On heat

The fieriness of chilli peppers is measured using the Scoville scale which to date ranges from 0 for a sweet bell pepper to 16million for pure capsaicin , with Original TABASCO® brand pepper sauce from the McIlhenny Company coming in at 2,500 – 5,000.

Fieriness is partly dependent upon pepper species but also upon growing conditions. In 2007 we grew a lot of chillis in front of a South-facing white painted wall, which reflected the heat and light from the sun onto the backs of the plants. 2007 was an exceptionally hot year in Greece, we had air temperatures by the coast in June in the 40s (Celsius) and there were spontaneous wild fires all over the country.

We have friends who are very fond of hot spices and have been known to sample whole fresh chillis from market stalls in far away tropical places. When they took a bite from samples of our 2007 harvest they were instantly spat out, something that no other chiili had happened to before. We can only presume that ours were in the region above 100,000 Scovilles.

We used them to make an absolutely devastating chilli garlic sauce, ½ a teaspoon of which in a casserole was quite enough. The garlic was added to bulk it out because without it it would not have been possible to spoon out a small enough measure.

I have repeated the process today and each of these six jars contains; loosely speaking, 200g chillis, 100g garlic and 100g oil (raw weight). The growing conditions this year however are very different and we don't imagine that this brew will be anything like as explosive as its forerunner. Time will tell ;-)