O ne of the oldest occurrences of black pepper is in a rather unexpected place: Up the nostrils of the mummy of King Ramesses II of Egypt, who died in 1213 BCE. It does not tell us about the trade between the Malabar Coast of Kerala, where pepper (Piper nigrum ) has grown since the beginning of time, and the rest of the world; nor how exactly it was discovered to be a spice that could be used to flavour food. It does, however, tell us a great deal about how advanced civilization was over 3,000 years ago and that trade was conducted between Egypt and India, possibly by sea as boat-building was already known to the ancient Egyptians. It also shows that the preservative quality of pepper was already known at that time!
Black pepper is the single most widely used spice in the world, making its presence felt in all parts of the globe. And I wouldn’t be overstating if I said that pepper is, perhaps, the single spice that has changed world history. More than the any of the other aromatics, it was the search for black pepper that provoked the great explorers – Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Christopher Columbus and Drake – to set off on their voyages. All this was due to the preservative nature of the spice, more than any flavour profile that it had. Today, looking at the pepper mill commonly found on every table at a high-end restaurant, it is difficult to believe that these tiny round devils were the cause of wars and intrigue, and were once so expensive and luxurious a product that they were considered equivalent to cash!
Pepper has always grown on the west coast of India, and you can still find parts of the tropical rainforest in both Kerala and Karnataka that have the original strains of wild pepper clinging tenaciously to host trees. Thousands of years ago, that is what the forests of north and central Kerala must have looked like, with pepper vines clambering up the trunks of the nearest trees, waiting to be discovered by man. Today, when you look at the ‘spice gardens’ in Kerala and the coffee plantations in Coorg, with pepper clinging to corral trees, you cannot help but notice the symbiosis between man and nature.
Pepper has been intrinsic to Indian food for millennia, which is unsurprising, since along with turmeric, ginger and cardamom, pepper is a spice native to the country. However, the arrival of chillies on our shores a mere 500 years ago have made us forsake the lingering depth of pepper for the far hotter bite of chillies. The reason is that chillies can be grown around the country, whereas there is only a relatively small area of suitable land that is available in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka where pepper flourishes.
On the secluded island of Kumarakom, in the backwaters of the Vembanand lake, in the Kottayam district of Kerala, is Philip Kutty’s farm. The widowed mother-in-law daughter-in-law duo that run the homestay that their respective husbands started are renowned for their cooking. Their style of cuisine is Syrian Christian – just one among Kerala’s confusing welter of Christian denominations, albeit the one best-known for their style of cooking. I had been staying with them for a few days, and one afternoon, over lunch, the mother-in-law was telling me about the spice blend that they used as a dip for idlis, chammanthi podi, as it is called in Kerala. They couldn’t find the blend, so I went with them into their cavernous kitchen, with black basalt counters and polished red floors, to look for it. There were rows and rows of spices on their racks, so I started by taking them down, one by one, opening them, sniffing the contents and returning them to the racks. A few jars later, I thought I had found what I was looking for. The colour was dark and speckled, and the fragrance was poetic: It transported me to the spice gardens that are the highlight of all my trips to Kerala. ‘Is this it?’ I asked triumphantly. Mother and daughter looked at me with narrowed eyes. ‘That’s black pepper,’ they said, incredulous that someone who called herself a food writer could not identify this most elemental of all spices, one reputed to be the most widely used spice in the entire world.
I could scarcely believe my eyes either. The spice in that plastic jar was absolutely nothing like the pepper that pretentious South Delhi restaurants crush on your plate of carpaccio with a pepper mill the size of a bludgeon. On my way back to Delhi, I stopped at Kochi and bought a modest amount of black pepper (the variety that I bought is called Malabar Garbled Extra Bold, one of the most premium peppers produced in the world) and I now know the true taste and fragrance of black pepper. But I don’t think the Kuttys will ever let me within a mile of their island again.
There are several types of peppers, but the International trade, however, centres around black pepper (Piper nigrum ), although white and green pepper are offshoots of the same plant, in different stages of ripeness and processing. A cluster of peppercorns on the vine turns red at first. When it turns green, it is plucked. If the peppercorns are then dropped into brine, the enzyme that turns the outside surface (called the pericarp) black is halted, and the peppercorns remain green. If they are allowed to dry, they turn black and the pericarp wrinkles, giving black pepper its characteristic crinkled look. If the pericarp is sloughed off, the inside is shown to be smooth and white – this is white pepper. Sloughing can be done by a dry or wet process, depending on the country of origin. While South-East Asia has developed a long-drawn out soaking process, India has a dry process for the sloughing off of the pericarp. Because the pericarp, that contains sugar and part of the volatile aroma compounds of pepper, is sloughed off, white pepper has a slightly different flavour than black pepper, and is primarily in demand because its use doesn’t interfere with the appearance of a finished dish.
Though the coast of Malabar has historically been where the lion’s share of the world’s black pepper has come from, in a rather cruel twist of fate, today it is Vietnam that exports the largest amount of pepper, and India has been reduced to number four. Vietnam’s skill in removing the pericarp of black pepper has made it the number one exporter of pepper in the world. However, the common consensus is that the pepper indigenous to the coast of Malabar has the best flavour. This is because these hills are lashed by monsoon winds at precisely the time of the development of the flower into the spice. The pollination of pepper is done by gentle rain in April–May. No rain at all or rains that are too heavy can be a disaster for the crop.
The pepper plant is a climber as opposed to a creeper. It is often planted around corral trees whose thorns allow the pepper vines to grow upwards with a good grip. Travel out of Kochi into almost any upland region of the state, and you’ll catch sight of trees wrapped with vines of the pepper plant. Once upon a time, the sight was common only in the heavily forested regions around the coast of north Kerala and later in Thekkady and Wayanad, but with the constant climb of international pepper prices, even farmers whose land is not quite as high in altitude manage to coax pepper vines around host trees. Black pepper drying in the sun is one of the distinctive sights of Kerala’s countryside. Even in Kochi, around the tiny lanes of the Jewish quarters, you can see able-bodied men raking tons of pepper set out to dry on coconut leaf mats. This is done to ensure that each berry dries to a moisture content of 12 per cent. More than that and there’s a chance that mildew will set in.
It quite often does, especially in cases where farmers have intentionally kept the moisture content slightly higher than 12 per cent to make a quick buck: effectively, what they are doing is increasing the weight of the spice.Once this happens, some crooked practices are often set in motion for the spice’s recovery. The most common of these consists of hurriedly drying the berries on high heat and then spraying them with oil – any oil – to give them a glossy appearance, effectively conning customers into buying pepper that is not of very good quality. I have bought many an attractive packet of glossy black peppercorns. However, whenever I’ve tried to grind them in the limestone mortar and pestle I use for my spices, they had no taste whatsoever, which has now made me wary about suspiciously shiny peppercorns. As a general rule, there is no substitute for tasting a tiny pinch of a spice before buying it. It goes without saying that a freshly harvested spice that has been stored carefully can make all the difference to a cooked dish, just as a spice that is long past its sell-by date would not add value to a preparation, even if added in great quantities. This is especially so for pepper, which can either prickle your palate with its pungency or have the appeal of sawdust.
The other state that is associated with pepper is Karnataka. The uplands of Coorg have many hundreds of privately-owned estates that are planted with pepper and coffee. Coffee needs a shade tree. The shade provided by tall trees that vary from rosewood to teak to silver-oak. It is on these that pepper vines are then trained, so that pepper, in a manner of speaking, becomes subsidiary to the all-important coffee, unlike in Kerala, where pepper is king, with the corral tree being completely incidental, though the soft wood of the corral tree is good for making matchsticks.
Many of these old estates in Coorg have now been turned into homestays, which provide a quiet and secluded stay away from the bustle of everyday life. I found out how secluded they really are on my three-day visit to Varuna Plantations, not far from Virajpet, the main town in the region. For the three days of my stay, I met nobody but my hosts, Sagar and Kavita Muthappa. I did not even speak to anybody but them, not even on my cellphone, because given the topography of the region, I would have had to trek for a kilometre or two to get a signal. There were no neighbours visible, no blare of a television set or voices of children playing, no tradesmen calling out their wares, no vegetable vendors, no postman, no courier delivery boy, no rumble of a local bus: nothing at all. As much as I love silence, it was ever so slightly unnerving. In the evenings, we would sit in the garden and talk desultorily till the silence would suddenly be broken by a dog barking in the distance. My hosts pointed out that as sound travels easily across the hills, the dog was likely to be at least five kilometres away.
The Muthappa’s estate primarily grew coffee, with shade trees that included jack and silver oak. It was up these that the graceful pepper climbers were trained, with their artistic, heart-shaped leaves trembling in the breeze and curved drupes of glossy peppercorns clinging tightly to the central stem. The small but furiously efficient team of plantation workers on the estate appeared to know each individual coffee bush (and there were thousands!). They knew under which bush a patch of wild mushrooms might sprout in another week. In Coorg, varieties of wild mushroom and bamboo shoots grow near the coffee bushes during the rainy season, but you can only find them if you know where to look. During the torrential three-month monsoon, the estates are even more secluded than they are during the rest of the year. Hence, stocking the larder becomes a necessity, and the home-made wines and pickles that are sold in the shops all over the area point to the industriousness of these estate owners.
The largest plantations in Kerala and in Coorg have some similarities. In both states, there is a lifestyle that revolves around the estate and its crops. The planter may be at the top of the chain, but he and his family are dependent on the staff, who, in most cases have lived on the estate for generations. When you compare the growing conditions in south Karnataka and in Kerala, though the plantations in Kerala are marginally closer to the sea than Coorg plantations, both states have similar soil and climate conditions: red laterite, and approximately equal humidity. However, the piperine content in Kerala pepper – the alkaloid responsible for its pungency – is marginally higher: 6 per cent compared to the 5 per cent in the Coorg crop.
I once tasted a recreation of a meal from the 6th-century Tamil treatise Pakadarpana . The late Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni, who used it as inspiration, made it clear that the text was a sort of home-science treatise and not a recipe book, but if you read into it, you could extrapolate which spices and ingredients to use for a particular preparation. Of course, the meal was just an approximation based on a manuscript written in Tamil, but the broad details had been meticulously adhered to. The only spices used, for example, were the ones that were known at that time, which meant it had been spiced entirely with long pepper as, at the time the treatise was written, black pepper was something of a novelty. (Long pepper, Piper longum , which looks like a tiny pine cone with seed-like projections, was common in India as well as Greece and Rome till black pepper ousted it from its position of prominence around 12th century CE. Today, it is used, if at all, in Ayurvedic medicine.) In our meal, it was used in conjunction with ginger, and the bite was pungent, because Piper longum has a hotter bite than Piper nigrum , but nothing like the blast of hotness from chillies that we now have come to expect in an Indian meal, since, of course, there were no chillies in 6th-century India. Even though in that particular meal, the use of pepper was controlled, it made me wonder whether the predilection Indians have for spicy food has something to do with the fact that pepper is indigenous to our country. And while in most other parts of the world, pepper is primarily used as a seasoning, rather than a spice, in India we use it in a wide range of dishes: from rasams and curries to panjiri to sweetened milk-based drinks like thandai. In North India, black pepper is one of the ingredients in garam masala, but it is by no means used in every version. Chef Manjit Gill of ITC Hotels jokes that the most visible signs of the use of pepper up north is in matthis, the deep-fried, flaky flour savouries that are a feature in both Punjab and UP. For a matthi to be ‘authentic’, it has to have a whole peppercorn pressed into its centre.
Of course, there are other quintessentially Punjabi dishes that black pepper goes into. All types of wadis – dried, pounded and spiced urad dal dumplings, usually cooked with one or two vegetables – have to have black pepper in addition to cumin, coriander powder and chilli powder. In fact, the city of Amritsar uses far more black pepper in its cooking than many neighbouring states. Chana masala, tawa-fried meat, even raita, all use ground pepper for its hot bite and colour, since pale fish, mutton, chicken and lentils are not looked upon with much favour in Amritsar.
Most restaurants in North India also have a special dish called chicken kali mirch that is something of a trick up their sleeve. The heat of black pepper goes well with the mild blandness of chicken and the best conveyor of the heat is the creaminess of a dairy product. So a curd-based gravy with just a few spices is mixed with a strong dose of crushed pepper powder before being taken off the fire. It all works well against the canvas of two mildly flavoured ingredients, yogurt and chicken, amidst which is a hit of black pepper.
The state with the highest usage of black pepper is, predictably, Kerala. There, it goes into every last stir-fry of vegetables, shrimp and red meat. Even curries are not exempt from a few peppercorns added to spices while they are frying. It is what sets Kerala’s cuisine apart from its neighbours, though as a general rule, all rasam/saaru, by definition, have a powerful punch of freshly pounded peppercorns.
Ayurveda also plays a part in accounting for much of the usage of black pepper. According to Ayurvedic tradition, pepper helps temper pitta – which governs heat and metabolic functions of the body.
When peppercorns are moistened with a little water and ground on a grinding stone, they are said to lose their heating properties and become cooling to the system (which is why thandai, drunk in summer, always contains ground pepper along with rose petals, almonds, poppy seeds and fennel). There is also a prevalent belief that when uncooked mutton is marinaded with a very strong dose of ground black pepper for a few hours and then washed off with boiling hot water, it rids the meat of its cholesterol-causing properties. Many patients who have been warned not to consume red meat by their cardiologist, resort to this practice when overcome by cravings.
It is believed that there are more than 63 varieties of pepper, not all of them edible or even closely related to what we know as pepper. Like with so many other spices, in the case of pepper too, etymology leads to confusion. Take Sichuan pepper, for instance, which is not really a pepper at all but the fruit of a bush called the prickly ash. And thereby hangs a tale. The English named the bush thus for the thorns that the branches undoubtedly have, but the word ‘ash’ probably comes from the leaves of the tree that resemble those of the ash (Fraxinus excelsior ), without being related to it in the least.
Sichuan pepper comes from plants in the genus Zanthoxylum, which includes so many species, from so many various continents, that it is a botanist’s nightmare to separate all of them. It is neither a chilli pepper nor a black pepper. And besides the common Sichuan pepper, there are many other variants: a Japanese version whose leaves are crushed to make sansho pepper, a Korean version, one version from Nepal, another from Uttaranchal and one from the west coast of India, which includes Goa, north Karnataka and parts of Maharashtra. Here, in the western part of the country it is known variously as triphal, teflem, jumman kai and teppal. Like all its cousins across the globe, Zanthoxylum rhetsa (the Indian coastal variant) grows from a thorny tree.
One can spot the teppals in any market in Goa, sold in bunches tied with twine and, depending on which month you visit the market, they will be either dark green and not quite open, or brownish-black and open, with the central shiny seed removed. (The seed has to be discarded in all species of Zanthoxylum, for it has a bitter taste and a gritty texture.) All the essential oils are carried in the pericarp or leathery outer skin. It does bear a cursory resemblance to Sichuan pepper, but the skin of teppal is far from being papery and brittle. Bite into one, and in a few minutes, you will feel your mouth becoming strangely numb: the reason why it is referred to as ‘mouth-numbing pepper’. However, to achieve the strange but not unpleasant mouth-numbing sensation, one has to follow a few rules: You do not grind teppal; when the your dish is almost done, you add three or four berries whole, but without the seed, and let it cook; by allowing the cooked dish to stand for fifteen minutes, the character of the teppal infuses through the preparation.
Its astringency cuts out the fattiness of certain fish like mackerel. Potatoes, beans and lady’s finger – all the vegetables that, according to Ayurveda, have a heavy effect on the digestion – benefit by being cooked with tirphal, and the iconic Goan shark curry, ambotik, always contains triphal.
People from the Konkan region settled all over the world discover, to their horror, that they are unable to replicate the tastes of home without it. That’s when a quick search on Google yields the similarity between Sichuan pepper and teppal, and a fortuitous compromise is reached.
It might be appropriate to mention here another instance of a pepper that is not pepper at all. What is commonly touted as ‘pink pepper’ in that assorted mix of peppers you see in the posh glass pepper grinders at your local café is, more often than not, the fruit of a South American tree called Schinus terebinthifolius , and not pepper at all. Be careful not to use them in large quantities though; its sap can cause severe itching in sensitive individuals. Consuming a number of them at one sitting may also cause nausea.
There is a way to ripen black pepper on the vine so that its colour is forced to turn crimson – the ‘true’ pink pepper, if you will – but it is a job for specialists and the cost is high because of the wastage that results. To my knowledge, this process is only undertaken by one single pepper plantation in the entire state of Kerala.
One of the culinary puzzles in the world of spices is that while pepper is endemic to India, there is no use of it in its green form. In Thailand, on the other hand, stir-fries make copious use of drupes of green pepper, glossy and tongue-tingling. In traditional Indian cuisine, the concept of garnish is virtually non-existent, which probably explains why green peppers are rarely found in our cuisine.
And while pepper is used in all parts of the world – it accounts for 20 per cent of all spices traded internationally – it is by no means used equally. In the West, it’s treated primarily as table seasoning while in India, we consider it a spice. Even within the country, some cuisines rarely make much use of black pepper. Take our traditional Kashmiri family for instance. We take the prize for the most frugal use of black pepper: About six peppercorns a week, for 10 people. In our extended family, our only use of black pepper is for lamb koftas which appear on the menu once a week. It is pounded in our mortar and pestle along with black cardamom, shallots and fennel over which the minced meat is added and whole lot is hammered till the mince becomes silky and the spices are amalgamated into its very fibre. And why don’t we use black pepper for other preparations involving lamb? Because it is tradition – the one thing you don’t question or argue with!
ATUL SIKAND’S BLACK PEPPER LAMB
Atul Sikand literally lives for food. On his farm are cows and vegetables. On his Facebook group are over 20,000 souls who post recipes with rapid-fire speed, and Sikand tests each and every one of them before uploading them to Sikandalous Cuisine . This recipe is his own creation.
INGREDIENTS
• 500 g mutton
• 2 tbsp thick curd
• 1 tsp (heaped) garlic paste
• 1½ tsp black pepper, coarsely crushed
• 1 tsp whole black peppercorns
• 2 tbsp coconut, grated
• Salt, to taste
• 15–20 curry leaves
• 3 tbsp ghee
METHOD
• Sauté the coconut till aromatic and lightly coloured and then make into a paste.
• Marinate mutton in curd with garlic paste, salt, crushed pepper and half of the curry leaves. Cling-wrap and leave in the fridge for 12–24 hours.
• Bring mutton back to room temperature. Place the mutton and juices in a pressure cooker and cook for 3 whistles. Allow to cool down.
• In a kadhai, heat ghee, splutter peppercorn and then add the remaining curry leaves. Now scoop out the mutton without the stock and sauté the meat, slowly adding the stock from the pressure cooker.
• Cook covered for 5 minutes then add the coconut paste and cook another 5 minutes or so till done. Adjust salt.
BUTTER PEPPER GARLIC CHICKEN
This is my family recipe for when my two children wanted to eat something tasty and uncomplicated that would be ready at lightning speed: The quest of most mothers all over the world!
INGREDIENTS
• 8 chicken joints
• 3½ tbsp butter
• 4 tbsp garlic, finely minced
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp black pepper, coarsely pounded
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp fresh coriander leaves
• 4–5 black peppercorns, to garnish
METHOD
• Wash the chicken.
• Bring a pot of water to the boil and give the chicken a quick turn in the water till it changes colour. Discard the water. The chicken will now fry evenly.
• Heat butter on medium flame and add the garlic. Sauté till golden.
• Add chicken pieces, salt and pounded pepper and fry on high for 5 minutes till the chicken changes color.
• Lower heat and cook the chicken covered for 15–20 minutes or until tender.
• Remove the lid, increase heat and add lemon juice.
• Cook until completely dry. The trick is to cook the chicken till done without causing the garlic to darken too much.
• Pound the whole peppercorns coarsely and sprinkle over the chicken.
CHEF G. SREENIVASAN’S HONEYDEW AND WATERMELON GAZPACHO
INGREDIENTS
For the gazpacho:
• 600 g honeydew melon (cut into chunks)
• 600 g watermelon (cut into chunks)
• 125 g cucumber (peeled and seeded)
• 2 tbsp green onion
• 50 g mint leaves
• 3½ tbsp coriander leaves
• 3 tbsp honey
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tbsp rock salt
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
For the garnish:
• 4 tbsp feta cheese
• 1½ tbsp pumpkin seeds, roasted
• 8–10 mint leaves
METHOD
• Puree all ingredients in a blender, keeping aside 100 grams of both melons for garnish.
• Place the melon chunks in the serving bowl, pour in the puree over it.
• Serve garnished with pumpkin seeds, crumbled feta cheese and mint leaves.