By Liliana Usvat
Pepper plants are climbers which grow to a height or length of 10 m or more. When its main stem is established, it grows lots of side shoots to create a bushy column.
The plants form short roots, called adventitious roots, which connect to surrounding supports.
Although black pepper is cultivated in many tropical regions, it is native to Kerala State in India where it still occurs wild in the mountains.
Cultivation
For this spice tree, you pick the fruit before it matures and then dry it. They can be used whole or ground into a powder. The flavor will usually be better if the fruits are kept whole and ground up right before use.
Cuisine and Black Peper
The Arabs had monopolized pepper trade for millennia; it is not surprising, thus, that pepper is popular in Arab cooking and figures prominently in several Arabic spice mixtures.
Black pepper has found friends in the New World, and subsequently entered traditional cooking styles in Latin America.
Rather than following the common Indian practice, Sri Lankan cooking quite often makes use of black pepper as a main spice, creating an interesting contrast to other foods which owe their heat to chiles.
In India, black pepper is widely used but plays no special rôle; it is just one more member of the large spice pantheon, often used as a minor component of garam masala.
Also the Vietnamese use now much more black pepper than a few decades ago, since Vietnamese pepper production is now well-established. It is added to long-simmered soups and appears quite often as a table condiment.
In Cambodia, black pepper is part of the ubiquitous table condiment tik marij, a mixture of lime juice, salt and freshly ground pepper. Ironically, black pepper is little used in the cuisines of Malaysia and Indonesia, although these are the oldest production areas outside of India.
Black pepper is by far the most used type of peppercorns. It is widely employed in almost all cuisines of the world. Since pepper cultivation has much increased lately and new plantations spread to remote locations, black pepper is continually introduced into cooking styles that did not use much pepper before, mainly for reasons of expense.
For example, Thai cooking has not only developed a likening for fresh unripe pepper berries, but also uses black pepper to a larger extent that before when it was an expensive import commodity. Black pepper is particularly popular for comparatively mild stews as preferred in the cuisine of the Royal Thai Court.
Flowers
Flowers - grow in clusters along flowering stalks known as spikes. Between 50 to 150 whitish to yellow-green flowers are produced on a spike.
Fruits
Fruits - the flowers develop into round, berry-like fruits. There may be 50-60 fruits on each spike. They grow to a diameter of 4 to 6 mm, each containing a single seed. Fruits are green at first but they turn red as they ripen. These fruits are picked when either green or red to produce black and white pepper.
Blog 137-365
Pepper plants are climbers which grow to a height or length of 10 m or more. When its main stem is established, it grows lots of side shoots to create a bushy column.
The plants form short roots, called adventitious roots, which connect to surrounding supports.
Although black pepper is cultivated in many tropical regions, it is native to Kerala State in India where it still occurs wild in the mountains.
Cultivation
For this spice tree, you pick the fruit before it matures and then dry it. They can be used whole or ground into a powder. The flavor will usually be better if the fruits are kept whole and ground up right before use.
Cuisine and Black Peper
The Arabs had monopolized pepper trade for millennia; it is not surprising, thus, that pepper is popular in Arab cooking and figures prominently in several Arabic spice mixtures.
Black pepper has found friends in the New World, and subsequently entered traditional cooking styles in Latin America.
Rather than following the common Indian practice, Sri Lankan cooking quite often makes use of black pepper as a main spice, creating an interesting contrast to other foods which owe their heat to chiles.
In India, black pepper is widely used but plays no special rôle; it is just one more member of the large spice pantheon, often used as a minor component of garam masala.
Also the Vietnamese use now much more black pepper than a few decades ago, since Vietnamese pepper production is now well-established. It is added to long-simmered soups and appears quite often as a table condiment.
In Cambodia, black pepper is part of the ubiquitous table condiment tik marij, a mixture of lime juice, salt and freshly ground pepper. Ironically, black pepper is little used in the cuisines of Malaysia and Indonesia, although these are the oldest production areas outside of India.
Black pepper is by far the most used type of peppercorns. It is widely employed in almost all cuisines of the world. Since pepper cultivation has much increased lately and new plantations spread to remote locations, black pepper is continually introduced into cooking styles that did not use much pepper before, mainly for reasons of expense.
For example, Thai cooking has not only developed a likening for fresh unripe pepper berries, but also uses black pepper to a larger extent that before when it was an expensive import commodity. Black pepper is particularly popular for comparatively mild stews as preferred in the cuisine of the Royal Thai Court.
Flowers
Flowers - grow in clusters along flowering stalks known as spikes. Between 50 to 150 whitish to yellow-green flowers are produced on a spike.
Fruits
Fruits - the flowers develop into round, berry-like fruits. There may be 50-60 fruits on each spike. They grow to a diameter of 4 to 6 mm, each containing a single seed. Fruits are green at first but they turn red as they ripen. These fruits are picked when either green or red to produce black and white pepper.
Blog 137-365
