Both harvests have been good this year. I picked all the peppers, both the soft bell shaped ones and the spicier long green ones, earlier this week. The chilli plants are still turning red so what you see below is just the first crop. There will be a stack more to come and, after last year’s bumper crop we are still working through the dried chillies from 2021. Even an Anglo Indian household like this one cannot keep up with what our gardens supply.
Some of the long green spicey peppers have been preserved in the same Sweet Asian sauce I use for radishes. That is an experiment for me, we shall see how it goes. The rest are frozen – this is one vegetable you can freeze whole without first blanching. The bell peppers have all been cut into strips for flash freezing on a tray and then also bagged up for use later.
The chillis come in two varietes this year. Long thin ones which start green before turning red and round ones which are a bright purple before turning red. Both are equally powerful with even my in-laws suggesting they are a little hot. I threaded the first harvest with a needle and cotton and it is now hanging up to dry for a couple of weeks before it is jarred. There are enough chillis still reddening up in the garden that, as last year, I expect to be handing out jars of the things as Christmas presents to neighbours here in Wales.
