ON THE PLATE: Things are getting chilli in the kitchen

You’ve got to be intrigued by a man who can grow enough chillies in his backyard to produce 100 bottles of gourmet sauces per week. By chance I once met such a man!

Grant Hustler no longer has to spend weekends pushing a lawn mower around – instead his real fulltime job is to harvest the 80 or so varieties of chillies he grows in his suburban garden.

He has over 600 plants, and as you can imagine, it must be a very labour-intensive task to select the ripe chillies which form the basis of his range of sauces that can be used as marinades, in stir fries and even in ice cream!

Grant has been carrying on a fiery love affair with chillies for about 30 years, having spent time travelling throughout Asia, especially Thailand, where the cuisines call for the use of chillies. Gloves are an essential part of his uniform as the fiery capsaicin in chillies will burn and cause noticeable discomfort for hours.

Hence all cooks are wisely advised when cutting or de-seeding chillies to take care, and to be especially conscious of not touching your face after handling chillies.

Take it from Grant who probably handles more chillies than the average person – you can end up in the emergency department of hospital!

I was also intrigued by the man with a mild-mannered name of Wilbur.

Wilbur Scoville – happily married to Cora with two children – so far so normal.

But Wilbur’s claim to fame was being the pharmacist working for Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Co in America in 1912, who developed a test, now known world-wide as the Scoville Scale, a scale by which to rate the hotness of chillies.

Five tasters would work their way through various dilutions of dried chilli peppers in a sugar syrup until the heat could be detected.

The scale applies units of heat to chillies with the bell pepper or capsicum as we know them scoring zero, jalapeño 2,500 – 5000, cayenne pepper 30,000 – 50,000 and capsicum spray as used by police, scoring up to 2 million SHU or Scoville Heat Units (SHU).

The SHU indicates the amount of the chemical capsaicin present – this chemical stimulates – or irritates to be more precise – the nerve endings in the skin.

But back to Grant and his super-duper hot chilli sauces – and back into the kitchen.

Grant has spent countless hours refining the range of sauces, combining the chillies with fruit, herbs, onions, spice and has cleverly named each sauce to inspire you to blend the range with various meats, vegetable dishes and even into a cheesecake.

Sounds a bit weird I know, but as they say the proof is in the eating! Who could resist adding a little Caribbean Dream to a stir fry of chicken, vegetables and finishing this off with coconut milk?

Or a little Bloody Murder as the marinade on kangaroo or other game meats before barbecuing? Grant recommended searing the meat first on the barbecue, followed by wrapping it in foil with a little of the marinade to complete the cooking.

He highly recommended the Dragon Berry as something really different – a blend of mixed berries, lemon, garlic that can be used (sparingly) in whipped cream, or added to cheesecakes (marbled through the mix) or even just swirled through luscious vanilla ice-cream. Then there’s White Lightning, Serpent Bite and Mayan Sacrifice – all great names don’t you think?

Grant makes no apologies – the sauces are fiery and I have to add addictive, as any chilli head (as we’re known) will attest.

The beauty of them is that you can add just a little to suit your taste, and then a splosh more for those who like their food spicier or “hotter”.

Check out the Jungle Rain website (junglerain.com.au) and look out for Grant at our local markets. His range of sauces is selling well online all over Australia and a large number of bottles are dispatched to South Korea – so that’s got to be saying something about the quality of his lovingly made bottles of heat!

Meanwhile, I don’t know why I don’t make the super dish below more often. It was originally given to me by a dear friend and I call it Ro’s Prawn Salad. But I strongly suspect it is a Jill Dupleix recipe so, duly noted here, thank you Jill.