I found something precious at the Asian grocer today, these little green chilies, or cabe rawit/cengek, as we Indonesians call it. To understand how important chillies are to me you have to understand Indonesians. To most Indonesians chillies are not just the thing you use to make your food spicy, it’s almost like the way of life. As eating covers most of our activities, most of us cannot eat without a fiery touch of chilli. We love our food spicy. Hot spicy.

Imagine my happiness at the sight of these little green chillies. They are not always available at my normal supermarkets here. Yeah yeah, they do have other chillies, the big red ones, the smaller red ones, the long green ones, medium green ones, but rarely these. Consistent with characteristic of coveted items these babies came with a price. I compare the price in Australia with the price of chillies in Jakarta, of course, that’s where all this “heated relationship” started. A kilo of these bird’s eye chilli costs $28.00. Yep, you Indonesians live in Indonesia, it’s time to be grateful that you live in Indonesia, where a kilo of cabe rawit only cost you $1.59 (or max $6 a couple of months ago when the price spiked a bit according to my “source”*). And now I paid almost 14 times that and still felt happy about it. What is up with that?

Tsk. Serves me right running off with a white boy and leaving the chilli heaven behind.

*Special thanks to O (my trusted restaurants owner BFF in Jakarta) for your prompt market info