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Sales of
fresh chilli peppers have increased by 42 per cent over the last two
years, as consumers have become increasingly adventurous in their cooking.
The small spicy vegetables have
ballooned in popularity in recent years, transforming from a small
niche, bought by aficionados, to becoming mainstream, according to
trading figures from the research company TNS. In the twelve months
to the end of April, £14.5 million of chillies were sold in
Britain.
Tesco, the country's biggest
supermarket chain, is taking advantage of the trend to double the
number of varieties it stocks from five to ten, selling the Dorset
Naga for the first time nationwide.
The world's hottest chilli is -
as its name suggests - cultivated not in the arid heat of southern
India or Mexico but in the south west of England under polytunnels.
It measures more than 900,000
units on the Scoville scale, a measure of heat developed during the
early years of the twentieth century. Previously, the hottest chilli
pepper in The Guinness Book of Records is a Red Savina habanero with
a rating of 570,000 Scoville Heat Units.
Sam Wright, Tesco's chilli buyer
said: "Chilli pepper culture in the UK has really come on in
the last few years and they are no longer thought of as a culinary novelty.
"In the past we used to
primarily stock chilli peppers in areas where there was a large
Afro-Caribbean or Asian community but nowadays we sell them in stores
right across Britain."
Consumers are becoming
increasingly adventurous in their kitchens experimenting with dishes
they have eaten in Indian, Thai and Chinese restaurants, with Anjum
Anand's "Indian Food Made Easy" one of the most successful
cook books of the last five years.
A spokesman for Wealmoor, one of
the country's largest importers of chillies, said: "Culinary
trends are behind the growth of chillies, but there is much further
to go, if you look at how many chillies a British cook uses compared
with an Asian cook. They are still poles apart."
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