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Turn up the heat

Jean Vernon visits the South Devon Chilli Farm and discovers there's more to chillies than meets the eye

Some people treat themselves to a hot curry to liven up a night out, others use it to ward off colds or detoxify their system for the weekend, but one pair of IT specialists used the humble chilli plant to leave the rat race and start a new business growing, processing and selling chilli plants and produce.

Steve Waters and Jason Nickels both worked in the IT industry but became bored and disillusioned with their careers. “It started as a hobby to feed my own habit. I had an interest in Mexican cookbooks but the recipes included ingredients I couldn’t get hold of, so I started to grow my own,” explains Steve. Like most people that discover, grow and eat chillies it became addictive and soon he realised that his hobby had business potential. Neither had any food experience or actual business training, but the hobby soon started to generate an income. “We realised fairly early on that it was a better business model to process the chillies, though we still sell fresh ones today.

We can thank farmers markets for creating cash flow and then for helping us to make the jump into packing in the day job. The farm now exists on two sites and has been growing, processing and producing for eight years.”

Savour the flavour

Gardeners on the whole tend to grow one or two types of chillies depending on the strength of their culinary heat, but different types of chillies actually have very distinct and unique flavours too. What’s more the flavour changes depending on how you preserve and use the fruits. “We are discovering all the time about chillies,” says Steve. “In Indian cuisine they use all their wonderful spices for flavouring and it is a case of ‘how hot do you want it’, but in South Africa and Mexico, chilli is still a major flavour ingredient. We are finding as growers and processors that we are in a unique position to be able to have access to and to also discover flavours that are usually difficult to come by in this country. Because we actually grow/dry/smoke and cook chillies and that gives us quite a unique position.”

“Dry chilli develops flavours that are not there. If you dry them sympathetically, ie slowly, the flavour is more apparent; they are still very vibrant in colour and then they potentially have flavours that aren’t in most synthetically dried chillies. We grow approximately 100 different chilli varieties and each one can really surprise you when you dry it.”

The flavour dictates the way in which the chillies are used. The farm creates many new and original recipes based around the types that they grow. Some are used for relishes, jellies and even jam while others have even more exotic destinations.

“The surprising one is the Peruvian Chilli – Aji (pronounced like a scream),” he demonstrates, “these are typically lemony when fresh but when you dry them they taste and smell like a dried banana and there are lots of other surprises like that.

“We use it to produce a single variety sauce with strong lemon tones, but when we dry it we use it for other things with fruity tones like our chilli chocolate. Most good recipes recommend you use dry and fresh chilli of the same type if you can get it so you get the better flavour spectrum.”

Chilli chocolate has become a popular range for the young farmers. “Chocolate has a long history going back 1000s of years. I read about chilli chocolate and decided to try it. I had a little play, making 500g at a time and I thought it had potential. I didn’t think it was something we would make a lot of. We expected to be a chilli sauce company but now we make more chocolate, though our direction changes all of the time.”

They now produce five different delicious flavours including original, orange, peppermint, fruit and spice and coffee bean. It’s a bit hotter than some chilli chocolate you may have tried and is simply delicious. Available mail order and online at www.southdevonchillfarm.co.uk.

Future foods

The farm now grows over 10 000 chilli plants each season and these occupy some 2500sq m (2989sq yd) of polytunnel and produce over a million chillies each year. But they also use other farm-grown ingredients in their recipes. “At the first farmers’ market we sold our chilli jelly,” explains Steve. “It was quite unusual because we used a lot of hedgerow fruits at that time. I was tuned into what you could collect and eat from the hedgerow, so elderflower, elderberry, sloes, hawthorn all featured in our recipes. Now we have started to plant a 10-acre field with hundreds of elderflowers, hawthorns, and sloes to crop them commercially.”

Power plants

The active ingredient in a chilli is capsaicin and is found mostly around the seeds, it is used to create the heat in some topical treatments for muscle pain and arthritis.

It is thought that it has the ability to block pain receptors and instead amplifies your heat receptors. Medical researchers are investigating its use in relieving cluster headaches and migraine. It also has an antibacterial and anti-inflammatory effect that is thought to relieve the symptoms of arthritis. Capsaicin has also been shown to inhibit the growth of some cancer cells. Chillies are used as a folk medicine for colds and flu and are packed with vitamin A, C and D.

Chillies and their heating effect are also thought to trigger the release of 'feel good' endorphins which lift the spirits, this has led some scientists to believe that chilli in the diet can be addictive. Ripe red chillies are twice as hot as green ones and dried ones are even hotter.

 

 

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