This Chilli is what they call a “Child/Family Safe” vari­ety as its fruits have no heat, it is an ideal patio plant with its beau­ti­ful dis­play of up to 5 cm long pep­pers which are held above the foliage. The pep­pers start out green­ish yel­low, gradu­ally chan­ging to orange and matur­ing to dark red, as you can see from the pic­ture you get all the stages on display.

This long last­ing vari­ety requires good soil and plenty of mois­ture and matures at about 40cm inches tall. it is part of the Cap­sicum Annuum Spe­cies, prob­ably the most com­mon of all the Domest­ic­ated Cap­sic­ums.

You can find seeds online at Nicky’s Nurs­ery

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I first came across the name “Aleppo Pep­per” in a sauce made by ChilliPepperPete’s son Wilf and decide to invest­ig­ate it fur­ther, kindly Pete send me a pack of the crushed Aleppo pep­per to try.

The chilli is named after Aleppo a city in north­ern Syria fam­ous for culin­ary cuisine, being loc­ated on the Silk Road in and area of fer­tile land, it is one of the old­est inhab­ited cit­ies in the world, dat­ing back over 4,000 years.

The Aleppo pep­per part of the Annuum spe­cies and it grown in both Tur­key and Syria, and is also known as the Halaby pep­per. The pods are ripened to deep bur­gundy col­our and then semi dried, de-seeded and either coarsely ground or crushed.

The fla­vour is not unlike the Ancho, but oil­ier and with a hint of salt, I have been told that salt is often used in the dry­ing pro­cess. It is not a very hot chilli, with the heat build­ing slowly, but it is packed with a fruity raisin-ish flavour.

If you find a shaker of chilli flakes on the table on your next hol­i­day to Tur­key, it is prob­ably Aleppo flakes. I remem­ber these from a trip to Tur­key in my youth, but at the time did not know much about the vari­et­ies of chil­lies to even ask about them.

They can be used any­where you would nor­mally use chilli flakes, I have been using mine in all sort of cook­ing and espe­cially sprinkled on Pizza’s, they also add a fla­vour to rice, I have added some to the water dur­ing cooking.

You can pur­chase crushed Aleppo Pep­per dir­ect from Chil­liPep­per­Pete

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Ger­ald from The Chilli Pep­per Com­pany has point out to us a new chilli vari­ety. Developed in India as the ulti­mate chilli for mak­ing cur­ries, this has not been cre­ated for it’s heat but for the fla­vour and it used with green as well as red.

The Chilli is a Cay­enne type with long thin fruits, that are puckered in appearance

If you are select­ing chilli plants to grow this year we would recom­mend you take a look at the Bul­garian Car­rot, it pro­duces beau­ti­ful bright orange glossy pods and it idea for grow­ing in a large pot on the patio.

A medium heat (2,000 — 5,000 SHU) chilli they are thick fleshed con­ical shaped pods, they are idea for salsa’s.

The com­pact plants grow to about 60 cm high.

The seeds are avaible from a num­ber of UK sup­pli­ers including:-

The Chilli Pep­per Com­pany
Simpsons Seeds
Nicky’s Nursery

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It is an odd thing, but every­one seems to want green Jalapeños chil­lies, but at the end of the grow­ing sea­son they are start­ing to turn red before they can be picked and sold, at this point there mar­ket value as a fresh product is about as low as it gets.

The wise farm­ers then either let then ripen fully until they are a deep red, at which point they are picked and and placed in a smoker and smoked until the almost all the mois­ture is removed and until the weight of the product has been reduced 90% dry­ing and pre­serving them.

If fact smoking is really a way of dehyd­rat­ing and pre­serving the crop, Jalapeños are hard to sun dry due to their thick flesh and tough skin, they would just rot if left to dry naturally.

There are at least two dis­tinct vari­et­ies of Chipotles:-

Meco — The skins are a tan/grayish col­our and a matt fin­ish, they are far less com­mon, they are also know as tipico or ahumado

Mor­ita — They are dark purple with a shiny skin and are prob­ably the most com­mon out­side Mex­ico, they are not as deeply smoked as the Meco Chi­potles and are gen­er­ally con­sidered and inferior, cheaper product.

We are used them when we made our Hot Juan range of products in both our BBQ Rub and Crisps, they are mild in heat (but hot­ter that the Jalapeños due to the reduc­tion in moisture)

I have always wondered how to pro­nounce them, the best I have phon­et­ics found is “chip-oat-lay”

They are avail­able from most of the online retail­ers please see www.chillipepperpete.com, Cool Chile Co www.Hot Headz.com and www.scorchio.com

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Almost any­thing is avail­able of eBay, In the past few years I have even seen “Chi­potle Seeds” for sale. I did ask the seller how this was pos­sible, but did not get a reply, I have not seem then for sale again.

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