Black chilli...

When I bought my chilli plant in the sale – 50p instead of £1.99 – I failed to realise that it was black. Just how I didn’t spot it is beyond me, maybe it was because I didn’t really expect it to grow and if it did I wasn’t really expecting any peppers. Just look at it now, my black peppers are growing well.

In reality they are a deep purple-blue and not really black and the gardening glitterati  describe them as a medium hot Pepper for cropping indoors or outdoors that matures from red through to purple. Early UK trials have shown it to have great promise in our moderate climate and could possibly be the first real opportunity to try for outdoor cropping.

Yes, Pepper Gusto Purple F1 sounds interesting and if my half dozen peppers (so far) are anything to go by it does just what it says on the can - well, label actually. It rates 10,000 on the the Scoville scale which is the measurement of the pungency (spicy heat) of chilli peppers. The number of Scoville heat units indicates the amount of capsaicin present per unit of dry mass. The chillis with the highest rating on the Scoville scale exceed one million Scoville units, and include specimens of naga jolokia, bhut jolokia, the “Dorset naga” and the “Ghost chilli”. I wonder if they call it that because you die after eating it?

By comparison mine is about as hot as Peter pepper. But the proof, as they say, is in the eating of the pudding. Well, I’m off to Wales for a couple of weeks and will be taking my chilli with me. I won’t be making a chilli pudding but I can feel a chilli con carne or some spicy bean soup (perhaps both) coming on. I’ll let you know if it’s medium or ultra-hot on my return.