Capsicums

Peppers, sweet peppers or, in America, bell peppers. British in the summer, supplemented with Dutch imports. Better from Mediterranean. Year round supply maintained from Canary Islands, Israel, Kenya and others.

Of all the available colours, red, yellow and the new Day-Glo orange are fully ripe and can be deliciously sweet. Apart from green, the others – in which the colour really is only skin deep – are gimmicks.

Tinned pepper strips – sometimes roasted, sometimes not – can be superb. Frozen are never exciting. Dried, especially some of the sun-dried whole varieties from Spain and the Balkans, can be excellent.