Once in a drunken state, I called them japalenos, so when I read “japs” it went right over my head, as once in a while I still transpose the word.
Anyway, jalapeno love is a great thing to discover. All my life, mom made salsa with pickled sliced ones from a jar. Only when I was out of the house, married and on my own did I discover that you could buy these things in the store, just like that.
I’ll dice a couple up, drop then in a pan with some olive oil, while I scramble some eggs with sharp cheddar. At the last minute drop some butter into the pan, then the eggs.
Take the scrambled result, put it on a corn tortilla, with a slice of avocado, and salsa verde.
First time in New Orleans my friends (who lived there) and a few of the crew and actors on the film and I went to have a Mexican dinner. We munched on tortilla chips while waiting for dinner. Man, the salsa was weak! I asked the waitress if she could bring something to spice it up and she brought sliced fresh jalapeños. I ended up bypassing the salsa and just putting the jalapeños on the chips. The waitress looked at me as if I were nuts. My friend said, ‘Oh, he’s from Southern California. They do that.’
I did this, chopping without gloves. Twice. You’d think I’d learned the first time, but no! It was so, so painful. I tried everything, including Vagisil :eek: and nothing helped, except cold water. I had to sit there all day with my hands submerged in a bucket of cold water, taking them out only for a moment to do whatever had to be done. Oddly, about 12 hours later - the pain just … stopped. The pain just went away. Very odd.
Using water to try and remove residual pepper oils is hard because the pepper oil is not very solvent in water. Many people recommend milk as the best readily available pepper oil solvent for internal use. I imagine a detergent like Dawn that is noted for being a powerful oil solvent might be useful for external areas.
