Product Description
Purpose
WHAT IS IT?
Long pepper (Piper longum), is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. It works in pretty much anything, including seafoods, raw, or cooked, meats, vegetables, or even sweet dishes.
EXPERIENCE
Long pepper has a taste similar to common pepper (Piper nigrum), from which black, green and white pepper are obtained, but it is more fragrant, and a bit sweeter, tempered by sweet notes of nutmeg, and cardamom. Its “heat” is more like a white pepper. In sufficient quantities it has a more numbing effect.
Its flavor is more complex, mildly reminiscent of spice blends, like garam masala rather than a single spice. A gentler version of black pepper, it has been an obscure, local seasoning. Why? See the backstory, below.
Culinary geography
TRADITIONAL USES
- Nihari – Pakistani beef stew
- Pippali Rasam – a dal soup often made for new mothers, but delicious any time
- Long Pepper Chicken
- Sprinkle on papaya, with lime
A FEW IMPROVISATIONAL RIFFS
- Balinese Ceviche – fresh raw fish with lime juice, long pepper, coconut milk tumeric, galangal, ginger, and salt
- Long pepper vanilla bean ice cream.
- Long pepper/dried pineapple/chocolate sprinkle topping for red velvet cupcakes.
- Southern Fried Chicken, Taiwan-style – Long pepper substitutes for black pepper, for an amazing flavor shift.
THE BACKSTORY
The word pepper comes from the Sanskrit word pippali, which is Sanskrit for long pepper. Ancient Indian textbooksm from Ayurveda, describe both medicinal and dietary uses.
The Greeks acquired long peppers in the sixth or fifth century BCE. Hippocrates’ descriptions of it suggest that the Greeks used it as a medicinal, rather than a spice.
It was a well known spice to the Romans, who referred to all pepper, black, or long, as “piper.”
Round, or black, pepper, competed with long pepper, in Europe, in the twelfth century. It surpassed long pepper, in common use, by the fourteenth.
The quest for cheaper and more dependable sources of black pepper fueled the search for new routes to India, and the Columbian exchange.
The chili pepper, which the Spanish called “pimiento,” brought a new flavor, and heat, that ultimately did in the common uses of the long pepper in much of the world..
AKA
- Bali Cabe
- Balinese pepper
- Balinesischer-Pfeffer
- Bengal pepper
- Bengalischer-Pfeffer
- Indian Long Pepper
- Indonesian Cabé
- Jaborandi pepper
- Jaborandi-Pfeffer
- Kandandippili
- Lada panjang
- Langer Pfeffer
- Long Pepper
- Pipal
- Pippali
- Pippil
- Pippli
- Poivre long
- Stangenpfeffer
- Thippali
- Thippili
- Timiz
- Tippali
- Vanapippili
- ጥምዝ
- पिपल
- पिप्पली
- पीपल
- கண்டந்திப்பிலிதிப்பலி
- வனபிப்பிலி
Get top quality from our friends at SpiceJungle.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.