How are you all holding up? We’re still mostly isolating ourselves at home which offers plenty of time to do all kinds of things. For a while now, I’ve wanted to improve my cooking skills using variations of both capsicum and legumes, so I started actually reading some of the cookbooks on the shelf – primarily a book on Indian cuisine, a recently acquired one on Peruvian cooking, and another one on chili peppers. Suddenly I learned something that is so painfully obvious that I feel like I should have known this for at least as long as I’ve been a gardener.
Couldn’t find a shot of a pepper, but here are close cousins – green tomatoes, ripening on the vine.
You know the nightshade family – Solanaceae? In particular, the members of the subfamily Solanoideae; potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, etc.? I think it’s fairly common knowledge that those all came from South America – right? And yet, it totally blew my mind to learn that ALL of the world cuisines as we know them today, have the Portuguese to thank for the global spread of the members of the Solanaceae family, and the Capsicum genus. That’s right – before that fateful October day when Cristóbal Colón cast anchor off the east coast of the Americas, no other part of our planet had anything remotely like a chili pepper!!! A hundred years or so later, it was EVERYWHERE!! Wow… I can’t even imagine Ethiopian, Thai or Indian food without it. What a gigantic, historic, culinary watershed moment!
As plants and growers are wont to do, over the next 5 – 600 years the various peppers mutated, were crossbred and further hybridized. Now, there are varieties that we consider typical for the various regions – piri piri in East Africa and birdseye peppers in Southeast Asia, to name a couple. This might explain how I had so completely missed making this connection, but holy crap – what a life altering revelation!! Not to forget the other three major staples either – what would the Swedes and the Irish be without potatoes, the Chinese without the eggplant, and the Italians without the tomato? I’m stunned! And also very, very grateful I picked up that book.
Stay well, everyone!
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Thank you Anna. for sharing your insight and your spontaneous joy through your writing.. It is such a gift to me
Anytime, dear Mamma! Love you! ❤
Glad you’re well, Anna. I like your “culinary watershed ” phrase. I’ve often wondered just how bland the currently rich-hot world foods were before the chili were transplanted everywhere! I haven’t a WV today, as my wildlife thing is happening. 🙂
Sounds like you’re doing well too, which is good news! I’ll check out your “wildlife thing”. 🙂
Indeed peppers are everything and it’s hard to imagine them not everywhere. We had to trek to the grocery store yesterday and hit the FM on Lombard. While Andrew braved the checkout line I escaped to the nursery dept. I almost let myself buy pepper starts, then I saw the tomatoes, in March! (well, it was yesterday). Too early!!! So I left empty handed.
My WV:
http://www.thedangergarden.com/2020/04/wednesday-vignette-opuntia-patch.html
Yeah, that IS too early. Good for you for calling their BS.
It sort of makes one wonder what the Irish ate before, or what the Russians made their vodka with.
Hahaha – who knows? I know the Irish ate a lot of turnips. Maybe the Russians too? I think they mostly made vodka from cereal grains. That’s what the Swedes do to this day. 🙂
Great article Anna! I would have never linked chilli peppers to the Portuguese. Glad everyone’s doing OK. Working from home is not all that bad. I’m using the extra time to learn 1st grade math.
Haha – you crack me up, Greg! So nice to hear from you! Hugs galore! ❤