At Sous Chef we stock ten different varieties of dried Mexican chillies. Perhaps the most commonly used combination is ancho and guajillo. Each other variety has its own distinguishing characteristic though – from the chilli de arbol’s wicked hotness to the mulato’s fruitier notes. The same cooking method applies to all the dried Mexican chillies, so once you’ve mastered a basic chilli paste, start experimenting by adding and taking away different chillies – and before you know it you’ll be tinkering your way toward a thirty-ingredient mole.

Step 1 – Preparing the chillies
Pull the stem off the top of the chilli. Use your hands or a paring knife to split the chilli open, spatchcock-style. Collect the seeds and put them to one side. You might want to add these to the sauce later, to give it an extra kick. You might prefer to wear gloves during this step – if not, make sure you don’t touch your eyes. It will burn.

Step 2 – Toasting the chillies
Traditionally, toasting is done on a heavy, cast iron skillet – but a frying pan will work, and it can even be done on charcoal if you happen to have a barbecue on the go. Use a wooden spatula to press the chillies down onto the dry heat, so that they start to blister and turn a darker colour. This should take between 35-45 seconds.  Some recipes go a step further and toast the chillies until blackened – for 2 to 3 minutes – introducing more bitter notes. The best way to control the process is to toast the chillies in small batches.

Pressing a chilli against a dry pan until it blisters is a counter-intuitive process for a European cook. Traditionally, recipes start with oil or butter in a pan – so forcing out extra flavour by blistering the chillies directly against a hot surface may feel like a brutal technique. The toasting process intensifies the flavour though, and introduces rich, caramelised notes to a dish. At this stage blacken some of the seeds as well, but keep them separate – to add later for extra heat if needed.

Step 3 – Soaking the chillies

Once the chillies have all been toasted, plunge into warm water. This rehydrates them – and the flesh will become moist and supple.

Some writers suggest that it’s important not to soak the chillies in boiling water, as it will leach out too much flavour, instead recommending simmering for 15-20 minutes is ideal. We prefer the easier route. Instead pouring water from a freshly boiled kettle over the chillies, and leave in a bowl to soak – they are not in too hot water for too long, and the soaking water can always be added to the sauce or stew later. Chillies float, so rest a plate or mug over them to keep them submerged.

Step 4 – Blending the chillies
This is the point that the sauce starts to take shape, and some decisions need to be made. First is what other ingredients to blend with the chillies. A traditional chilli paste will might use blackened onions and garlic, along with a selection of other seasonings such as Mexican cumin and oregano. Use a blender to turn the ingredients into a thick paste – adding a little oil or the soaking water to help the mixture keep together. Taste the blended mixture, if you want it slightly hotter add a teaspoon of blackened chilli seeds at a time, and blend again.

The second decision is the thickness of the paste or sauce. To create a chilli sauce with pouring consistency, thin with a fresh or tinned tomatillos, tomatoes, or even a little stock or oil. If the chilli paste is being used as a marinade, then it’s best to keep it in its richest, most intense form while it flavours the meat – as in the Mexican birria recipe. It can then be thinned out at a later stage in the recipe.

The final decision is the sauce’s texture. Some people will strain the sauce through a sieve to make it perfectly smooth. Others will leave the sauce in a more rustic and textured form – there’s no right or wrong, just personal preference.

Step 5 – Cooking the paste (optional)
As with a tomato sauce, the process of slow-cooking a chilli sauce or paste will enrich and deepen the flavour. Pour a little oil into the bottom of a deep frying pan, and then add the paste. Heat to just below a simmer, and keep an eye on it – stirring occasionally – for 20 minutes or so. By the end of cooking, the colours deepen, and the hard edges of the paste will mellow to a full-flavoured rounded sauce.

Two chilli recipe ideas, to get started

1. Simple all-purpose three chilli paste
An all-purpose chilli paste to keep on hand to add richness and spice to almost any dish: add a couple of tablespoons to a chilli con carne, add a teaspoon to a fresh zingy tomato salsa, or add a little salt and use to marinade a pork shoulder before slow-roasting.

Ingredients: 4 ancho chillies, 4 guajillo chillies, 4 pasilla chillies

• Prepare chillies as in steps 1 to 5 above.
• Add a teaspoon of sugar to the paste.
• Store in an airtight jar in the fridge covered in a little oil.

2. Salsa de chile de Arbol
Recommended to us by our chilli supplier, this is the perfect accompaniment to tacos. Plus it can be made straight from the store cupboard in 10 mins.

Ingredients: 3 chile de arbol, 3 cloves garlic (unpeeled), 10 tomatillos (half a can)

Prepare chillies using steps 1-4 above. They are small and tender so only need soaking for 5 mins. Whilst the chillies soak, strain the tomatillos, and blacken for around 5 mins in a hot skillet. Remove to a blender, and then blacken the garlic cloves. Peel the garlic, and blend together the peeled garlic, soaked chillies, and tomatillos. Serve with tacos, or even for dipping tortilla chips.

The post How to cook with Mexican chillies appeared first on Bureau of Taste.

The Drinks Factory is just round the corner from owner, Tony Conigliaro’s, award-winning cocktail bar – 69 Colebrooke Row. While his tiny ‘film noir’ joint acts as something of a shop front, it’s The Drinks Factory which is the brains behind the operation. It’s here that laboratory technicians are pushing all sorts boundaries in the world of drinks development  – infusing vodka with flint stones, extracting water from olives and perfecting port reductions.

 From one side, it seems like a seventeenth century apothecary.
Drifting through the partition though is a familiar, twenty-first century whirr

Many might think that it’s something of an eccentric pursuit, but Conigliaro describes his journey from art historian to the Drinks Factory founder almost as if it were a logical progression. Having worked in fashion houses, Conigliaro moved into the bar industry. But it was while he was working at Knightsbridge’s Isola restaurant that he became frustrated with the poor purées available for using in cocktails. He turned to the pastry chef for advice, and the pastry chef suggested that he made his own.

It was that pear and cinnamon purée which Conigliaro used to flavour a bellini back in 1999 which kick-started his quest to find new and better and different flavours. This then developed into a serious scientific pursuit as he embarked upon bigger challenges. The two-year long project to create food-grade perfume, which involved creating a perfume-like structure which worked in a cocktail. Or the food -grade lipstick, used to mark the side of a champagne glass for his famous Sealed with a Kiss cocktail. Or making diamonds out of vermouth.

Conigliaro was frustrated with the poor purées available for using in cocktails.
He turned to the pastry chef for advice, and the pastry chef suggested that he made his own.

When I meet Conigliaro, he’s particularly excited by the recent discovery of a new ingredient – labdanum. “It’s a really beautiful type of balsamic resin” he explains. “It’s usually found in perfumery, but now labdanum is starting to be used in food too”. Resins and bark and even stones are all familiar ingredients on Conigliaro’s cocktail menu. They don’t have appetite-whetting associations. But it’s just this level of complexity which he finds intriguing.

“It’s all about context, and how you use an ingredient, and what you use it for” he says. “If you look at the ingredients in bitters, they’re quite disgusting. Take quinine in tonic water – it’s poisonous – but in the right amount it’s safe and has a nice bitterness to it.”

Given Conigliaro’s status as the Indiana Jones of ingredients, it’s no surprise that he dedicates a lot of time to developing new cocktails which showcase the ingredients best at 69 Colebrooke Row. It’s a time-consuming process which starts with what the art historian in Conigliaro calls a ‘reference point’ – “Paper flowers. Films. Conversations. Bits of music. Flavours. Concepts. Anything really.”

Often we just don’t have the answers to complete the project,
or the process or the actual ingredients themselves

Another of Conigliaro’s bars, The Zetter Townhouse, shows how his inspiration process works. In the heart of the cocktail lounge is a portrait of an imaginary Great Aunt called Wilhelmina. It’s her storybook adventures which inspire a number of the cocktails on the menu. A nettle-based drink from one of her foraging expeditions down a Victoriana towpath, or the rum and port reduction from when she was a stowaway on a navy ship during the ‘rum ration’ era.

Once Conigliaro finds his inspiration, he sets about perfecting each element of the drink. This can take days, months, years – which is why he often has ten to twelve drinks in the development stage at any one time. “Often we just don’t have the answers to complete the project, or the process or the actual ingredients themselves” he explains.

“I might have a honey, but it’s not the right honey, so the project will be put on hold while we track it down”. He laughs as he describes the amount of olives the Drinks Factory went through as they perfected the olive water part of a Dirty Martini, which took more than 25 different attempts in the centrifuge – tweaking the spin time and temperature each time.

If you change an ingredient, you need to be careful not to unbalance the cocktail,
take every ingredient into account, and look for a different but direct exchange

It’s clear that The Drinks Factory’s drink development is at the extreme technical end of the scale. But Conigliaro encourages keen cocktail makers to experiment at home too. “Sugar syrups are a useful place to start, as are purées” he suggests. “After you’ve mastered those, there are bitters and liqueurs. Anything that has an everyday use in a bar is the best starting point.”

“Begin by tinkering slightly with a classic cocktail recipe” he suggests. “If you change an ingredient, you need to be careful not to unbalance the cocktail, so take every ingredient into account, and look for a different but direct exchange.” Conigliaro explains. “Take a margarita – if you switch triple sec for something else, you’ve got to take into account the sweetness and the flavour profile of whatever you switch it for.”

Laughing about his ‘Rose’ cocktail, which took two years to perfect, Conigliaro’s parting piece of advice rings true– which is that, most of all, developing a new cocktail is a process which shouldn’t be rushed.

‘69 Colebrooke Row‘
69 Colebrooke Row
London
N1 8AA

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The extraordinary creaminess comes only from sesame seeds and tofu – to make it lower calorie you can leave out the sesame paste, and reduce the amount of sesame seeds. It also uses ‘konnyaku’ – often referred to as a ‘miracle’ food. Made from pounded konjac or yam root, konnyaku has close to zero calories, and an intriguing chewy texture.

If you find the dressing looks too grainy for your taste, blend it in a food processor for a few seconds. Make sure the salad is left to chill before serving.

Recipe: Shira ae – Japanese salad with tofu and sesame dressing

Serves 4 with 180kcal per serving

Dressing
4 tbsp white sesame seeds
1 tbsp sesame paste (optional)
340g firm tofu, drained
1 tbsp white miso
4 tsp sugar
½ tsp salt

Cooking stock
1l water
10g dashi powder
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar

Vegetables
1 head broccoli, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 carrots, peeled and cut into fine batons
1 pack white konnyaku, drained, rinsed and cut into fine batons

Shichimi togarishi to serve

First prepare the dressing. Simmer the tofu in boiling water for 5 minutes. Set in a sieve and leave to cool, as any extra water drains away. Toast the sesame seeds in a pan, and grind in a pestle & mortar until fine. Prepare the vegetables.

Bring 1l water to boil. Add dashi powder, soy sauce and sugar. Add the broccoli florets to the water, and cook for two minutes. Then add the carrots and simmer for two more minutes. Remove with a strainer, and leave to cool in sieve or on paper towels, to dry off. Add the konnyaku to the simmering water, and simmer for 5 minutes. Drain, and dry on paper towel.

To finish the dressing, press the tofu through a sieve into a dry bowl. Add the ground sesame seeds, white miso, sugar, and salt. Mix well and taste. Spoon in a little sesame paste if you prefer a deeper sesame flavour – leave out if you’re controlling calories.

When all the ingredients are cold, add the broccoli, carrots, and konnyaku to the dressing. Stir well. Serve, garnished with a little shichimi togarishi seasoning.

The post Recipe: Shira Ae – Creamy Japanese Tofu Salad appeared first on Bureau of Taste.

Serve with pan-roast cod, stirred through spaghetti, or even just heaped onto a slice of toast. Store any extra in a jar in the fridge.

Recipe: Seaweed Tapenade
Serves 6-8

25g dried seaweed (we use nori flakes, irish moss, sea lettuce, sea spaghetti, dulse)
3 banana shallots, finely diced
50g pitted olives, finely diced
50g capers, finely diced
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 tsp black pepper
80ml olive oil

Rehydrate seaweed according to instructions on packet. Chop finely, and stir through shallots, olives, capers, lemon zest and juice, black pepper and olive oil.

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Farro is an ancient grain which has been grown in Tuscany since Biblical times. Known as the ‘breadbasket of Italy’, the area has always been big in wheat production, with a large farming community.

Traditional Tuscan farro soup might be labelled as ‘peasant fare’ due to its lack of meat and reliance on vegetable stock for flavour. But the beans provide protein, with the fibre-rich farro giving the dish a nutty flavour, and the simple but beautiful vegetable stock demonstrating why ‘peasant fare’ remains quite so popular.

This isn’t a quick soup to make – particularly with the pinto beans needing soaking overnight. So we recommend doubling the quantities, and freezing the extra portions. Perfect for an unseasonably chilly evening, spent waiting for spring to arrive. Also try substituting the farro for spelt. It has a harder husk, creating more dramatic textural difference between the soft pinto beans.

Farro Soup
Serves 4

100g farro
125g pinto beans
1 litre vegetable stock
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, chopped
1 celery, chopped
1 tablespoon tomato sauce
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground pepper

To garnish
Roughly chopped flat leaf parsley

1. Soak the pinto beans in cold water overnight, and then boil them in 1.5 litres of salted water.
2. Blend half of the pinto beans, and then set both the whole and the blended beans to one side.
3. Heat the olive oil in a pan, and fry the onion, carrot and celery until softened.
4.  Add the tomato sauce, and cook for a further two minutes.
5. Add the farro to the pan, and then pour over the litre of vegetable stock.
6. Season with salt and rosemary, and then simmer for 40 minutes.
7. Add the whole pinto beans to the pan, and also stir in the blended pinto beans. Cook for a further five minutes.
8. Season, serve and garnish with chopped parsley.

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The early morning jogs seeing the graffiti change, picking stems and carrying them back to share in the office for lunch. The little river through a wood carpeted with the proud green leaves,  bobbing ears of thousands of green Easter bunnies – just close enough to another friend’s house where I hope she is free for me to pop past for a glass of wine.

Wild garlic can be sharp and vegetal when raw, although conversely some complain it’s too mellow when cooked. The flavour also depends on the maturity of the plant, and whether it’s in flower. I like the garlic wilted, but not too much. A touch of sugar in a pesto will help. To make sure we fit in all our greens, I’ve added some monks’ beard by way of marshy contrast. If it’s all a little too ‘green sea monster’ then leave it out – and the lemon zest as well.

Recipe: Spaghetti with anchovies, wild garlic pesto, and monks’ beard

Wild Garlic Pesto
Large bunch of wild garlic leaves (all the stems I can clutch as a bunch in one hand makes 500ml pesto)
Handful blanched hazelnuts
Olive oil
1 tsp sugar (optional)
Salt
Pepper

1. Fill a large mixing bowl with water, add the wild garlic leaves, and swirl to remove dirt. Strain, and dry in a colander or salad spinner.
2. Place in a food processor and drizzle in olive oil – perhaps even as much as a cup. Pulse until you have a green pesto-like paste. Add more olive oil if it is too thick. Sprinkle in salt, pepper and a teaspoon of sugar and pulse again.
3. Taste, season, taste again. If the garlic flavour is too intense, pour into a shallow frying pan, and cook through over a low heat for a few minutes, then pour back into the food processor. Add a rough handful of hazelnuts – they are here for texture, so go by what looks good to you. Keep refrigerated or freeze in small cubes.

Monks beard with pasta
200g dry spaghetti (we adore Martelli spaghetti)
100g Italian Monks Beard (optional)
50g anchovies in olive oil
2-3 tbsp wild garlic pesto (above)
Zest of 1 lemon

1. Add the spaghetti to a large pan of salted boiling water, and leave to cook while preparing the other ingredients.
2. If using monks beard, trim away the pink roots and discard. Was the greens well, and set aside.

3. Place the anchovies, along with their oil, in a small skillet and heat gently until they start to dissolve. Add the wild garlic pesto and stir. Warm through and set aside until the pasta is ready.
4. When the pasta is ready, keep one ladleful of water, and drain the rest in a colander. Pour the pasta and half a ladle of the cooking water back into the hot saucepan. Tip in the pesto, and monks’ beard if using. Toss well. Sit over a very low heat for 2 minutes to help the monks’ beard wilt. Remove from heat, add the lemon zest and season to taste.

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The first alteration lies in the Korean flavours. A phenomenal idea. But Modernist Cuisine at Home misses out doenjang – the Korean equivalent to salty Japanese miso. Gochujang, or Korean hot red pepper paste, has received tremendous press over the last six months thanks to the burgeoning interest in Korean food. But its symbiotic friend doenjang is all too often ignored, to the cook’s peril. Together they create a sauce with perfect balance of heat, sweetness and umami saltiness. We often alter the ratios dependent on the dish – but we nearly always use them together.

Secondly, Modernist Cuisine at Home deep fries their wings. But deep frying can be a chore – it involves lugging about cooking oil, and trips to the dump to get rid of it afterwards. Extractor fans which don’t extract properly fill homes with lingering deep fried aromas. And then there’s always that slight fear of flames. Pan-roasting the wings in the oven and then tossing them in a few tablespoons of rice flour just before the end of cooking creates a crisp outside without the angst…or the calories.

Recipe: Korean-style spicy wings
Serves 10 as a starter, with 4-5 wings each. Preparation time 20 mins. Cooking time 70 mins. 

2kg chicken wings
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp rice flour

For the sauce

225g gochujang (Korean chilli bean paste)
80g doenjang (Korean soy bean paste)
75g sugar
2 tbsp light soy sauce
3 tbsp shaoxing rice wine
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp garlic, finely grated
1 tbsp ginger, finely grated

1. Heat oven to 200°C
2. Joint the chicken wings (we particularly like this boning cleaver). Set aside the the wing-tips. They can be frozen and kept for making stock at a later date.
3. Add a little oil to two roasting tins, and divide the wings between them. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove from oven, and turn the wings over. Roast for a further 20 minutes.
4. While the chicken wings are roasting, prepare the sauce. Add all the sauce ingredients together into a small sauce pan, and stir gently whilst heating until combined. Set aside.
5. After 40 mins of total cooking time, remove wings from oven and sprinkle over a little rice flour. Toss well. Return to oven for a further 20 minutes.
6. Remove wings from oven, and pour over sauce – split evenly between the two roasting pans – and toss well. Return to oven for another 5 minutes until warmed through and a little crispy.
7. Serve with carrot and celery sticks, or – for an American twist – cos lettuce tossed in a blue cheese dressing.

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Kenedy’s love affair with Italy is deeply-entrenched thanks to childhood holidays spent at his family home in Sperlonga – between Rome and Naples – near where his Italian mother grew up. “Before I started school, before I finished school, pretty much every year of my life I’ve been to Italy” the London-born chef smiles. But it was after he graduated that a year-long jaunt around the country planted the seeds for Bocca di Lupo: “At the time, it was just a year of exploration – quite naughty, quite enjoyable – but in retrospect it was the research that became the backbone of Bocca” he says.

Indeed, the menu reads like a travel itinerary: the battuto (raw young beef seasoned only with oil) is a dish from Piedmont, the fennel salami recipe is from Tuscany, and the fried courgette fritters are a regional dish from Lazio. A menu clearly produced from commitment to ‘field research’ – no quick fixes, no fusion food, but a geographic documentation of the cuisines throughout the country.

At the time, it was just a year of exploration – quite naughty, quite enjoyable –
but in retrospect it was the research that became the backbone of Bocca

“When looking at a pasta dish, it’s important to pay attention to how the people in every region have always cooked it, because they’ve had generations to get it right.” Kenedy laughs. “A local pasta recipe and a local sauce recipe tend to go quite well together –usually, if you copy what they do in Italy, then it’ll probably turn out alright.”

“In general, lighter sauces which are less adhesive work better with finer pasta. And heavier, oilier sauces are better with chunkier pastas.” Kenedy explains. If you were in Bologna, people would rather die than eat ragu with spaghetti – it’s always with tagliatelle or tortellini” he says, before pausing for thought. “But hey, if you like spaghetti with bolognese then that’s just fine”, Kenedy laughs, stressing that he doesn’t have a favourite pasta dish, but likes “whatever is in front of me at that very moment. If it’s good.”

Not only does Kenedy capture Italy’s different regional cuisines through his pasta and sauce combinations, but he’s also able to chronicle the country’s history through the consistency and shape of the pasta itself: “The northern regions tend to use very thin egg pastas” he explains. “It’s because the north was always richer. It was a kind of status symbol. Eggs were expensive, and if your dough was thin, it showed that you had a lot of spare time to roll it.”

“Naples is where Italy had its first major industrialisation” Kenedy says. “So that’s where they have all the shapes – long pasta like spaghetti and tagliatelli, as well as the tubular pasta, made on new-fangled machinery.”

It’s important to pay attention to how the people in every region have always
cooked it, because they’ve had generations to get it right

“In the south, the pasta is made from semolina and water. Partly, it’s because the wheat in the south is harder, with higher-gluten content. But also because the region was poorer, historically. So water and semolina-based pasta like Puglia’s orecchiette is cheap and quick to make.”

It’s not just the pasta recipes which are important to Kenedy though. Across the road is Gelupo – a gelateria where he makes ice cream “the way I learned it in Gianni’s gelateria in Bologne”. Kenedy’s determination to recreate a genuine product has even resulted in a half-Italian staff force. The restaurateur laughs, commenting how he has become completely fluent since opening Bocca di Lupo – a sign that he’s a constant presence in the kitchen. Not the kind of boss to stand back and bask in the glory of his success.

“I’m at my happiest in the kitchen” Kenedy smiles. “In a kitchen, you work very closely together in a team. And when it’s a good team, it can be a very intimate experience. It’s a fast-paced, high-pressure environment which I respond to well. And at the end of the day, any anger is gone – there’s nothing left over.” He smiles. Perhaps nothing that is, except the feeling of satisfaction from serving a rare and authentic piece of Italy to another lucky room of diners.

Bocca Di Lupo
12, Archer Street
London
W1D 7BB

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In 1340 when Florentine merchant Francesco Pegolotti listed his inventory of 288 spices, it included white pepper, long pepper, grains of paradise, cubeb pepper and round black pepper. Cubeb pepper frequently appeared in Medieval Polish recipes, and it was also used in the fourteenth century English collection of recipes – Forme of Cury – for flavouring dishes like ‘rabbits (connynges) in syrup’. We know that medieval cooks in northern France often used long pepper, and at the Court of Burgundy in the fifteenth century, grains of paradise took preference over the common black pepper.

when Florentine merchant Francesco Pegolotti listed his inventory of 288 spices, it included white pepper, long pepper, grains of paradise, cubeb pepper and round black pepper

The booming spice trade meant that there were a lot of traders trading a lot of spices. And medieval recipes held the art of spicing dishes in high regard. Historian WE Mead describes how “cooks…prided themselves upon the number of incongruous elements they could combine in one dish without making it uneatable…they catered for men and women…whose palates were dulled by sharp sauces, by spiced wines and by pepper, mustard and ginger and cubebs and cardamom and cinnamon.”

Toward the end of the 15^th century, Venice was importing 1,000 tons of peppercorns per year – making its fortune from the monopoly it had on trade with the Middle East. This inspired the Portuguese explorer, Vasco de Gama, to set off in search of new trade routes. And in 1498 he struck gold when he landed on India’s Malabar coast. Soon ships laden with peppercorns were doing a roaring trade in Indian peppercorns – known as “black gold”. But with such high prices, the prized Indian peppers didn’t displace Europe’s diverse array of spices and seasonings which had been traded for centuries . And for many years, chefs were able to pick and choose from the most enormous array of spices which were being traded throughout Europe.

Matching salt ‘n pepper shakers on a refectory dining table, dispensing tasteless flecks.
And grains of rice to stop the dried pepper from clumping

Leap forward to the twentieth century, and the national obsession with pepper had dwindled to stale pots of pre-ground pepper. Matching salt ‘n pepper shakers on a refectory dining table, dispensing tasteless flecks. And grains of rice to stop the dried pepper from clumping – to keep it ‘fresh’ for as long as possible. Months…years perhaps. 

Around the time that fondues became fashionable though, people rediscovered the beauty of freshly ground pepper. And soon everybody had a wooden grinder on their wedding list. Italian restaurants allocated waiters to be Chief Grinder, arming them with increasingly large weapons to dash from table to table, seasoning dishes in front of the diners’ very eyes.

And then – as is the way with food trends – freshly ground black pepper suddenly fell out of fashion again. Mocked as a retro. And so a pepper backlash began. “Pepper…is a fickle spice – it can be used well, but add too much, and your food tastes cheap and crass” wrote food writer and anti-pepper ringleader, Sara Dickerman, in 2012. As momentum gathered, others joined in: “it makes food taste the same”, “why’s it used on everything?”, “it’s lazy!” critics cried.

Pepper…is a fickle spice – it can be used well, but add too much,
and your food tastes cheap and crass

Quite right. We’ve got a lot to learn from our discerning forefathers, who were familiar with a far wider range of peppers that we are. Freshly-ground, strong black pepper doesn’t enhance every dish. And quite often more subtle flavours work far better – the light, coconut flavours of Grains of Paradise are a far better match with fish than a heavier, spicy Telicherry pepper.

Pepper is now grown all around the world. And its taste depends on a lot of things. A wine merchant recognises that a Chardonnay from Burgundy is very different from a Chardonnay grown in a warmer climate like Australia. But peppers’ ‘terroir’ is rarely recognised by cooks – many of whom freely use pepper as the all-important finishing flavour in a dish.

So we decided to investigate here at Sous Chef, and have pulled together a guide to help.

Have you cooked with any “Medieval Peppers” like long, cubeb or grains of paradise? How did you use them? And how did the tastes differ from the common black peppercorn? 

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