Blue in Blue.

I apologise for the delay. For some reason I've been unable to post during my working day, where I get most of my writing done during downtime.

The spice is the life. Well, that's obviously what some people think when dealing with chili peppers. I was down in Brighton for the Fire Festival, a gathering of people who love the feel of burning tastebuds.

It is worth remembering that Capsaicin, the molecule that creates the fire in peppers is a poison, triggering similar pain systems as Tarantula venom. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin) It is also used in pepper spray, a non-lethal aerosol used to incapacitate people with minimal lasting effects once the eye watering pain has passed.

And so we were surrounded by sauces with obscene scolville ratings- People were eating peppers with a scholville range between 855,000 to 1,050,000. For an idea of scale- riot quality pepper spray is around 5,000,000 scolville.

My enjoyment stops around Scotch Bonnet level, which is around 350,000 and even that I would use sparingly. They have a nice flavour underneath all the heat.

I do not subscribe to the hotter=better attitude to that kind of spice. Fire provides a lovely bite to certain things but you have to be careful with your selections of peppers to ensure that you don't overpower the rest of the food. The primary flavour of any food should not be burning. For example, my bog standard pasta sauce has a hint of fire, just enough to wake up the tastebuds and give you a little rush but barely noticable. This rule does not exclude hot food either. A good curry has a complex flavour and a burn that hits while you are contemplating the subtle spices and the interplay with the meat. One green salsa (unfortunately I forget the name of the company) was a great example of heat as enhancement.

The products from the Chili jam company were great. I don't like things being that sweet, I usually find jam a touch cloying and sickly but their samples have encouraged me to start experimenting with savoury and meat jams. I can see their sweet chili jam working really well with roast pork sandwiches.

There were a range of good products all over the fair and I cannot list them all.

I am confused by people who choose to eat weapons grade sauces. I tried a few hot sauces, Dave's Insanity, Dragon's Blood and mongoose. Mongoose is around 3,000,000- I don't see the point in it, you have to use a pipette to put the sauce in a drop at a time. Something that concentrated is a nightmare, any cook will tell you that it's much easier to add more than it is to remove too much.

Quite a few places were selling plants as well. I figure it's a great idea to start growing your own food, and I've been growing my own herbs for a while. This has three main advantages, you can pick them when you're ready so they never go off, you get more varieties than you would find usually and you're using a sustainable source which theoretically gives you an infinite supply of herbs for little money. I have some Elephant garlic from the Isle of Wight garlic company, to grow rather than eat. I don't know when I'll see it again so I thought I'd use my family's green fingers to ensure a sensible supply and I'll experiment with the potato wedge sized cloves at some point in June.

I will get myself a strawberry planter soon and turn it into a small kitchen herb garden that I can keep in the kitchen and so I will be growing most things in pots and containers, it requires being clever, paying attention to fertilising and watering more often than you would if the plants were in a garden. This is city living in the 21st century- few people have the luxury of space. I've got room for a window box or two, so there's another place to put things. My early experiments with a few cheap pepper plants went well and so I thought I'd indulge myself and get two more plants. Twilight peppers do not glitter in the sunlight, but they look pretty and would be fine as a houseplant. Marble peppers look interestingly like cherry tomatoes and will fit nicely in my windowbox alongside my earlier experiments.

Anyway, the principle is to get as much interesting and useful food grown in as small a space as possible. You can (although I don't recommend it) raise a chicken in an A4 footprint. You could get a good herb garden in the space of two battery chickens. You use plants to brighten up the house, so why not use plants you can eat instead- brightens your house and your plate. How about that for efficiency?