About

cheek·y chil·li (not to be confused with chil·i or chill.y)
The fabulous hot pepper that is wonderfully co-operative in small amounts, but perfectly obnoxious in large.

What it’s about…

Cheeky Chilli is the written record of what I cook, what I eat and any thoughts I have on food, often punctuated with stories from my life. I’m Sharmila (aka Chilli) an architect by profession, and food is my passion. Though I use recipes often, I’ve never been known to follow one through to the last letter, making stuff up as I go along. This means that, more often than not, no dish I make tastes the same the second time around. My husband often bemoans this fact saying that he can never ask me to make something he liked for him since I never remember. This blog is an attempt to pull together my notes along with the recipe so I can possibly recreate the same dishes again. (Though something tells me there is no guarantee of this idea working for repeat performances….I do like to muck about with original recipes that are often quite good as they are)

I live in San Francisco with my husband, Amey who is in the front line for my mercurial cooking. He is also an architect and responsible for several (the good ones are his, that’s how you can tell) photos on this blog. He has evolved into an excellent cook in his own right, but is more than happy to test my various experiments for me, even when they go hopelessly wrong. Living in this city is wonderful for culinary experimentation.

My Indian heritage and life in the West take my culinary interests in several different directions. Join me on these wonderful meanderings, won’t you??

Why Cheeky Chilli??

My stranded-on-a-desert-island fruit (yes, the chilli is a fruit) of choice would indubitably be chillies. I’d prefer chilli over peppers (or capsicum as we call them in India), the distinction being that I’m partial to the tiny, flavourful counterpart that would have no chance of keeping me alive all by itself on the island, but I’ll take anything from the family. I’m sure I could make it work somehow. See, while a sane person would be looking for a way off the island, I’d be concerned about chilli in my food. Insane, but probably true.

Fond as I’ve grown of several cuisines that don’t necessarily feature it, two or three days without the mellow or obnoxious heat of chillies in my food can make me feel like something vital is missing from my week. Not surprisingly, I’m drawn most to the cuisines that feature it in abundance; Indian, Mexican and Thai foods feature high on my favourites list. And I’ve happily waded through all members of the chilli-peppers family…from Thai and Dundicut Chillies to Chipotle and Habernero with equal delight. It doesn’t have to be terribly hot, it just has to be there. (Amey is that way about peppercorns.)

Chillies can tease you, fooling you by being impossibly mild or explosively hot. You never know unless you know. That’s why they are  so much of a thrill. When discovering a new one, it’s like playing Russian Roulette with your taste buds.

You can reach me at cheekychilliATgmailDOTcom. Drop me a line. I’d love to hear from you!

A few things about copyright:-
This has been very well put by Sam of Becks and Posh. It applies to my site as well and reads as follows

Please note that the material you find on Cheeky Chilli is work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License in which there are some rights reserved. You are free to share, to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work under the following conditions:
1) Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor. If you use any of the work you find on Cheeky Chilli, you must attribute the work to me and include a working html link to my homepage, or relevant post from this blog.
If you use an original photograph belonging to me or my husband from this blog or Flickr where I post the photos, in addition to adhering to the rules set out in this section you must also agree not to change the name of the image if you copy it to your own server and when you publish it you must also include the exact same “alt” and “title” wording in your html that was used on this website when it was originally published.
2) Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes or advertising. Please do not use any words or photographs from this blog in a circumstance where you make money from advertising or make money from it in any other way, or where you would use it to promote any other commercial entities. This means you may not lift posts from this blog and duplicate them on other websites that contain any form of advertising whatsoever.
3) No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder, Chilli aka Sharmila B. The full legal code can be found here.