I make the crisp once a year, in August, because that is when the chillies in the polytunnel ripen all at once. There are about forty plants, mostly a medium red variety called Hungarian wax and a few hotter ones, and they hold nothing for three weeks and then give you eight kilos in a weekend. You can’t eat eight kilos of chillies. You have to do something with them that afternoon.
The base is everyday olive oil from the co-op mill, heated gently with sliced garlic from the lane until the garlic is pale gold and just beginning to crisp, and no further. Past that it turns bitter. Then the chopped chillies go in with a spoon of toasted sesame seeds and a few fennel seeds, and everything simmers slowly for forty minutes until the water has gone out of the chillies and the oil has taken their colour. At the end there is a little salt and a splash of vinegar, and it goes into jars while it is still hot.
It keeps for a year unopened. Once you open it, put it in the fridge and use it within two months, though it has never lasted that long in our house.
How to eat it
Spoon the crunchy part first. The solids at the bottom are the best bit, and the oil on top is for cooking: fry an egg in it, or stir a spoon into noodles, or put it on a pizza when it comes out of the oven. It is also very good on plain yoghurt, on rice with a fried egg, on a cheese sandwich, and on vanilla ice cream, which sounds wrong and isn’t.
Heat is a matter of taste, and the crisp is medium. If you find it too hot, put it next to something fatty or sweet. Honey works well, and so does avocado.
The eggs
This is the recipe I cook most often, mainly on a Sunday when there is no plan. It takes ten minutes and uses things you probably have already. The honey is not a joke. A small amount cuts the heat and makes the yolk taste richer, and with the salt on top you get all four tastes in one mouthful.
Use a pan that is a bit too small, so the eggs hold their shape and the white sets up round the yolk. And have the bread ready before you start. By the time the eggs are on the plate, you have about a minute.
The recipe
You need
- 4 eggs
- 2 tablespoons everyday olive oil
- 2 teaspoons chilli crisp
- 1 teaspoon wildflower honey
- A pinch of smoked salt
- Bread, to eat it with
Method
- Heat the oil in a pan over a medium-high heat until a drop of egg white sizzles.
- Crack in the eggs and fry until the edges are lacy and brown, about two minutes. Leave the yolks soft.
- Spoon the chilli crisp over the yolks, then trickle the honey on top.
- Finish with the salt and eat at once, with bread.
