheese.

3. In another bowl, combine the milk, oil and egg. Mix well. Combine the liquid and dry mixes, mixing thoroughly. Do not overbeat.

4. Spray a 12-cup muffin pan with vegetable oil spray and pour in the batter. Bake until a wooden pick comes out clean when inserted, about 20 to 25 minutes. Serve hot.