Chilli Notes

Revamp your everyday cooking with the ultimate versatile ingredient

"Most people think about chillies in terms of heat and their capacity to blow one's head off. I think about how they can delicately pep up a pile of silky aubergines, perhaps already spiced with cardamom, cinnamon and faint dusting of cumin; how dark, tobacco-flavoured chillies can add deep mysterious tones to molten chocolate, how smoky chillies can add body to slow cooked, unctuous stews and how smoked, sweet peppers can add a note of earthiness to eggs, grilled flatbreads and sautéed greens."

Chilies can add excitement to the simplest, most frugal ingredients, and this book is full of recipes that excite and tantalize, comfort, and warm. Forget food that is simply there to knock you off your feet, this book aims to seduce the reader with the power of this humble fruit, even those who profess to loathe the slow burn. This book is packed with dishes that you can pull together on a weekday night with ingredients you have lying around. Without long lists of exotic ingredients to stand in your way, this fantastic cookbook will show you how the chili can be your exotic bedfellow to add a wonderful, unusual note to your home-cooked family food.

Thomasina Miers won BBC2's MasterChef in 2005 before opening a Mexican street food cantina, Wahaca. She is the co-editor of Soup Kitchen and the author of Cook, Mexican Food Made Simple, Wahaca—Mexican Food at Home, and Wild Gourmets.