If you want to add a bit of extra smokiness to the soup you might want to char-grill or oven roast your peppers first instead of frying them .

All the peppers, chillis and onions were home grown so it works out really cheap.

Ingredients

• Chorizo – about half a sausage – or as much/little as you like
• 2 or 3 red peppers (more if you are using the sweet pointy ones)
• 400ml Vegetable or chicken stock
• 2 cloves of garlic (crushed)
• 2 Hot Chillis or some chilli flakes
• 1 Red Onion (or 3 smaller ones)
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes with herbs
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• Salt and pepper
• Chilli flakes

Method

1. Chop the chorizo into small pieces
2. Chop the onion, peppers and chilli’s keeping a few bits of pepper for decoration.
3. Dry fry the chorizo – you don’t need to add oil as the chorizo is oily enough, remove the chorizo from the pan and place on some kitchen paper
4. Fry the onion, peppers and the chilli in the chroizo oil until soft then add the garlic and paprika and tomatoes, cook for 5-10 mins.
5. Add 2/3 of the stock
6. Simmer for 15 minutes.
7. Taste and season
8. Now you depending on how you like your soup you can either liquidise it all or liquidise half of it, either way liquidise until you have your favoured consistency (adding more stock if necessary)
9. Add the chorizo back to the soup.
10. Garnish with a couple of pieces of pepper and a sprinkling of chilli flakes, Serve with homemade bread.

I have mainly been using the tomatoes in salads and sauces as well as giving a lot of them away as i just haven’t had the time to make as much sauce as i would like.

Our shopping bill has gone down a fair bit because we have been using the potatoes from the garden, carrots from the tubs, cucumbers (along with the tomatoes,peppers and chillis) from the greenhouse and most excitingly of all my first cabbages.

I’d never grown cabbages before as i didn’t have room until we bought the house, then last year i didn’t have space in the veg plots as i went OTT on other veg. This year i am so glad i grew them, they aren’t very big  but they are very very tasty and just the perfect size to have as part of a meal for the two of us.

The next month or two should see the chilli harvest keep ripening which will lead to me making some Chilli Up North Sauce and definately some chutney, so keep your eyes peeled for that. In the mean time take a look at the pics

[Show as slideshow]

1234►

Ingredients

• 2 chicken breasts
• 1 red onion
• 1 clove of garlic (crushed)
• 2 or 3 red chillis, depending on how hot you like it
• 6 cherry tomatoes
• 4 olives
• cheddar cheese (monteray jack, mozerella or something like would work)
• lime juice
• tequila
• small bunch coriander (chopped)
• 1 handful of tortilla chips
• 2 Maris piper potatoes
• sprinkling of paprika
• chilli powder or flakes

Then serve with spicy potato wedges

Method

1. Pre heat oven to 200 degrees.
2. Slice the potatoes into wedges, place on baking tray, drizzle with olive oil, coat in paprika and chilli powder and place in the oven.
3. Chop the chillis,olives, onion and tomato and fry with the garlic and coriander until soft.
4. Add the lime and tequila
5. Flatten the chicken breasts, season and drizzle with olive oil, fry until browned on both sides
6. Transfer chicken to  a baking tray, top with the chilli/tomato mix followed by the crushed tortillas and finally some cheese
7. Bake in the oven for 20-30mins until both the chicken and the wedges are golden and crispy.

The wind and rain have messed up some parts of the garden, especially the spuds, they are looking worse for wear, slugs also seem to have gotten a taste for the tops of my onions so that’s not great, on the plus side everything seems to have shot up and started ripening and we have had bucket loads of peas, spuds, lettuce,raspberries and beans.

Ive also had a few problems with white fly but some organic spray seems to have done the job and my too rather poorly looking dorset naga plants have recovered well since i moved them so I’m still hoping for some fruit on them.

The biggest revelation so far is the hawaiian currant tomatoes, the seeds were given to me by a friend, they are about the size of…well you have guessed it a currant, The plants are nice and compact and you get lovely little bunches of tiny fruit. The fruit themselves are lovely, very sweet and have a great texture, they are perfect for scattering on salads or eating like grapes!

Fingers crossed the weather will sort it’s self out soon and i can start harvesting my chillis and other tomatoes along with my main crop spuds and the rest of my new spuds.

As far as Chilli Up North and the website goes, i am getting close to finishing the proper website so it shouldn’t be long now. I have lots of reviews to post of chilli products that i have been testing lately, if anyone has any chilli products they would like to see reviewed or has any products they want to send me to review then please let me know.

anyway here are a few pics:

[Show as slideshow]

12►

The weather has meant ive had to water the garden and veg plants lots over the past week, not that i mind as its nice being out in the sun. It also seems to have given everything a boost and really brought the garden to life.

The spuds are now poking through so it will nearly be time to earth them up, the onions are well on their way, the toms have shot up, the green house bucket o peas has started flowering, the peas and beans outside have all grown a bit too and the parsnips have definately grown.

The most important crop of all the chillis are doing well, all the plants are nice and healthy, some of them are still a bit on the small side but it wont be long before they are fully grown, of that im sure.

I also got a new toy this week, a nice shiny panasonic lumix lx3 digital camera, ive not taken many pics of the garden yet…just a few of the marigolds in the greenhouse, i have however taken a bucket load of pics when we nipped across to the lion inn at blakey ridge for a spot of walking followed by a few real ales and a lovely old perculiar casserole.

if you want to check out my photos from days out and about they are availble here

I will try and get some pics of the newly emerging veg along with adding a bit more info to my blog, if anyone has any requests for stuff they would like to see here please let me know

Chillis and peppers:

• Peter Pecker
• Violet cayenne
• golden cayenne
• Mystery chilli
• chilil fuego
• Bell pepper
• Dorset Naga
• Hidalgo
• Hot portugal
• Sweet Pepper

Tomato:

• Hawian Currant
• Black Tomato
• Choc Cherry 
• Beams Yellow Pear
• Eva Purple Ball

Other Veg:

• Peas Early and meteor
• Sweetcorn
• Potato – Nicola,charlotte, kestrel and maris piper
• red onion 
• leek
• parsnip – gladiator and white gem
• golden cabbage
• romanesco broccoli
• mangetout
• sugarsnap peas
• purple climbing beans
• french beans
• Cucumber – telegraph, telapathy and crystal lemon
• courgette – taxi f1
• melon
• butternut squash

Everything is still quite small due to the poor weather but they will hopefully shoot up soon.

So far ive planted:

1. explosive ember
2. fisus blue
3. orange habenero
4. sweet pepper
5. fish chilli
6. violette cayenne
7. golden cayenne
8. satans kiss
9. dorset naga
10. peter pecker pepper
11. chilli fuego
12. mystery pepper
13. hot portugal
14. hidalgo

i also plated, the following non chilli seeds

1. courgette taxi f1 (yellow)
2. cucumber telepathy
3. cucumber crystal lemon
4. cucumber telegraph
5. Random melon seed
6. meteor peas
7. early peas
8. tomato eva purple
9. beams yellow pear tomato
10. chocolate cherry tomato
11. black tomato
12. hawiian currant tomato
13. white gem parsnip
14. gladiator parsnip

ive stuck a couple of pics of the process below, these are also in my germinating guide post.

Here are some pics from back in 2006…i’ve not had chance to name the pictures yet but i will as soon as i get chance…..it also includes some non chilli stuff such as cucumbers, courgettes and sweetcorn

[Show as slideshow]

123►