While I was away, I managed to fit in lunch at an IOW favourite, The Garlic Farm Cafe.
Even if you think you don’t like garlic this is an amazing place to visit, and not everything on the menu contains garlic, though you can have garlic beer if you like.
But there’s more to this place than the garlic, don’t miss the amazing shop which stocks over 25 Vampire Pickles, Chutneys, Pickled Garlic & Mustards as well as an array of locally sourced and artisan produced products. You can taste most of them too.
While there I was offered a handful of late season chillies and had visions of some making some crab apple jelly with a chilli twist. Trouble is the chillies turned out to Dorset Naga. The very hottest chillies in the world, over 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce and said to be enough to give you a heart attack, especially if you didn’t know what they were.
Now I’m not sure whether the donor was going to tell me, but fortunately I guessed what they were before I’d made a terrible mistake.
A friend that asked ‘how much do you put into a chilli con carne,’ was a bit surprised when I said “none, just wave the chilli over the top of the pan and that will be enough.”
I’m not sure what to do with them yet, they are too hot to eat or use as they are, but I do remember reading about infusing oil with chillies to treat wood to stop rodents gnawing it, and as I am about to repopulate my hen houses, maybe this would be a good way to protect the wood from curious rats. Or maybe that is just too cruel?
Hmmm, food for thought I think.
