Espelette

Who would have thought that a small village in the foothills of the Pyrenees would be famous throughout France for its chilli pepper and hold a 2-day festival every year to celebrate the fact. The basque cuisine features chilli heavily in almost every dish from savoury to sweet and it is the chilli from Espelette which is the most famous. Luckily for us, this year's festival coincided with our time here and so we jumped on the bike and headed into the hills to find the village.

Thanks to Christopher Columbus, the chilli pepper arrived from Mexico and in 1650, after realising that the growing conditions around Espelette were ideal (how they realised, we don't know!), every local farm was producing it and it became an essential part of every basque kitchen in the area.

Today, this special chilli is the first and only spice in France accredited with an AOC-AOP (just like fine wines) acknowledging the strict controls governing its production. It is planted in the spring and then harvested between August and December, once it becomes bright red. It is then sold in different ways; as a string of 20 fresh chillies, as a puree in a jar to be used in the cooking process or dried traditionally on the front of buildings and then turned into a powder to sprinkle over a finished dish.

We were told that visitors from all over France come to the festival and from the long line of traffic backed up into the village, they were right. Travelling on the bike made getting in and parking a breeze.

Strolling around we realised that it wasn't only the chilli that was being celebrated, it seemed that every basque food speciality was too with stalls full of locally made basque cake, cured meats, cheeses, nougat, wine and the biggest barbecue we've ever seen! For lunch we tried a Taloak, which is similar to a Mexican tortilla, made by hand mixing corn and water before rolling out ( in our case the rolling pin used was an empty wine bottle) and then cooking on a flat, hot plate. Filled wine two types of sausages, onions and of course some chilli pepper, a simple hot-dog will never be the same!

There followed a procession of bands and dignitaries with the Mayor announcing that next July the Tour de France will stop at Espelette for the first time, to great rounds of applause. Looks like two-wheelers are being welcomed to Espelette. We definitely were.Read more