Garden Goulash #vegan #oifree #GlutenFree #Kosher

Fall is officially here. That garden you've been tending all summer is ready for one final harvest. My friend Melanie gave me a bag of veggies from her garden and my wife's friend Cindy heard that I love hot peppers. She sent me a whole box of asorted insanely hot,  fresh and dried peppers from her own garden, bagged and neatly labeled. Thanks again to both of you!

Here's a picture of what I used:

Garden Veggies

Which magically turned into dinner:

Garden Goulash

That little red pepper of Cindy's was labeled simply "Butch".  That doesn't sound very threatening so I washed it and tasted a tiny bit...

Note to self:

Before tasting a strange little pepper, look it up! 

SURPRISE!!!

It turns out "Butch" is a BUTCH SCORPION PEPPER; the hottest hot pepper ever grown next to the Carolina Reaper. It's about 1,460,000 Scoville Units (SU). That's 200,000 SU hotter than the Ghost Chili .  For reference a Jalapeno pepper is about 5000 SU.  My lips swelled up, I started coughing and the roof of my mouth fell off. Smooth move.

Twenty minutes later when that fun passed, I cleaned out the seeds and threw it in a blender with my tomatoes, green pepper, garlic, onion, salt and other seasonings. It was still too hot. I dialed it down a bit by adding 3 chopped dates. The natural sugar in the dates neutralizes some of the heat in the pepper.  Perfect! 

I put the mix into a pot, added 1/2 cup water, brought it to a boil, turned down the heat and simmered it for 20 minutes stirring occasionally. 

I added 4 cups of  dry vegan penne noodles and simmered it for 15 more minutes allowing the liquid to disappear. Salt to taste and enjoy! 

Ingredients:

4 Garden tomatoes

2 cups cherry tomatoes

1 green pepper

3 cloves garlic

2 small onions

3 dates

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup mixed basil, oregano and parsley

1/2 TBS cumin

1 hot pepper (optional)

4 cups dry penne noodles (gluten free optional)

Serves 4