Chilli peppers

Rain has come, good news for the garden and the mushrooms.The weather man says its the tail end of some hurricane that hit the Americas last week.

The chilli harvest approaches. This photo features the long mild local variety, the fat juicy hot Espelettes from the nearby Basque country and the little round sweet Hungarian paprikas that we use for goulasch.

We also grow Cayenne and West Indian varieties, including the famous “12 curry chillies”, so called because they are so spicy you just need to stir the curry with a chilli in order to make it dynamite hot, then keep it in the refigerator for the next curry, and the next one….

This always reminds me of the very dry Martini, pour gin into glass, show the vermouth bottle to the glass… was this Noel Coward or Hemingway..or someone else?

Anyway last night I simply fried, in some olive oil, two sliced red peppers (from the garden), a sliced red onion (from the garden) and two crushed Espelette chillies (from the garden). Fry mixture until the onions start to caramelise and serve as a garnish for anything (any kind of bland fish is quite good with this).

More on chillies in future posts.