A question of taste

Dear collectors of taste, and fellow explorers

I have been roaming the world a bit during my life, and had lovely small and big adventures. Mostly on vacations and some work related trips, I like to absorb culture and nature. In some odd way, my memories hold pictures, feelings, smell and taste, as vivid as I am still there if I go to explore my memory.

On my vacations I want to do something, I hate beaches personally, for they seem to be there only for lying down and waiting for time to pass. I just as much could be waiting for the bus to arrive, where there is no bus stop, not exciting at all.

I worked in Switzerland in the woods for some time, and my colleagues were always laughing when I tasted wild plants and berries. I always made my own hot food in the forests on a wood fire, and those guys were always asking. . . . The smell, and the taste, I do really taste and smell it again.Those places were great, as was the wild food.
After some weeks I still wasn’t dead, and my colleagues asked me if they could have a taste, and they did. Not taste, but they dug in.

We also have roamed the northern part of Europe a bit. One of the times, when we ( my wife and me ) were far up north in Norway I got a text from my mom. She kind of protested the way I treated my wife, taking her up and dragging her through the forests. Sure I dragged her through the forests, and she loved every bit of it.
It was her fist time eating wild raspberries, a comment was: “It tastes just like raspberry ice cream, but then way better!! ” So when I got the text, I was waiting for the chance to send her an email or text, with a good remark or way to tell my mom off.

During that trip, a day before the text I picked chanterelles, a wild mushroom my mom is fond of, about 1Kg. When I got the text, I was fishing for wild trout about 300 Km over the Arctic Circle. These trout here are way smaller then the normal ones, and taste a load better.
I caught about 8 of them, and I had a plan. I made dinner with chanterelles soup, fried potatoes, trout with tree onion, fried chanterelles with cream. All was made on 4 Shmelb Russian petrol stoves, which sure make some good fire.
As soon as dinner was served, I made a great photograph of the dinner served, and send it to my mom. My wife ate like there was no tomorrow, and then we enjoyed the real wildlife. . . .

And my mom, she never had the audacity to complain about my trips again, and where I take wife. I also grow my own food, first year the normal regular stuff. Then I heard from forgotten vegetables, and heirloom sorts, on yet an other trip. I got the chance to taste and try blue potatoes, and black carrots, in the garden of forgotten fruits.
Potatoes with taste, my goodness me, what a taste! So guess what, next year I had 12 sorts of potatoes, 5 strange tomato sorts, beetroot that was not red but yellow. Me, the wife and kids loved them.
Ever tried purple and yellow striped beans? You should. Now chilies I like, but they just seem to have no taste, other then they have some or a lot of heat. In the Netherlands, at the shops and supermarkets, the have red chillies.
They call them: Red Chilies or Spaanse peper.

Doesn't mind what sort it is, or name... If it is red, and it is a chili? Label it: red chili So, once I tasted a superb fruity nice chili with fabulous herb and nicely balanced sweets. It took me over 6 months to find its name: Medina F1. Now I have to tell you, that is one amazing chili !

So I had to search for real taste in chilies, and had to try, I just could not help myself. So, after getting about some 15 odd sorts, and tasting those I seem to be sold to idea to grow real chilies. A year later, after comparing loads of heirloom and modern chili’s, I started wondering where the taste comes from.

Looking at all those sorts, and families, I wanted to go back to the roots. Where do all those tastes come from? Natural selection I would presume, if one tasted better it would be worth to keep and cultivate. So somewhere in the jungle out there, the answers will be, as to where the mothers of all taste in chilies come from. And I found WildChilli.EU, and started to ask how they taste, no answer really. One of the chaps told me he tasted a few, and the site owner couldn’t even tell me more.
So I asked if anybody has put the tastes in chart so to say, and nobody did. As they were real wild chillies. . . . . .  

After all these questions, I guess they got fed up with me, and send me 2 sorts dried wild chillies to taste. So that is where my real adventure in Wild Chili land started.

When I got them I first tasted Capsicum Cardenasii 904750136, all I can say is WOW, not hot but what a taste !!!!!

Only good I first tasted the cardenasii first. I tasted a second, and gave both kids one too. Fruit tones, sweet and a distinct liquorice taste.  That was one superb and stunning little berry with a taste like modern commercial chillies are totally lacking off. Both kids tasted the sweetness and the liquorice as well, and wanted more !
This tiny 5 mm berry has more taste then a “water grown” cayenne !!!

After that, I tasted a Capsicum praetermissum CAP 1144 chili. Slight taste like natural ripened cheese or ham, you know the taste that makes real cheese and real ham.
And after tasting these tones, WHAMMAAAAA a load of heat from a minute berry. I needed coffee with loads of suger to get rid of the sting and. . . . That sting stayd for  about 15 minutes.

I had an other capsicum praetermissum soaking in water, to see if it would develop more taste and smell. Not, but even just a small sip of the water I felt the burn again

So, after calming the pellets, the misses came home, and we both tasted an other cardenasii. She detected a bit of heat, and tartness and a bittery taste, even with the second she tried. From the second I took half, and tasted the liquorice and sweetness again. The taste stays for long, lovely. Even after about 15 minutes I still taste the cardenasii. I would call this a berry for grown persons, but would not eat a hand full.
I would be too afraid the taste would last a week or more. Now that makes me think and dream of roaming South America, being in the jungle, see. smell and taste the wild !

Yours in exploring the world, and its taste.

If you would like to wander with me through the tastes of wild chillies, keep reading my taste log at WildChilli.EU Forum

Yours truly,