#chilli #peppers Well, if you didn't get "hot" about the blog I wrote about chili-type peppers, I feel I can hit you with more information about the perhaps underappreciated black pepper.
Our tabletop pepper comes from woody, climbing vines, grown in such exotic locales as Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia and India. Your hot peppers fall into that big nightshade family that has as cousins tomatoes, potatoes and bell peppers. The "bells" are some of the pretty ones of the family, but are nearly completely lacking in capsaicin, the alkaloid that bestows heat.
So, how come all of these seemingly unrelated foods called peppers? The Old World was crazy about black pepper. It was used as currency in ancient Greece and Rome. Pepper was one of those spices you read about in school that sparked all of those trade voyages.
When the new world was discovered, so were the chili peppers. Their spiciness reminded voyagers of black pepper, although there are distinctly different sources of the flavor. It's been estimated that many chiles are 70 times hotter than black pepper.
To hear some people talk, black pepper is nature's wonder seasoning. Take digestion, for example. Pepper stimulates the taste buds which, in turn, signal the stomach to send in more hydrochloric acid. Voila – food digested better.
This helps pepper's status as a carminitive. Add that to your vocabulary. A "carminitive" is a substance that will help prevent formation of intestinal gas. All of that hydrochloric acid work just mentioned prevents the undigested food from slithering its way into the intestine. Read further and you'll find black pepper has "impressive antioxidant and antibacterial effects." You know how unhealthy those oxidants can be.
The peppercorn stimulates the breakdown of fat cells, it is told. And, black pepper in tea form has been credited for relieving arthritis, nausea, fever, migraine headaches, strep throat and even coma. Nothing mentioned about the heartbreak of psoriasis, but they're still busy in the labs.
If only half of these claims are true, black pepper can claim to be a wonder in a shaker.
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