Chillies

Appears in
Food of the Sun: A Fresh Look at Mediterranean Cooking

By Alastair Little and Richard Whittington

Published 1995

  • About
The chilli on which so many relishes are based came originally from South America and was brought back to the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century by Spaniards and, in due course, exported on to the Middle East, then India and Southeast Asia.
Used fresh, the larger milder chilli is a vegetable like a hot sweet pepper. When dried, it is used as you would a spice and people in the countries where they are grown value the chilli in its dried form just as much as when it is fresh. The heat-producing element in chillies is called capsaicin and the heat itself is measured in ‘Scoville units’, which range from zero for a sweet pepper to 300,000 for the hobanero - also called the Scotch bonnet - and the hottest chilli in the world (rated 10 on a simplified scale of 1 to 10).