Hi, I’m Dave the head chef here at the South Devon Chilli Farm (yet to be photographed). Although if truth be told until recently I was the only chef! I now have a trainee chef called Matt and I am busy teaching him the ropes. I am ex-military and been working here for a little over 10 years.
So it’s Autumn now, and time for us to take advantage of the abundance of apples in our orchard at the Farm.
The apples all come from a mixture of heritage trees, planted on site several years ago. So firstly we pick the apples, then after a wash they are cooked down in order to extract the juice which is then strained and measured into batches. These batches are then stored to be kept until required for making our Apple Chilli Jelly. This is one of our very first original recipes.
When it comes to the cooking of our Jelly, we are very proud to say we do not use any artificial setting agents whatsoever, just the apple juice, chilli, sugar and a small touch of lemon juice to help activate the pectin to set the Jelly. For our Elderflower Chilli Jelly we infuse the juice with elderflower before adding the other ingredients.
The finished recipe is then loaded into our depositor and immediately measured into jars, lidded and left to cool before labelling and hitting the shelves for our customers to enjoy!
Of course, along with the apples, the tonnes of chillies on all our plants are being picked and also need to be processed whether it be drying, cooking, smoking or mashing and freezing them - this time of year is a busy one for us all!