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| | Hot red pepper or chilly -- dry fruits of tropical semi shrubs Capsicum frutescens, spice.
Botanical description:
Plant with height upto 60 cm with branchy stems, elliptic leaves and large white or grayish leaves with violet colored blossoms. These fruits look like berries with less-rich pericarp, with shape ranging from round to beak form and color ranging from yellow and red to black- olive green.
Native land of this plant is tropical America. Findings in Peruvian burials testify that the plant is cultivated in Peru long back even before the discovery of America. Spaniards and Portuguese discovered this spicy plant during navigation for Europeans and called it “Indian”. Presently, hot red pepper is grown in many tropical countries, but India and Thailand lead the group of all pepper growing countries.
Properties and use:
Red pepper has strong spicy aroma and taste ranging from spicy to hot and even to very pungent (it is due to the presence of phenolic compound of capsaicin, where as its content is 20times more than in sweet pepper). Some sorts of hot red pepper are so pungent that a single touch is enough to cause irritation of skin. Fruits of red pepper are dried as a whole or powdered; during drying process, seedpods become denser, with color ranging from dark to orange-red. Usually, chilies are dried under the sun, due to which the chilies shrink and then the chilies are freed from cups and handed over for grinding. Thus, cayenne pepper is produced, named after city Cayenne in Guyana (South America). Seedpods of pepper can be kept at dry place and preserve entire winter in air-dried (withered) form. This pepper can be used, when it is fresh along with seedpods (mainly in vegetable dishes and pickles). In dry form, red chilies are used both in seedpods as well as in powdered form. Ground pepper is mostly used in sauces, in dressing of salads, in kefirs, curds, yoghurts, used for dressing egg and rice dishes , it is added to stewed meat and marinades. Whole chilies are put in borsch, coups (while boiling but not after preparation). It is good to spice-up the potato puree with ground red chilies in combination with garlic, coriander, basil, savory and ground bay leaves.
Cultivation:
Red chilies can be grown even in home conditions in flower pots. Required conditions -- regular watering with periodical additional fertilization. |
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