I use chilli powder only for my inauthentic chili con carne. I use chilli flakes a lot in Italian dishes such as arrabbiata and puttanesca and spaghetti with prawns, lemon and rocket. Mostly it's the bog standard Schwartz dried chilli flakes, typically sautéed gently with sliced (not minced) garlic in extra virgin olive oil, but I use dried ancho chillies too which I like to crumble in my hands! I find shop-bought fresh chillies to be unreliable in terms of how perky they are and I regularly underdo it. I'm thinking of growing some this year and I'll see how I get on. Half a green one goes into my roughly-chopped guacamole. They are greenhouse crops in Cornwall. In the last few years, cheap boxes of padron peppers have appeared in shops more and more. I love them fried in hot olive oil until they blister then liberally sprinkled with coarse salt (white wine optional but strongly recommended). These days I cook them outdoors on my little camping stove as they are the world's worst spitty spatterers.