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Facts about Chilli
By Peace | March 12, 2006
Chillies are the fruits of a small annual plant called Capsicum annuum. The family these plants belong to is called the Solanaceae. It is closely related to the tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum), potato (Solanum tuberosum), aubergine/eggplant (Solanum melongena) and deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna).
Chillis, come in all shapes, sizes and colours ranging from tiny pointed extremely hot, birds eye chilli to the large mild fleshy peppers like the anaheim. Indigenous to Central and South America and the West Indies, they have been cultivated there for thousands of years before the Spanish conquest, which eventually introduced them to the rest of the world. Mexican cooking is one of the worlds oldest cuisines, the explorers of the New World brought back the tomatoes and peppers, red hot chillis, avocados, various beans, vanilla and chocolate, these flavours were to change the flavour of Europe.
Today there are probably 400 different chillis grown, and are one of the most widely cultivated crops today, grown from the Far East, China, Japan, Thailand and Indonesia to India to Mexico. Some of the more commonly available fresh chillis include jalapeño, serrano, poblano, yellow wax, birds eye, habarnero and cayenne are now being stocked by many stores and markets. If you cannot find the required chilli called for in a recipe try substituting with one of similar size and heat scale, or grow your own as they are as easy to grow as tomatoes especially in a greenhouse in pots.
Growing chillies is quite simple. They do need good light, and are best off in a greenhouse, but it’s very simple to grow them from seed collected from chilli peppers even on a bright windowsill. Don’t expect seeds collected from chillies to necessarily give you exactly the same chillis as a crop, since they may well have been cross-pollinated by other varieties. They prefer a moist but well drained compost (a soil-based loam, rather than a peat-based potting compost), you can make this using 2 parts of a horticultural compost mixed with one part of sharp horticultural sand, if a proper loam (like John Innes No.2) is unavailable.
Chilli plants are subtropical, so they will die or fail to germinate if the temperature falls much below 10°C: they prefer 20-25°C. Very high temperatures (above 32°C) will inhibit fruit set though. Don’t get them too wet: they don’t like to be waterlogged, and they don’t like high humidity, which can encourage moulds. Apart from that they are quite easy: you may need to pollinate their flowers yourself if the plants are kept indoors away from bees, etc.
In the wild, the seeds of chillies are dispersed by birds: many plants that exploit birds have red flowers or fruits (insects can’t see red, so it’s a good choice for attracting vertebrates instead). Birds are unable to taste capsaicin, so they can eat the fruits with impunity, and the seeds pass straight through them and out the other end unharmed. However, if the seeds pass through a mammal’s gut, they die. This is the reason that chillies lace their fruits with capsaicin: mammals (that’s you) can taste the burn, and ’should’ avoid the fruits.
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