Comments (2)

By Hot Juan, May 18, 2010 9:58 am

This is not just an “Oil and Chilli” blend; there is a whole extra level of fla­vour to be found here, and  Rape seed oil is becom­ing the new Olive oil,  its time may have come. I am sure you will see more and more gour­met products based on Rape seed oil.

David’s Chilli Oil

When you open the jar, the smells like the wel­come from my favour­ite ori­ental res­taur­ant, the oil needs a good stirred before use, to make sure you get an even mix of all the good stuff.

Ingredi­ents: R-Oil (Extra Vir­gin Rape Seed Oil) Dried Chilli (6%) shal­lots, Ginger, Gar­lic, Black Beans, Mixed Spices, Sugar, Salt.

Jars kindly provided by David Chilli Oil

Uses for this are really open to your ima­gin­a­tion, I love just dip­ping fresh crusty bread in it as a starter, while it also works as a drizzle over a salad. In cook­ing it adds depth to a stir-fry, on the web site there is a very inter­est­ing recipe for “Slow Cooked Ori­ental Crispy Pork Belly” which will be mak­ing an appear­ance in our kit­chen very soon.

If you visit the company’s web site that this is a small craft busi­ness, where the qual­ity of the product has to do most of the selling and without tast­ing it first I am not sure the web site is help­ing give a good impres­sion of the products. (Note: had a mes­sage from David that a new site is in development)

It comes in two vari­et­ies with a medium and hot ver­sion, the main dif­fer­ence between them is the medium has 4% chilli while the hot has 6%.

The oil used is called R-Oil is cold pressed rape­seed Oil. It is extrac­ted in the same way as extra vir­gin olive oil, but has a much lower in sat­ur­ated fat con­tent 7% com­pared with 14% for olive oil, and a num­ber other use­ful fatty acids like Omega 3, 6 & 9.

This is the kind of chilli product that is not designed to blow you away with heat, it is packed with fla­vour and I will prob­ably find new uses for it every day, The pack­aging could do with a bit of an upgrade, it is not easy to use dir­ect from the jar and the label while inform­at­ive is a little basic in it style.

You can order online either at David’s web­site www.davidschillioil.com and also at the Vir­tual Farm­ers Mar­ket , a jar costs £10.00 which may seem a lot for a 308g jar, but it does go a long way and can be used to trans­form plain with a quick drizzle.

If you see the David’s stand at one of the shows I recom­mend you have a taste I am sure you will be very impressed.

---

---

---

---

Please visit our spon­sor www.hot-headz.com

Comments (0)

By Hot Juan, May 4, 2010 11:20 am

The Chilli Garden

Based in a wooded vale on the Surrey/Hampshire bor­der The Chilli Garden seven acre’s are farmed by three gen­er­a­tions of the same fam­ily. Between them Father, Daugh­ter and Son-in-law; Peter, Alison and Mik, have wealth of exper­i­ence in farm­ing, food pro­duc­tion and design enabling them to make everything on the farm themselves.

There web site is truly excel­lent for an in-house design, with a great look that goes across the whole product range as well.

They are very com­mit­ted to nat­ural farm­ing meth­ods and are mem­bers of “The Whole­some Food Asso­ci­ation” (a self poli­cing body for small hold­ers and farm­ers which holds the prin­cipals of organic farm­ing in highest esteem).

Only their own chil­lies are used in their sauces, Jam and Jel­lies and are free from all arti­fi­cial ingredi­ents, we have reviewed some of their products in the past and they come highly recommended.

Their range includes some very inter­est­ing products I don’t think I have seen a jam’s or Jel­lies made with Hun­garian Hot Wax Chil­lies, they also have a Thai Basque Hot Sauce that com­bines Thai Dragon Chil­lies with Basque Gor­ria Pep­pers, I can­not wait to try them.

Please visit them at www.thechilligarden.co.uk where you can order on-line.

The Chilli Garden
Opax Farm Nurs­ery
Spats Lane,
Hearn,
Head­ley,
Hampshire

info@thechilligarden.co.uk

Comments (0)

By Hot Juan, April 22, 2010 10:06 am

Fallen Angel Microbrewery

At the Fiery Foods Fest­ival at the begin­ning of April this year I finally man­aged to run into the Fallen Angel Micro­brew­ery, they have been brew­ing chilli beer for over 5 years now as part of their extens­ive range of 16 bottle con­di­tioned beers.

Unlike other chilli beers which seem to be a pro­mo­tional items, which have only been brewed for pub­li­city there are really drink­able, there is no chilli float­ing in the bottle or chilli flakes or extract added to a bottled beer.

Fire In the Hole and Black Death Chilli Beers

The Fallen Angel brew­ers have worked hard to develop these beers with the chil­lies being added in what they describe as par­tial mashes, where the chil­lies are included at the start of the brew­ing pro­cess, which seems to help the chilli impart its fla­vour as well as its heat to the brew.
They have two chilli beers in the range:-

Black Death – Is a dark oat­meal stout made with naga chil­lies. At 5.2% by volume it is strong beer, and goes just as well on a cold winter even­ing as a winter warmer or as a sum­mer drink to be savoured with friends.

Fire in the Hole –  This is a much lighter brew at 4% and is best served as recom­men­ded ice cold, it is brewed with hot­test fresh green chil­lies they can find, and while still hav­ing a good kick, it is easy to let a bottle or two slip down while cook­ing a BBQ.

Of all the chilli beers I have tasted these rate as the best so far, they are not some­thing I would try just once for the hell of it, but if they were avail­able loc­ally would be a reg­u­lar in my bas­ket, these beers need national dis­tri­bu­tion, but don’t take my word for it, buy your own, or even bet­ter buy me another.

The brew­ery was estab­lished in 2005 in a small unit in Battle, East Sus­sex, as they busi­ness grew it had to relo­cate to lar­ger premises in 2007 and after a change of own­er­ship in 2009 they moved again to a new Indus­trial unit in East Hoathly.

Nor­mally the entire out­put of the brew­ery is bottled with cask and keg ale only pro­duced on spe­cial request.

The par­tial mash pro­cess is not a tra­di­tional brew­ing pro­cess in the UK, but is widely used in con­tin­ental Europe, it enables them to make short runs of beer and make their wide range of 16 spe­cial­ist beers.

For more inform­a­tion visit www.fallenangelbrewery.com

---

---

---

---

Please visit our spon­sor www.hot-headz.com

Comments (0)

By Hot Juan, February 2, 2010 10:45 am

Tim Murphy con­tac­ted us a while ago to tell us about his new ven­ture “Cam­bridge Chilli Farm” after the arrival of a little boy in Septem­ber 2008, Tim who has pre­vi­ously run a small part time nurs­ery ded­ic­ated to Hel­le­bores, decided to go full time, but not grow­ing Hel­le­bores but chillies.

So in Janu­ary 2009, the first large batch of seeds was sown and the new ven­ture star­ted. With three poly­tun­nels they could grow a good crop of chil­lies and by mid June they star­ted pro­du­cing ripe chillies.

After much devel­op­ment and some help from the local author­it­ies they star­ted pro­du­cing their own rel­ishes, Jel­lies and sauces. Then in July 2009 they did their first Farm­ers Mar­ket in St. Ives Nr Cambridge.

Cam­bridge Chilli Farm Stall

Now they are reg­u­lars on the Farm­ers Mar­kets with a stand at The St. Ives, Cam­bridge, Ely and Ram­sey markets

They have a range of Sauces which we hope to review as time goes on, including:- Ghost Pep­per ‘10’ Sauce – An all nat­ural sauces which boasts 10 Naga Morich per bottle.

And Naga Nap­alm Sauce, Habanero Hot Sauce, Pine­apple & Habanero Hot Sauce, Sweet Chilli Sauce, Smoky Chi­potle Sauce, Tomato & Chilli Sauce.

As well as a impress­ive col­lec­tion of spicy jellys , jam and a smoky relish:- Raspberry & Chilli Jelly, Lime & Chilli Jelly, Cran­berry & Ser­rano Chilli Jelly, Habanero Gold Jam and Red Onion & Smoky Chi­potle Relish.

No online shop as yet, but they accept Cheques and PayPal, So if you are in Cam­bridge visit one of the local farm­ers mar­kets and let us know what you think.

UPDATE:  Tim has also now added an shop to their web site, so you can now order on-line

Visit www.cambridgechillifarm.co.uk for more information

Comments (0)

By Hot Juan, January 25, 2010 2:19 pm

Dart­moor chilli farm estab­lished in 2007 is loc­ated on the out­skirts of Ash­bur­ton within the beau­ti­ful Dart­moor National Park. It is run by Phil and Kay Palmer. Kay has trained in flor­istry, hor­ti­cul­ture and hol­istic ther­apies. Phil has a dip­loma in com­puter stud­ies and is the chilli enthu­si­ast. They grow over 90 vari­et­ies of sweet pep­per and chilli plants along with rhu­barb, herbs and vegetables.

Dart­moor Chilli Farm

They run the farm hol­ist­ic­ally and organ­ic­ally without the use of herb­i­cides or pesti­cides and use nature and hard work to min­im­ise the dam­age caused by pests such as bio­lo­gical con­trol, com­pan­ion plant­ing, and reg­u­lar hand removal of slugs and snails which are given a hol­i­day to another part of the nurs­ery. Being both vegan we real­ise the import­ance of liv­ing in har­mony with nature and our sur­round­ings and there­fore do not kill any pests but encour­age nat­ural wild­life hab­it­ats to cre­ate a greater biodiversity.

“We have a very low car­bon foot print and caring for the envir­on­ment is very import­ant to us. The nurs­ery is off grid there­fore we cre­ate our own elec­tri­city with 4 large solar pan­els and a small wind tur­bine, up until July 2009 we only used rain water which we col­lec­ted in over ten 1000 Litre water buts. We now have a bore hole which has given us our own drink­ing water and allowed us to water the plants with a hose pipe when neces­sary. We con­sciously re-cycle all of our house­hold waste and by con­scious shop­ping meth­ods have not had to add any­thing to land­fill in over two years.” Says Phil.

They have an extens­ive range of vegan chilli chocol­ate with the excep­tion of the milk chilli chocol­ate. The range of dark chocol­ate con­tains 70% cocoa and is avail­able in plain, orange, mint and cof­fee. The vegan theme con­tin­ues in the range of chut­neys along with the chilli jam, sauces and chilli jelly.

“We are pas­sion­ate about what we do and proud of everything that we have achieved, in a world where most com­pan­ies are only con­cerned with gross profits we are a small com­pany who have embraced a sus­tain­able liv­ing which allows us to work in har­mony with nature whilst hol­ist­ic­ally grow­ing and pro­du­cing a range of chilli plants and pro­duce that we can sell loc­ally and nationally.”

You can find out more about the Dart­moor Chilli Farm at their web site www.dartmoorchillifarm.co.uk

---

---

---

---

Please visit our spon­sor www.hot-headz.com