Many varieties at garden chilli sale
If you’re looking for a chilli-ng encounter this Halloween weekend, Braehead Community Garden are serving up all the right ingredients.
On Saturday, October 30, the community project is hosting a chilli pepper sale after growing some of the hottest varieties on the planet this year.
One of the varieties on sale is a chilli which looks like a miniature pumpkin. Another is called ‘Black Pearl’ and is similar in heat to the chilli found in Tabasco sauce.
Other varieties available include the scary sounding ‘Trinidad Scorpion’, ‘Medusa’, ‘Demon Red’ and ‘Satan’s Kiss’. Others will try to fool you with sweetshop sounding names including ‘Peruvian Lemon Drops’; but buyer beware - this South American creation is still three times hotter than a jalapeno.
If you want to hang out with the ultimate strongman of the culinary world, then look out for the ‘Carolina Reaper’, officially the hottest food on the planet. On the Scoville Scale, which is used to measure the heat of a chilli, the grim Reaper comes in at 2.2million units. That’s nearly 1000 times hotter than a jalapeno.
It’s not all about the hot celebrities of the chilli world; there are over a dozen varieties for sale including mild chillies you can eat in a salad and the Gogosari, a savoury chilli from Transylvania. You can dilute the chillies to your taste, by making hot sauces, infused oils, jams and chutneys.
The chillies were grown by volunteer gardeners at the popular community project, all under the guidance of Braehead man Alasdair Forsyth.
Alasdair has been growing chillies for more than 30 years and the polytunnels at Braehead have allowed him space to grow a larger crop. He will be on hand to offer advice on the day.
The sale runs from 11am1pm on Saturday at Braehead Community Garden, Broom Road, Stirling, FK7 7GU.