Grow your own peppers

“Without heat – from a grill, an oven, a cast-iron pan blackened with age – there is little point to the pepper,” writes British cook and author Nigel Slater in the first volume of his vegetable tome Tender.

“Raw, green and unripe, its waxy, plastic skin and lack of obvious juice offer little but crisp nothingness… Wherever it appears, the raw green pepper seems uncomfortable. But left to ripen to a sunset orange or scarlet (a few varieties remain green even when ripe), then blistered over a hot flame or