Photo article from the Welsh Hovel - first dried chillies

The chilli bushes are still spitting off firey red chillies and so, as you can see below, I am still threading chain after chain to hang up in the kitchen, close to the aga, to dry. And after just over two weeks, the first chilis have dried. I bit one to taste and, gosh, one tiny nibble and my mouth was on fire.  Those dried chillies have now been put in an airtight jar where they will last a year. 

In a household where one half is of Indian descent and the other half is descended from my father, who always added stacks of paprika to his signature dish of ghoulash, we use a few chillis in our daily cooking but nothing like what we will have in store.  I sense that along with the chilli vodka, dried chillis from the Welsh Hovel might end up being put in smaller jars, to accompany the normal christmas presents for each member of my family of a Yarg cheese.