PEPPER: Over a Millennium Later And More Versatile Than Ever

The rage these days with pepper is trying out every color you can find that isn’t boring old black.

Lately the trends have even pushed past white to get positively exotic. Different types and colors, of long pepper, and Sichuan pepper. The huge popularity of this last pepper has even overshadowed the fact that technically it’s more of a berry than a pepper, but pepper lovers are still positively obsessed.

Besides, who has time to quibble over names when you’re too busy trying all the new kinds of pepper popping up all over the place? Spices in general have a very long history, one that often and surprisingly takes turns towards the violent and intensely interesting.

Some Pepper History

Pepper has been highly valued and widely distributed since traders brought it out of India over two millennia ago. Traders brought it from India to the Romans and then the Romans fell in love almost instantly. The love affair with pepper goes on and on, as much as popular interest has waxed and waned, pepper comes back.

I Know What Ground Pepper Looks Like But…

How did the pepper get wherever it got from to be sprinkled upon your favorite dishes?

Technically, pepper starts out as the dried fruit of the Piper Nigrum climbing pepper tree. These trees are best grown in tropical regions, and tend to be found on plantations. Black pepper is gathered as unripe fruit and left to dry in the sun, fermented.

White pepper is from the same fruit, except it is first allowed to ripen, unlike with black pepper, and then it is soaked. After also being peeled, the white pepper is then artificially dried instead of left to dry in the sun. These important differences in each step of the process take the same fruit yet produce opposite colors of the spice. Though similar in some ways, each is highly prized for singular traits. For example critics and consumers generally agree that black pepper is the more robust of the two.

As For Pepper Trends?
The more spice lovers become obsessed with pepper, the better they learn to care for their pepper. Now spice lovers are more knowledgeable about proper pepper storage, and how to distinguish levels of pepper freshness. Many people are proud to say they’ve come a long way from the diner and dollar store flakes.

There are so many new ideas and new ways of thinking about spices. An old favorite French sauce known as the mignonette is also getting a new twist. New fusions of mignonette with a variety of exciting new (to us) spices combine to create the tastiest and most innovative pepper-infused creations out there. Experiment and learn what you like.

If history has anything to prove, which it almost invariably does, pepper isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. After enjoying this huge renaissance, perhaps pepper will decide to take another small vacation to await its next exotic makeover.

© 2009