Pondicherry pepper

Tip:
Crush in a mortar or grind in a mill.

Recipe suggestion:
Cod with Pondicherry pepper: 4 cod fillets, fleur de sel, ground pepper, 20g Pondicherry pepper, 50ml white wine, peppercorns, bay leaf, thyme. Clean, bone, skin and dab the cod fillets. Put some white wine, laurel, pepper and thyme into a pot with salted water, then steam the fish covered on a grid over this pot until the fish is even but still glassy in the core. Grind the Pondicherry pepper and sprinkle it over the fish. Add pak choi, mushrooms or asparagus and an aromatic curry-based sauce.

Botany:
The pepper plant is an evergreen climbing shrub and grows up to a height of 9 m. It has dark green, oval, whole-edged, tapered leaves 7 to 15 cm long, with small, inconspicuous, white flowers grouped together to form an ear. After pollination, the flowers develop into solitary berry fruits, which change color from green to a strong orange-red when ripe. The fruit clusters then resemble the red currant grapes. Each ear bears about 20 to 30 pea-sized berries.

home & spread:
The original home of the pepper bush is the warm and humid monsoon forests of Asia, especially the coastal forests of the Indian province of Malabar. Today, pepper is grown in many places in the tropics on both sides of the equator, mainly in India, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) and Indonesia, but also in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Congo basin, Sierra Leone, the West Indies and Brazil.

cultivation & extraction:
The pepper plant loves the warm and humid maritime climate of the tropics and usually remains below 500 m above sea level. There are two ways of propagation. One is by planting cuttings and the other by seeds. The first harvest is possible after 3 to 4 years when using cuttings. When propagating by seed, the first harvest can be done much later. The former is therefore the more common method. In the 7th or 8th year, the plant reaches its full yield capacity, but the harvest capacity decreases considerably after the 15th to 20th year. Usually plants are replaced after the 10th year. Harvesting takes place twice a year. The interesting thing about pepper is that black and white pepper come from the same plant. The only difference is the time of harvest. In the case of black pepper, the unripe green berries are picked and then stored for a few days to ferment. Then the berries are spread out on mats and dried in the sun until they are wrinkled and blackish-brown. With white pepper, unlike black pepper, the berries are harvested only after ripening, i.e. shortly before they turn red - at this point they are yellowish green - and then processed. Now the harvest is filled into bags and soaked in weakly flowing water for about 8 days, after which the skin is removed so that only the seeds remain. The remaining gray peppercorns are washed again and stored in the sun for several days to dry, giving them their creamy yellowish-white color. In addition to black and white pepper, green pepper has been found in ever larger quantities for years. As in the production of black pepper, the unripe berries are harvested. These are either pickled in a salt or vinegar brine and preserved or dried in special processes.

History:
Since ancient times, pepper has been used to season food. In more than 3000 years old Sanskrit writings of his Indian homeland he was described under the name Pippari. In the course of its spread it became the Greek Péperi, the Romans called it Piper, which became Pepper in England, Pepper in Germany and Poivre in France. Pepper was probably first introduced to the Occident by Phoenician merchants. Later, in ancient Rome, it was one of the most precious and sought-after spices. During this time, Alexandria became the most important trading center for pepper. Long after that, the city-states of Venice and Genoa, together with the Arabs, established a fairly complete monopoly on the spice trade, but this collapsed almost abruptly when Vasco da Gama, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, which he named after himself, discovered the sea route to India in 1498 and returned to Portugal with a rich cargo of the most precious spices. The Portuguese, for their part, built up a lucrative spice trade monopoly, and now Lisbon became the most important transshipment point for spices and, after a short time, the richest port in this period. The Dutch finally brought this monopoly to an end when they drove the Portuguese from the spice islands and coasts around 1605. They immediately controlled the cultivation and trade of pepper and other spices themselves. It did not take long, however, before the cultivation of pepper in the Malaysian archipelago in particular had spread beyond Dutch control. With the increased supply, prices and profits fell more and more over the decades. Finally, pepper was no longer reserved for exclusive shifts.