5 Recipes with Peppers and Other Information

Recipes

• Sweet Spice Blend• Chinese Five-Spice Blend• Moroccan Spice Blend• Preparing peppercorns
Try those blends with this recipe
• Norwegian Apple Pie Cake

During the Middle Ages, black pepper (Piper nigrum) was so valuable, it was placed in the hands of the pharmacists, who doled out the peppercorns to prescription holders who had the gold to pay for them. Ransoms and conquering soldiers were paid in peppercorns. The amount of black pepper people owned was a measure of their wealth and “liquidity,” and the search for this highly prized spice was one of the motivations for Christopher Columbus to set sail. And as so often happens when there’s not enough of the real thing to go around, for several hundred years, the mania for black pepper led to the use of less costly spices with similar flavor–pepper alternatives that remain in use to this day.

Piper brethren

Three members of the genus Piper have been substituted for black pepper throughout ­history. All contain the alkaloid piperine, a flavoring substance that has a taste and aroma of clove, cinnamon, and allspice combined.
Long pepper (P. longum), the first pepper species to reach the Western world but rarely available in the marketplace today, closely resembles black pepper in flavor but is less pungent and has a hint of sweetness.
Cubeb or tailed pepper (P. cubeba) is pungent with a turpentine-allspice aroma.
Ashanti or West African pepper (P. guinense), which produces mild-flavored but aromatic peppercorns, is often added to ground black pepper as an adulterant.

Szechuan pepper

Szechuan (or Sichuan) pepper–also known as fagara, anise pepper, Chinese or Japanese pepper, or flower pepper–is the rusty brown berry of a prickly ash tree, Zanthoxylum piperitum. The berries have a spicy-woody aroma and a slight numbing effect in the mouth rather than the sharp, bitter taste of other peppers. They are excellent for seasoning poultry and meat.

Along with cinnamon and ginger, Szechuan pepper is one of the oldest ­established seasonings in China. The ground berries are an essential ingredient in Chinese five-spice blend, an important symbol of the Chinese proverb proclaiming that the universe is made up of five elements: wood, metal, water, fire, and earth. In Japan, the berries, called sanshô, are one of the few spices used in food preparation.

Grains of paradise

With peppercorns priced out of reach for most, grains of paradise (Aframomum melegueta) became popular. A member of the ginger family (Zingiberaceae) and closely ­related to cardamom (Elettaria ­cardamomum), grains of paradise are cultivated in Ghana, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone. The plants grow about 6 feet tall with the typical showy blossoms of the gingers. Their grains, or berries, often called melegueta pepper, taste hot and pungent, without the camphor taste found in some cardamoms.

Today, we like to use grains of paradise in ground spice mixtures with meat and poultry. Simmering the whole grains with cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, and cassia buds in red wine makes an excellent mulled wine that can be used for poaching fruit. We also add the grains to garam masala for Indian preparations of beef and vegetables such as cauliflower and potatoes.

Allspice

Allspice (Pimenta dioica) is a tropical tree of the myrtle family (Myrtaceae) grown as a commercial crop in Jamaica and Guatemala. It was introduced to Europe by Columbus and his fellow explorers, who found it on the Caribbean islands while searching for a shorter route to the Orient. They mistakenly thought the fruits were pepper, hence the generic name, Pimenta, which is Portuguese for “pepper.” These days, allspice and nutmeg are the only important spices that still come almost exclusively from the New World.

At our gardens in Round Top, Texas, we have two 12-foot allspice trees that are happy in large planters. They bloom in January in the greenhouse but do not set fruit. Outside, their late spring bloom is heavy and very fragrant. Berries set quickly and beckon cardinals to build their nests nearby.

In Guatemala, green allspice berries are considered a special treat. We use the large, fragrant leaves to garnish food and in table arrangements. Both the berry and the leaf smell and taste like a spicy combination of cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg or mace. The food industry uses allspice in ketchup, pickles, and sausages. In Jamaica, it is used in cakes, fruit pies, stews, and curries.

Monk’s pepper

The seeds of Vitex agnus-castus, with their bittersweet, slightly astringent flavor, were used as a condiment in monasteries to suppress the brothers’ libido, giving them the name monk’s pepper and the tree the name chaste tree. Little used today, this species remains on the list of plants producing berries that mimic black pepper in size, color, aroma, or pungency. Vitex berries have become a popular medicinal herb in recent years as they seem to affect hormonal balance in both men and women.

We grow monk’s pepper as a 10-foot tree in the herb gardens. Another cultivar with variegated leaves adds height in our large terraced garden, and both of these varieties sport pale blue flowers. A pink-flowering form thrives in a shaded area. All three trees produce seeds that look like peppercorns with a pungent taste but little aroma.

Beware the Pink Peppercorn

Pink Peppercorns claim no relationship to Piper nigrum, although some trendy chefs marry them with a combination of black, green, and white peppercorns (all P. nigrum in varying stages of growth or drying procedures). The slightly sweet fruits, also called Brazilian pepper, rose or red pepper, baies roses, or baies roses de Bourbon, come from Schinus terebinthifolius, a small tree harvested commercially on the island of Réunion, a French possession in the Indian Ocean. They move through customs to France as “baies roses,” the same name applied to the red berries of the rowan tree or European mountain ash (Sorbus aucuparia). In France, they are cleaned, processed, packaged, and exported as a gourmet spice.

When pink peppercorns exploded onto the U.S. culinary scene nearly two decades ago, food writers wrote glowingly about “the spice of the ’80s,” and prices soared to $10 per ounce. Unfortunately, many people who ingest them experience irritation of the throat, vomiting, and/or diarrhea. The plant belongs to the cashew family (Anacardiaceae), whose members include numerous poisonous species, such as poison ivy and poison sumac. Extensive research on the toxicity of pink peppercorns by German scientists and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in 1977 was presented to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but despite conclusive findings about their potential toxicity in the early 1980s and a short-lived ban on importation, pink peppercorns are still marketed to unsuspecting Americans. No matter how tempted you are to use them, you’re better off finding an alternative.

Growing black pepper

Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is a woody vine with heart-shaped leaves that is usually kept pruned into a low bush that is easier to harvest. The creamy yellow, fragrant flowers are similar to those found on peperomias, a closely related genus of houseplants. Black peppercorns have a warm, woodsy aroma and are hot to the tongue. India, Malaysia, and Indonesia are the primary producers of black pepper; Brazil recently entered the market as well.

P. nigrum is said to require 100 inches of rainfall annually. While we do not have that much rainfall at Festival Hill, we do have two large, lush containers of P. nigrum ‘Malabar’ that winter in our greenhouse. They live happily in a dappled shade picnic area in the summer months. The vines produce copious fragrant flowers in both winter and midsummer but nary a peppercorn. We are told they must be pollinated by a particular beetle.

Black peppercorns are harvested when they turn faintly red. They are picked green for processing as dried or frozen green peppercorns. White pepper results from soaking the red berries several days to remove the skin, then air-drying them.

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