CHILLIES 2020

“Hello, my name’s Siân, and I have a chilli-growing habit....”

....and no, this isn’t all of them! I dread to think what we’d do if we had a greenhouse!!

 

The first pick of the Trinidad Moruga Scorpions.


Here they were a few moments ago.

 

We are currently doing a twice-weekly harvest, but trying to keep the varieties separate is complicated!!
This isn’t all the varieties - we also have Hungarian black, Hungarian hot wax, vampire, Serrano, and Krakatoa....

 

I'm picking mine every 2 days, but they're very slow to ripen this year. Until recently the temps were tropical and they didn't lack sun, so I'm a bit puzzled as to why. Just three varieties this year...the unnamed Balinese one I use most in cooking, a slim birds-eye type, very productive but fiddly to prepare, so they will be dried for chilli powder, and Hungarian Hot Wax.

 

Well, on Wednesday we were forced to do a chilli cull. 80+ plants in the living room meant compromised heating vents, and high humidity = mould starting to grow on the walls .

So, we were ruthless going through the plants, harvesting all the chillies, and keeping just one (ok, a few varieties, two) specimens of each variety. We are now down to three large trays of plants, which can be housed in the seed-germination areas upstairs, rather than all along the patio windows/doors in the lounge.

What to do with all the chillies?! We still have a 60cm string of dried chillies from last year, the freezer is now full of bags of chilli varieties. 7 batches of varietal hot chilli jam have been made (last vat bubbling away as I type), and a large pickling jar of jalapeño about to be filled with vinegar.



“Remaining chilli plants, no rush to produce more chillies!!”

 

I use them for various recipes to make gifts for friends who like it hot. Cranberry sauce is a big winner at Christmas and Thanksgiving here. I also make wine jelly with peppers added. That also is a hit. Otherwise they sit in the freezer and wait until I am making a batch of rolls or bread.

 

I often wonder what people actually do with masses of chillies that they seem to grow, I've got a bag of them been in the freezer for about 5 yrs

 

Me too!

 

I know what you mean, Pete...

The turning the chillies into our Ultimate hot chilli jam is a good way of using them. We need 225g of chillies to make 6 jam-jars of the jam. I am pretty addicted to it for a lunch snack. Homemade bread, toasted, a thin spread of the chilli jam, then ripe Brie sliced on top.
Heaven!!We are getting through a jar of the jam every two weeks or so !
Fortunately, it makes very well from frozen chillies, and we’ve even made it from dried chillies (counting each dried chilli as 5g, for the 225g)

 

Oh the uses are endless! Picked green for Thai green curries (with homegrown lemongrass, limes, and garlic), picked red for sweet chilli jam, chilli sauce, Indian curries, making chilli powder...All 'exotic' fruit and veg are ridiculous prices here, so it's a big help being able to produce our own. The aim next year is to succeed with ginger :-)