Even though Chilli pepper is one of the hottest types of pepper in the world, it’s a vegetable I would put in any meal I cook if I could. This pepper which is indispensable in Indian, Mexican and Thai cuisine, is also one of my indispensable vegetables at Sanayi313.

If you put too much of it in your dish, it may be too hot to eat. You hear millions of different legendary stories about how not to pass the limit in using chilli peppers in a culinary school, ranging from ending up in hospital because of touching the eyes right after cutting peppers with bare hands to ending up getting all swollen up because of allergies.

It was not easy to find chilli peppers in Turkey, until seven or eight years ago. Now it even shows up in small markets or district bazaars. It is evident that it has more demand compared to before.

Chilli pepper is almost a blessing for spicy food-lovers. I like cooking far eastern recipes and I usually prepare the soups, which I make with coconut milk, a night in advance. For the chilli sauce I scratch the chilli peppers on multiple sides, place them in the sauce and let it sit all night. It gives a sharp spicy taste which leaves a hot feel in the mouth gradually.

We prepared special eats for the Valentine’s Day. And we have a shrimp dish with chilli peppers and tarragon for a starter.

Here is the recipe:

For 4 people

*Ingredients*

1 bundle of stinging neddle
50 gr butter
12 cleaned shrimps
1 finely sliced chilli pepper
Salt, black pepper
Tarragon
10 ml white wine vinegar
2 cloves of garlic

Once we wash and clean the stinging needle, we sauté it with black pepper, salt and garlic in a large pot. Then we melt the butter in a pan and add the shrimps. We cook the shrimps with butter over a high heat. We continue sautéing by adding the finely grated garlic, salt, black pepper and chilli pepper. They should be undercooked. The shrimps tend to be tasteless and
hard when overcooked. We then add the white wine vinegar, just to give an acidic flavor to the shrimps. Finally, we put the tarragon in the pan and slightly shake it.

You may serve your starter as sautéed stinging nettle topped with shrimps.