The chillis are a mix of some I grow every year and some new ones, I’ve also got some chillis over wintered in the greenhouse. The tomatoes are my favourite varieties as I’ve just decided to grow the ones I like this year to save on space.

2012 Chillis (sown 22/01/12)

• Mixed Caribbean - A mixture of 5 very hot chilli peppers from the Caribbean, includes Habanero and Scotch Bonnet chilli peppers in different colours and shapes.
• Naga Morich -  is a small-medium shurub with large leaves, small, five-petalled flowers, and blisteringly hot fruit. It differs to the Bhut Jolokia and Bih Jolokia in that it is slightly smaller with a pimply ribbed texture as opposed to the smoother flesh of the other two varieties.
• Sweet Pepper – Traditional sweet peppers, I use loads of them so like to grow them.
• Guajillo chilli - The guajillo chilli’s thin, deep-red flesh has a green tea flavor with berry overtones. Its fruits are large and mild in flavor, with only a small amount of heat (rating 2,500 to 5,000 on the Scoville scale).
• Hot Portugal – one of my favourites and a type of Anaheim, great flavour and not too hot.
• Gold cone chilli - Capsicum annum that has small white/yellow pods that look great on a window sill or patio, brilliant for in salads or stuffed with cheese.
• Aji Pinguita De Mono - The name Aji Pinguita De Mono translates to ‘ little monkey dick’ a reference to the pods shape. The pods are small measuring only 0.5 to 1in long, are slightly curved and taper to a point. They mature from green to a bright scarlet. This variety is among the hottest of the little Aji’s known in Peru measuring 70,000 – 80,000 Scoville units. The Aji Pinguita de Mono is found in all regions of the Peruvian jungle, mainly in the central valley of Chanchamayo.
• Aji Limon – Another Peruvian jungle chilli, bright yellow pods with a distinctive citrus flavour, great in salads.
• Violet Cayenne – Brilliant purple and white flowers, 3″ long thin purple pods, a real stunner.
• Numex Big Jim – The largest of all the chillis, mild heat, perfect for stuffing, frying, battering etc etc.
• Dedo De Moca – Small Brazilian variety, often dried and ground also known as pimenta-calabresa.

2012 Tomatoes (sown 22/01/12)

• Beams Yellow Pear – Sweet, yellow pear shaped tomato.
• Hawaiian Currant – Tiny, pea sized tomato, perfect for salads and garnish. Great as a snack too.
• Red Cherry Tomato – Generic red cherry tomato, always a favourite.
• San Marzano Tomato – widely considered as one of the best tasting tomatoes in the world and a firm favourite of mine.

2011 Chillis (over wintered)

• Sweet Bell Pepper – Small, sweet, no heat but great for stuffing
• Hot Portugal – one of my favourites and a type of Anaheim, great flavour and not too hot.
• Naga Morich -  is a small-medium shurub with large leaves, small, five-petalled flowers, and blisteringly hot fruit. It differs to the Bhut Jolokia and Bih Jolokia in that it is slightly smaller with a pimply ribbed texture as opposed to the smoother flesh of the other two varieties.
• Yellow Scotch Bonnet – hot and fruity, great chilli
• Orange Habenero – like the yellow scotch bonnet but orange.
• Explosive ember – Purple leaves, purple chillis that grow upward.
• African sun – I don’t know much about this one, hoping it’s second year will prove more fruitful

This is a super simple, serves 2 greedy people and takes about 20 minutes to cook and if you don’t like prawns you can always leave them out. It also works really well with good chicken stock but when I made this last night I didn’t have any stock so used the oxo cube and water.

If you really want to stir the rice you can, although a Spanish friend once told me never to stir it so for once I’ve done as I’m told.

Ingredients

• 1 Chicken breast, cut into chunks
• 1 small packet of smokey bacon lardons
• 4 mini cooking chorizo (picante ones if possible), skin removed and then sliced
• 10 (ish) large raw king prawns
• 1/2 green pepper, thinly sliced
• 1/2 red pepper, thinly sliced
• 1/2 yellow pepper, thinly sliced
• 5 large chestnut mushrooms, sliced
• 1 red onion, sliced
• 3 sprigs worth of thyme leaves
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 oxo chicken stock cube
• 350-40ml water
• 150g paella rice.
• pinch of saffron soaked in a tablespoon of water.
• Handful of chopped flat leaf parsley.
• 1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes
• 1 handful of frozen peas
• 1 medium tomato, chopped and seeds removed.
• 1 glass of white wine.
• salt
• pepper
• 1 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• bay leaf
• olive oil

Method

1.  Heat a splash of olive oil in a large frying pan, add the bacon and cook until crispy, add the sliced chorizo and cook for a minute or so before adding the chicken.
2. Cook the chicken for a few minutes until its nice and golden then add the mushrooms, peppers and onion along with the garlic, bay leaf, chilli flakes and paprika. Stir well.
3. Cook until the onions are soft, add the wine, give it a really good stir then add the rice , once the rice has soaked up the wine add the water and crumble in the stock cube (unless your using stock then just add the stock), give it a quick stir.
4. Now turn the heat down so the pan is simmering and just a say bubbling. The trick here is not to stir anything and leave it for 10-15 minutes, checking it every now and then to make sure it’s not drying out too much, the rice will soak up all the juices and puff up nicely, the bits that catch on the pan add a little more texture and taste fab too.
5. The rice will start to soften so after 15 minutes try a few grains, if they are about cooked add the prawns and peas, pushing them into the rice but not stirring too much as you don’t want to disturb the pan too much.
6. Cook until the prawns are pink and cooked through.
7. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and season with salt and pepper.
8. Remove from the heat and give it all a good mix before you plate it up.

Enjoy!

This is pretty much a Jamie Oliver recipe out of a little booklet that my future mother in law gave me a few weeks ago, I changed it slightly as I could’t get any plum jam so ended up buying some cherry jam instead.

How long you cook the meat for will depend on the size of your joint and how well done you like it.

As well as the chilli flakes you could also add some sliced fresh chillis or sliced pickled Jalepeno towards the end of glazing.

The broth from the initial cooking can be used for soup or stock if it’s not too salty and the juices from roasting make wicked gravy.

The meat is delicious hot or cold and will last a while in an air tight container in the fridge.

Ingredients

• 3Kg Gammon joint (smoked or unsmoked it’s up to you)
• 1/2 tbsp whole black peppercorns
• 1/2 tbsp whole white peppercorns (or you can just use a whole tbsp of black ones)
• 1 onion, peeled and cut into wedges
• 1  carrot, cut into chunks
• A few sprigs of fresh Thyme
• 1 Piece of celery, cut into chunts
• Water.
• 1/2 jar of cherry jam
• 1 tsp chilli flakes.
• 1 fresh chilli, halved (optional)
• 6 cloves (optional)

Method

1. Pre heat your ove to 160 degrees.
2. Place the meat in a roasting tray or a large pan that you can fit in your oven.
3. Fill with water so it comes about half way up meat.
4. Place the onion, celery, carrot, thyme, peppercorns, cloves and fresh chilli around the meat.
5. Cover the pan with a lid or foil and bake for 90 mins and cooked through (use a meat thermometer to check if you have one)
6. Remove from the oven, keep it covered and leave to cool for at least 30mins.
7. Once the meat is cool enough to handle, remove most of the skin, leaving a thin layer of fat on the top.
8. Carefully use a sharp knife to score the fat in a diamond pattern.
9. Turn the oven up to 200 degrees
10. Put the meat back into the oven and put the meat back in for 30-40 mins until the fat starts to crisp up.
11. Carefully spread some cherry jam over the meat, sprinkle with chilli flakes and then place back in the oven.
12. Now this bit is where you need to use your judgement, keep roasting the meat for 30-60 mins, basting and adding more jam if necessary, until the jam is crisp and sticky and the meat is cooked how you like it.
13. Remove from the oven, leave to cool lightly and then slice and serve.

Nagi Nagi Hot Chilli Sauce

The company name Nagi Nagi comes from one of Paul’s colleagues who used to call the Naga chilli, Nagi Nagi instead of Naga, after the name stuck they found out that Nagi in Polish means naked…which I think is quite appropriate as their products contain no additives

A bottle of Nagi Nagi Hot Chilli Sauce has just landed on my desk so I will give it a try over the next couple of days, I’m pretty sure it will be great on boxing day turkey sandwiches.

It retails at £3.50 per bottle and the bumf says

“Our HOT sauce is lovingly crafted from the very finest sourced ingredients. We hand pick every ingredient in this sauce and guarantee it will tantalize and tease your taste buds to the EXTREMES.We have achieved a very fine balance of heat with taste. This very versatile sauce will compliment and spice up even the most ordinary dish.”

I really love the sound of that and the branding and the description on the bottle are great, although it could do with the website on but that’s just me being picky!!

You can follow Paul on twitter here, check out his facebook page here or buy stuff from his site here.

The slaw really adds another dimension

I’ve never actaully tried putting pork shoulder in the slow cooker or making a BBQ sauce so this was a bit of an experiment, It was also a bit of a spur of the moment decision to make so I didn’t marinate the meat before hand.

Cooking time will depend on the size of pork and whether you choose to use a slow cooker or an oven, but I’d say the minimum cooking time is about 6 hours, I left mine in my slow cooker for just over 8, the first hour it was set on high, after that on medium.

To be honest it was a great success, I’d have maybe added an extra chilli and a splash of balsamic  and possibly a bay leaf to add a bit of extra depth but for a first attempt I was over the moon.

Try to get hold of either some Chipotle sauce (like Mr Vikkis Ranch Sauce or one Stop Hoy Shops old smokey) or some Chipotle paste, if you can’t then try using BBQ sauce from the supermarket.

I served mine with a good dollop of coleslaw, home made skinny fries, with nandos piri piri salt and a soft white bread bun.

It wen’t something like this.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg pork shoulder
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 green chilli, sliced
• 1 tsp mustard powder
• 1 red onion, thinly sliced
• 3 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 

  The pork before cooking

  3 tbsp Henderson’s Relish (or Worcestershire sauce if you are from down south)

• 4 tbsp soft brown sugar
• 4 tbsp cider vinegar
• 2 tsp corn flour
• 60ml chipotle sauce (you can add a bit more if you like)
• 1 tin of haricot beans, drained and rinsed.
• Salt
• Pepper
• Water

Method

1. Trim the fat off the pork shoulder, either discard or use for crackling.
2. Depending on the size of your pork shoulder, chop into fist size chunks.
3. Mix all of the ingredients, apart from the pork, beans and water , in a large bowl, taste then season, add a little more spice if you like.
4. Add the pork into the bowl and mix well.
5. Tip the contents of the bowl into your slow cooker
6. Add some water to the bowl and swirl around to get the rest of the sauce out.
7. Tip the water into your slow cooker, so it just about covers the pork, if not add a little more.
8. 

   The pork after it's been pulled and returned to the sauce

   Turn the slow cooker on high and cook for an hour.

9. After an hour turn down to medium and leave for 5-7 hours.
10. An hour before you want to serve the meal, tip the drained beans into the slow cooker and mix well.
11. Just before you are going server the meal, remove the pork, pull apart with a couple of forks and then tip it back into the slow cooker, mix well.
12. Serve with your chosen accompaniment’s.

Spot The

I’ve just been sent a copy of Ching’s Fast Food for review, after the success of her TV series,  Ching-He Huang has decided to pay homage to the Chinese Takeaway with this new cookbook.

I had a quick flick through last night and it looks fantastic there’s plenty of recipes to keep just about every Chinese and Cantonese food fan happy, there’s plenty of meat, fish and vegetable recipes  some with a good helping of chilli too.  The recipes are split up into handy sections and with the exception of delicious looking deep fried dishes the recipes seem reasonably healthy and should give the takeaway a run for it’s money.

The recipes seem simple and straightforward and the ingredients should be easy to get hold of so I will write more once I’ve cooked a couple of recipes which will be in the very near future as my mouth was watering just flicking through the book.

In amongst the recipes there’s some great photography and what look like interesting anecdotes so I will certainly be having a read of those.

If you’d like to get your self a copy or even better get a copy for someone else for Christmas then you can currently get it for £6 on the WHsmith website here. You can also visit Ching’s websit here

The package it’s self came in a huge box with super hero survival kit on it, one opening I found a scroll with my mission on it, a brilliant hand drawn cartoon of me as a super hero, some invisibility glasses, Kick-ass on DVD, Worst case scenario survival handbook and most importantly some Jalapeno Fire Doritos and Pepsi Max Citrus freeze. It was all very well thought out and I really love the picture.

The crisps them selves were great, incredibly moreish, had a lovely smokey flavour and a nice bit of heat, they worked quite well with some hummus and also some sour cream but personally I’d just munch them on their own.

The Pepsi was a little sweet for me but my other half liked it so I let her drink it and snaffled a few extra crisps while she topped her glass up.

Doritos Jalapeño Fire retail at around £2.37 per 250g pack and Pepsi Max Citrus Freeze retails at £1.89 for 2 litres.

Check out the website here , facebook here, twitter here, here and here

Despite being a local delicacy, good ones are surprisingly hard to find, especially when you are sober. So I’ve had a go at making my own and thought I’d share the recipe with you so those of you who’ve not had one can give it a go.

I added some extra spice to the breadcrumbs but if you don’t want it to hot you can always leave that out.

It’s up to you how you cook your chicken, you can deep fry it for a few minutes until crisp and golden, shallow fry or bake in the oven.

You can also top your chicken with bacon/ham/chorizo or salami to add an extra twist.

Ingredients

• 2 chicken breasts
• Breadcrumbs
• Pinch chilli flakes
• 1/2 tsp chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp mixed herbs
• Salt
• Pepper
• Flour
• 1 free range egg
• Lots of Grated Cheddar
• Sliced chillis of your choice, I used pickled Jalapeno.

For the Sauce

• 25g Flour
• 25g Butter
• Handful Parmesan cheese
• 1 bay leaf
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 350ml milk

To Serve

• Garlic Sauce
• Chilli Sauce
• Salad
• Homemade Chips

Method

1. Pre heat oven to 200 degrees, or pre heat your grill
2. Butterfly your chicken breasts then bash them out so they are really thin.
3. Coat them in seasoned flour
4. Beat the egg and dip the chicken in the egg.
5. Mix the chilli flakes and powder with the breadcrumbs, along with a little salt and pepper.
6. Coat the chicken in the breadcrumbs.
7. Cook your chicken using your preferred method, I fried mine so drained it on some kitchen paper while i made the sauce.
8. Make your sauce by melting the butter in a pan, then add the flower and mix to form a paste, then add a little of the milk at a time, stirring well to avoid getting lumps.
9. Add the nutmeg, a pinch of salt and pepper and the bay leaf and cook for a few minutes until the sauce has thickened and no longer tastes of flour. Remove the bay leaf
10. Stir in a handful of grated parmesan and remove from the heat.
11. Place your chicken on a baking tray (use some grease proof paper if you want to save scrubbing your tray later)
12. Cover the chicken in the sauce, then top with lots of grated cheese
13. Top with a few slices of chilli then place in the oven or under the grill until the cheese has melted.
14. Remove from oven/grill and serve with salad, chips and loads of garlic and chilli sauces.

Sweet or Hot it's all pot luck..

Last week the excellent A Quarter Of sent me what could be the next hot thing this Halloween. For those of you who haven’t heard of A Quarter Of they are one of the biggest online sweet shops, specialising in retro sweets and treats for the whole family, not only that they are celebrating their 10th anniversary next year.

So you may be thinking what has this got to do with chillis? Well to celebrate Haloween they have released a nice new touch on apple bobbing,  in the form of Trick or Sweet apple sherbert pips. These are no ordinary apple pips for 1 in every 10 pips hides a dark secret, they are laced with hot and spicy chilli. There’s little to no difference in colour between the chill and non chilli pips so it really is down to chance.

Each pip is flavoured with real Cox’s apples and has no artificial flavours or colourings…..they are darn tasty too, I was planning on saving them for the trick or treater’s but have ended up munching most of them. The chilli ones pack quite a punch, they wont leave you gasping for breath but they will give you a little bit of a shock.

They come in at £2.27 for a 160g tub which is a bargain if you want to see the faces on either your party guests or the kids at the door in a couple of weeks time.

If you fancy some you can buy them online here, while you are there you could treat your self to some old school classics or some of the other chilli sweets they sell

Both are  new ranges from parent company Mars, and I’ll write some more about the Uncle Bens ones seperately.

dolmio pastavita tomato and chilli pasta pot

This Dolmio PastaVita comes in to little pots, one containing the pasta the other containing the sauce, The concept is simple, open each pot a little bit, put both pots in the microwave then heat on full power for 90 seconds, carefully tip the sauce over the pasta and your lunch is ready.

The 300g serving is just the right size for lunch or a light snack, the pasta was nice and soft but still had a little bite to it, the sauce it’s self was delicious, predominantly tomato flavoured but with plenty of nice earthy herbs and sweet roast garlic followed by a decent chilli kick, not super spicy but enough to let you know there’s chilli in the sauce.

My only criticism would be the texture of the sauce, for me it could have done wtih a few more lumps, maybe some mushroom or corn to bulk it out a little and add a little extra, although I did solve this by adding some slices of left over sausage that I had in the fridge.

They retail at £2 per pot and are a great alternative to the dried pasta pots where you add water and usually end up with a slimey mess, they are also great if you don’t have a fridge at work as they don’t need to be kept cool.

If you want to know more then check out the Dolmio website here.