From Piri Piri to Indian Tazpur, Cayenne to Jalapeno, chillies are every good cook’s staple ingredient and when it comes to these potent peppers some like it hot for sure.

Self-confessed “chilli geek” Alan Lodge knows how to spice up any dish – in fact, there’s not a lot he doesn’t knowabout chillies.

As the owner of Battlesbridge Mills Garden Centre, he has customers from across Essex – and even as far afield as Europe – flocking to stock up on the family-run nursery’s varieties of established chilli and herb plants.

Alan and his team have won a string of medals over the years for their horticultural handiwork and during the summer theywere even triumphant at the 2015 RHS Hampton Court Flower Show where they took silver in the chilli and herb plant category, thanks to their fiercely fiery Trinidad Scorpion chilli plant.

The Trinidad Scorpion is one of the bad boys of the chilli world and is not for the faint-hearted.

Alan explained: “It’s the hottest chilli we’ve ever produced and we grew it especially for the show.

It’s the equivalent strength of weapons-grade pepper spray, so it’s not something you’dwant in your average chilli con carne, but we were thrilled to have won the silver medal at such a prestigious contest.

“But the truth is when it comes to chillies, it’s not all about how hot you can go. It’s all about the flavour. There are so many different types that there’s something for every palate.

“Anaheim, for example, is one of our mildest varieties and is also one of our most popular, while Chi Chen is great for Asian dishes because it’s hot enough for most people but not super hot.”

The health benefits of eating chillies are well documented. These little vegetables (botanically, chilli plants are fruits, but in a culinary context they are classed as vegetables) are high in potassium, magnesium and iron, and contain large amounts of B and C vitamins. They also contain chemical compounds which are known to have disease-preventing properties.

If you wander out of your depth with chillies, however, you’ll pay the price as countless overenthusiastic contestants in popular chilli-eating competitions will know. Chilli overkill victims are regularly left writhing on the floor in agony, with symptoms of taking on a too-hot variety likened to the feeling of a having a chainsaw ripping through your insides.

This is because capsaicin, the active ingredient in chillies, can cause tissue inflammation and even damage to the stomach or intestines in too large a dose. But here’s a trick – if you do find you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, experts say instead of gulping down a glass of cold water youare better of reaching for some milk or even yoghurt.

Chilli peppers are one of the most popular spices in the world and come in more than 200 varieties and colours, but the most common are green, yellow, orange and red. They can be used fresh, dried or powdered and the level of heat varies from type to type, from sweet and mellowto blisteringlyhot – as a general rule, the smaller the chilli, the hotter the taste.

Alan’s familyhave been growing top-quality plants for more than 64 years for other garden centres and RHS shows, and they opened the Battlesbridge nursery five years ago, specialising in chillies and herbs.

An ethos of Alan’s is to teach customers howto get the garden they really want and this includes advice on cultivating your own herb garden. One of the most popular herb plants the nursery is selling at the moment is mint grown especially for Mojito cocktails – a real summetime favourite.

“Gardening is not just fun, it is also a fantastic life skill,” said Alan. “Sadly, however, these are skills that have dwindled and that’swhy I love teaching customers and even give talks to local schoolchildren about how everyone can grow their own herbs and plants, even if it’s on your windowsill.

“I am a bit of a chilli geek – they’re just so versatile and add flavour to any dish. I think I started becoming fascinated by spices while growing up watching Jamie Oliver onTVbecause he always used a lot of different herbs in his recipes.

“We all tend to want the freshest ingredients possible these days and there’s nothing fresher – or more cost effective – than popping out to the back garden or to your windowbox to snip off a handful of herbs or a ripe chilli thatwill end up on your dinner plate just minutes later.”

battlesbridgemills.com

 

FIERY FACT DID you know? There is an official heat scale for chillies known as the Scoville scale, developed by Wilbur Scoville in 1912. A sweet pepper scores 0 on the scale, Jalapeno and chipotle chillies score anything between 2,500 to 10,000 and habanero and Scotch bonnet score 80,000 to 300,000 plus. The Trinindad Scorpion variety can hit 600,000-2,200,000.