Wednesday 31 October 2012

Taste report, Caloro, a stunning medium to mild chilli.

Tasting the Capsicum Annuum “Caloro” or should I stop with the scientific gibberish
No I should not.
I won’t bug you too much with it, but a chef should know, and stay at home chef as well. It is much easier to know, so you can categorise it a bit.
So it is an Annuum making it closely related to the Bell Pepper, JalapeƱos and Czechoslovakian Black.
This baby has the looks, the smell and the taste of one great pepper, but it is a chilli. She is one sweet sixteen with a temperament that will make you want her. But behold, she bites if you take her the wrong way.

The form is a bit of a jalapeƱos at first, but gets longer. It turns from green to a lovely yellow, and stays yellow a long time, then at the end it turns to a lovely and bright red. The plants can grow to about 60-90 cm (2-3 foot) and have a stunning high yield. If the first gets red, pick it immediately, if you do that after the first couple red ones you picked it will start to flower again. It looks a bit like the Hot Banana, but at some point it will have a few reds per day between the yellow ones. Yeah I like the looks of it.

Now don’t let the looks fool you, it is a mild to medium chilli, rating from 1000 to 5000 scoville heat units. So it does have some good heat. The smell when you cut it open is stunning, it is sweet and has good herbs. Smelling it does remind me to Jerusalem artichoke a bit along the smell of the herbs, or fatty bacon baked. The taste is sweet, lush, juicy and succulent like a great snack pepper, tasting of a sweet bell pepper and lemonade. This is one fruity lovely chilli, a good snack for a hothead and for people that are not used to superhot it is lovely in salads. If you take out the seed lists totally, it is lovely and mild, but you could just chop one in full, to put it in a Bell Pepper soup. This will give it just that bit of a kick. I have seeds available for this one, if you would like to give them a try.

Yours sincerely,

Bart J. Meijer

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