A JAPANESE superfood grown in Dorset provided some added heat at this year’s Brit Awards.

Wasabi produced in the county featured on the menu at the star studded event at London’s O2 arena.

The Wasabi Company based at Waddock Cross near Dorchester received an order for five kilograms of wasabi paste from organisers of the awards bash.

It featured on the menu in a Dorset wasabi and green tea panna cotta starter, which was served to an estimated three to four thousand people.

Tom Amery, from The Wasabi Company, said: “They contacted us about eight weeks ago and we were delighted to help.

“We provided five kilograms of what we call our pure frozen wasabi paste.

“What we do is take the rhizome and grind it up to make a pure wasabi paste and then we flash freeze it.”

He added: “I think it must have fed about three to four thousand people.”

The Brit Awards is one of the biggest events in the British music calendar and one of the most talked about incidents of this year’s awards was when Madonna fell down some stairs following a costume malfunction.

Mr Amery said: “We joked on Twitter that maybe Madonna had her wasabi just before.”

He added that this was not the first major event The Wasabi Company had been asked to provide its product for and it was hoped there would be many more in the pipeline.

He said: “We have done a lot for some of these big events and I think there are going to be more and more we can provide this frozen wasabi paste and it means we can provide large quantities quite easily.”

After months of developing the product, The Watercress Company at Waddock Cross branched out into wasabi in August 2012 and became the first farm in Europe to grow and sell it.

Customers have included top chefs such as Raymond Blanc, who purchased a record breaking wasabi rhizome for £200 when the company auctioned it off to raise funds for Julia’s House children’s hospice.

Mr Amery said it was great to see that the product was also helping to put Dorset on the map by featuring at major events like the Brits.

He said: “These are big events and to get wasabi and Dorset on the menu is a big thing.”