'Pepper, mostly,' said the cook.
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, chapter 11
It occurred to me that I could give you a little taste of my cookbook.
[Hey did you see that? "A taste" of a cookbook?! OMG, that's a joke! Wow, was that a good one or what?!?]
Where was I? Oh, right. Taste of the cookbook. Ha ha.
Amazon's a bit serious about competing with their products. If you've signed an exclusive agreement with them (which I have, at least for the next three months), you can't offer your stuff elsewhere. But, if you haven't actually purchased the book yet (why yes, you can buy it -- here's the link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DPJU5VG) I think you might be interested in seeing what it's like.
This book (it's called Boneless, Lean and NOT FRIED: 60 Recipes for the Fried Fish Phobic, and you can conveniently buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DPJU5VG) has two appendices, one on "Exotic Spices," and the other "Spice Blends." Among the dozens and dozens of different spices and blends I talk about is pepper. This is the entry from the appendix (actually it's from the first appendix; yes there's more than one).
Pepper certainly doesn't sound particularly exotic. Ah, but there's hidden stuff here. Take a look.
Pepper is about as exotic as warm water. “Saltandpepper” is basically one boring word, and almost every recipe (except maybe for ice cream and pancakes) includes the dreary commandment “salt and pepper to taste.”
But pepper is far more than that silly stale shaker that's been sitting on your table since the Carter administration. For better or worse we live in a world that was made by people who were desperate for pepper.
The word pepper is believed to be derived from the Dravidian (South Indian) word “pippali” (which may have originally referred to long pepper, Piper longum, rather than black pepper, P. nigrum). The earliest evidence of pepper consumption goes back about 9,000 years at the Spirit Cave site in Thailand. People have been raising and harvesting pepper for at least four thousand years. Peppercorns were found stuffed into the nostrils of the Pharaoh Ramses II (inserted post-mortem for religious reasons, I hope); the Greeks and the Romans were trading for pepper as early as 2,400 years ago. In the year 77 Pliny the Elder complained “there is no year in which India does not drain the Roman Empire of 50 million sesterces” (okay, very roughly, assuming each sesterce was valued at 0.073 grams of gold, 50 million sesterces would be worth 3,650,000 grams of gold or, at current value, about $146,438,000) .
Why did Columbus sail off into the unknown? Why did Vasco de Gama sail around Africa? Why did Ferdinand Magellan begin the first circumnavigation of the planet? Pepper (okay, there were other things too, but pepper was right at the top of the list).
In 2002 pepper accounted, by itself, for 20% of the total volume of spices traded. Global pepper production in 2013 was about 473,000 metric tons. The largest producers are Vietnam and Indonesia.
Pepper – true pepper, the source of black, white, green, and the rare red peppercorns (but NOT pink peppercorns, which come from Schinus molle or S. terebinthifolia), is the product of one and only one species, Piper nigrum, but there are lots of other Pipers in the orchestra:
- P. amalago, “Pepper elder,” used as a spicy substitute for black pepper and as a medicine in some areas of Mexico and Central America.
- P. auritum, “Hoja santa,” commonly used Mexican cuisine.
- P. betle, “Betel leaf” (NOT “betel nut,” which comes from the areca palm, Areca catechu) is an addictive mild stimulant and euphoric used in South Asia and the Middle East.
- P. cubeba, “Java pepper,” though once quite common is rare in Western kitchens but still quite popular in Southeast and South Asia.
- P. darienense, “Duermeboca,” is used in Panama as a fishing poison (it anesthetizes the fish, letting people just scoop them up).
- P. guineense, “Guinea pepper,” from West Africa.
- P. longum, “long pepper,” a favorite of the Romans, is hotter than black pepper, and used today mostly in India and Southeast Asia.
- P. methysticum, “Kava,” is used to make a mildly intoxicating beverage in many parts of the South Pacific.
- P. sarmentosum, “cha phlu,” used as a vegetable in Thailand.
And then we have all the things that have been used as substitutes for pepper – the Capsicums (chiles), grains of paradise (Aframomum melegueta), nasturtium pods (Tropaeolum majus), Sichuan pepper (either Zanthoxylum simulans and Z. bungeanum), mountain pepper (Tasmannia lanceolata), grains of Selim (Xylopia aethiopica), and Yerba de Chiva (Clematis ligusticifolia) to name just a few.
Pepper is apparently what drives civilization. Respect it.
(see http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTRANETTRADE/Resources/Topics/Standards/IndiaSpices.pdf; http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aureus).
No, not all the entries in the appendix are that lengthy. But this should give you some idea of the kinds of things you'll find in the book. Oh, and if you're interested, you can actually buy this book! And here's a fun little link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DPJU5VG.
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