Jaine Blackman meets the woman bringing a feast of fiery food to the heart of Abingdon

Some like it hot... and if you’re one of them, head to Abingdon’s Market Square on Saturday.

It will be taken over by the second annual Oxfordshire Chilli Festival.

There will be stalls with fresh chillies from around the world, chilli eating and cook-off competitions, alongside music and children’s activities from 10am until 5pm.

New for this year will also be Man vs Food eating challenges.

“Last year’s chilli festival was an all-round success, so much so that we won the coveted Best New Chilli Festival voted for by the public and awarded by bastions of the UK chilli scene, the Clifton Chilli Club,” says the woman behind the event, mum-of-three Dawn Massam.

“Over 3,000 people visited the festival to enjoy the wide selection of chilli sauces, jams, chutneys, chocolates, plants, seeds and other fiery gastronomic delights.”

A life-long lover of chillies and hot sauce, Dawn, 35, a freelance copywriter and marketer, started the festival to share her passion with the people of Oxfordshire.

“I eat chilli pretty much every day. I love it,” says Dawn.

She doesn’t have a favourite chilli dish because she adds the spice to everything – from omelettes to bacon sandwiches.

Dawn was introduced to dishes with a kick when she was about eight years old.

“My dad was really good at cooking curries and he’d make up jars of pastes,” says Dawn. “You couldn’t get a lot in 1980s Dundee so he went to Asian supermarkets to get ingredients.”

He had also got his love of spicy food from a previous generation. “His aunt had married an Indian and dad used to bunk off school lunches in the 60s to go to their house to eat curry,” she says.

Dawn moved from her native Scotland to London after landing a job in music PR aged 17 and graduated to “hotter stuff”.

“I had a flatmate who was Ethiopian who put Encona (hot pepper) sauce on plain pasta. I tried it and it blew my head off – I thought ‘that’s amazing’,” she says happily.

Since then she’s tried no end of different variations. “Chilli is in so many different cusines. People think it’s all about heat but there are different types. It’s about flavour too,” says Dawn.

She’s long been a foodie and through visiting various events met Tony Ainsworth aka Darth Naga, one of the founders of the UK Chilli Cook-off Association and well-known among “chilli-heads” as a kamikazi chilli taster.

“We went for a drink and he said ‘why doesn’t Oxfordshire have a chilli festival?’” says Dawn.

After a couple of glasses of wine she decided it should have one and, with experience putting on events in her marketing role, that she would be the one to do it.

“Millets have a chilli fiesta once a year with chilli traders and plants but I thought it would be good to have a festival with music and bring people in to Abingdon,” says Dawn.

“It’s great fun to organise and the event was so popular last year there was never a question whether or not we’d do it again all over again.”

GO ALONG 
Oxfordshire Chilli Festival is in Abingdon’s Market Square on Saturday.
Stalls, chilli eating, cook-off competitions, music and children’s activities takes place from 10am to 5pm