So I’ve been growing the Pimientos de Padron for some time now and with the novelty of sunshine (plus a little judicious pollinating via a paintbrush) I’ve got a number of chillies slowly growing.
Now the thing is with Pimientos is that approximately one in ten is hot whilst the rest maintain a refreshing sweetness. When I’ve eaten them before I’ve been somewhat disappointed to only once or twice catch a hot one. So how did the home-grown ones fare? The small batch that I gave to Claudio back at Christmas all turned out to be hot (really quite fiercely hot at that!) so I had high hopes for this second wave.
We cooked them up last night in plenty of scalding olive oil and with a generous seasoning of crunchy sea salt, patted them dry on kitchen roll and tucked in. They were all hot! Every last one of them was hotter than any Padrons I’ve had before. They were of course delicious as well with a lovely fresh sweetness alongside the heat.
So why, of the dozen I’ve grown so far, have they all been hot? They’ve certainly been grown in a hot environment and with a lack of sunlight they’ve taken a long time to mature so maybe slow growing helps as well? We’ll have to see how hot subsequent batches are to determine what the key factors are.
In the meantime, I can’t wait for the next bundle to mature…
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