| Hot red pepper or the chili is dry fruits of the tropical semi shrubs Capsicum frutescens, spice.
Botanical description:
The plant has a height of up to 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 a shape ranging from round to a beak form and a color ranging from yellow and red to black and olive green.
The native land of this plant is tropical America. Findings in Peruvian burials testify that the plant is cultivated in Peru way back even before the discovery of America. The Spaniards and Portuguese discovered this spicy plant during the 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:
The red pepper has a strong spicy aroma and taste ranging from spicy to hot and even to very pungent (it is due to the presence of the phenolic compound of capsaicin, where as its content is 20 times more than in a sweet pepper). Some sorts of hot red pepper are so pungent that a single touch is enough to cause irritation of the skin. The fruits of the red pepper are dried as a whole or powdered; during the drying process, seedpods become denser, with a 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 the cups and handed over for grinding. Thus, cayenne pepper is produced, named after the city Cayenne in Guyana (South America). Seedpods of pepper can be kept at a dry place and preserved all winter in an air-dried (withered) form. This pepper can be used when it is fresh along with the seedpods (mainly in vegetable dishes and pickles). In a dry form, red chilies are used both in seedpods as well as in a powdered form. Ground pepper is mostly used in sauces, in the dressing of salads, in kefirs, curds, yoghurts, used for dressing egg and rice dishes and 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 a combination with garlic, coriander, basil, savory and ground bay leaves.
Cultivation:
Red chilies can be grown in home conditions in flower pots. The required conditions are regular watering with periodical additional fertilization. |
