Peppers may be mild or sweet, hot and unbearably fiery, but they are all members of the genus Capsicum. The large sweet peppers include the bell, some varieties are called bull, nosed because of their shape), the cubanelle or Cuban pepper, Italian frying and the sweet banana. Sweet peppers may be red, yellow, orange, purple, white or green, and squares or long in shape. Chili peppers add heat and flavour to a dish, although some are quite mild.

They can be green, red, yellow or black, and in general the smaller the chili the hotter it is. To test for heat, just touch a piece of the broken flesh to your tongue. Most peppers are green to begin with, ripening to red and finally becoming red brown when dried, although some peppers turn a pale yellow or bright orange when ripe or a deep mahogany colour. Peppers that are sold half ripe part red and part green, may never ripen to full red. Paprika, cayenne and Tabasco sire all made from peppers.

Bought fresh, large sweet peppers which are a rich source of vitamin C are quite light in weight. Red peppers are sweeter than the green ones. And the yellow and orange ones are closer in flavour to red peppers than to green. Capsicum means box and the fleshy wall of sweet peppers contain no more than a few cluster of seeds. These should all be discarded to the last flat seed, which even in the mildest pepper can occasionally be bitingly hot.

The empty boxes can then he filled with any number of stuffing’s cooked rice mixed with minced meat and perhaps yogurt or with a mixture of anchovies, tomatoes and garlic or olives and capers. They are then put side by side in an oiled pan, sprinkled with oil and baked slowly. Some people like to blanch the peppers in boiling water for a minute or two before stuffing them. As well as being stuffed, sweet peppers can be cut into strips and used in a variety of dishes.

Sicilians make lovely salads with grilled red or yellow peppers, mixing them with anchovy fillets, capers, garlic and olive oil. Yugoslavians have a similar salad, using peppers roasted until they have blistered and then skinning them and in the south of France there is the beautiful papered a mixture of sweet peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic and sometimes bacon, to which beaten eggs are added at the last moment. Sweet peppers are also sometimes combined with chilies, as in roiled the bright orange, fiery sauce that floats in the centre of bowl of bouillabaisse, and is served with a number of other fish dishes that have their origins in the south of France.

When fresh, a chili should look bright dullness is a sure sign of over maturity with no brown patches or black spots. Chilies can vary in size from 30 cm/12 in in length down to just 5 mm/ ¼ in, and may be anywhere from mildly warm to blisteringly hot. As well as fresh, they are sold dried (whole, crushed into flakes or powdered), canned and bottled, often pickled. In Central America, notably Mexico, chilies are second only to maize in their importance in cooking, and they are widely used in the foods of many other countries, including Africa, India, China and Thailand. In most of Europe and North America, hot chilies are generally used sparingly.

Chili experts, of course, can distinguish between the dozens of varieties, but non experts tend to differentiate only between the mild, the hot and the unbearable. Large chilies include the mild Anaheim or California, the similar but slightly larger New Mexico, the poblano, which can range from slightly hot to hot when ripened to red and dried this is called an ancho, which is sweet but can be quite pungent, and the Hungarian yellow wax pepper. Among the smaller chilies are the hot to very hot when smoked this becomes a chipotle.