Culinarily Flexible Pepper
Growing peppers of the proper heat level I think will be the most important.

If you like a lot of spice and grow Jalapeno peppers, then everything is going to taste like Jalapeno because you have to use a lot to get your desired heat level.

If you have the appropriate heat level pepper, then a little goes a long way in a dish and you will feel it much more than you taste it.

Here is a page with a nice list of peppers with ratings from the Scoville Scale (also explained on the page) http://ushotstuff.com/Heat.Scale.htm