The Magic of Pepper and Peppercorns For Healing and Cooking Table of Contents Introduction How Is Black Pepper Grown? Best Temperature Harvesting Peppercorns Other Types of Pepper White Peppercorns Peppercorn Oil Hot Massage Oil Why Does This Pepper Burn so? Using Pepper for Tooth Problems Gingivitis Cure Sore Throat/Cold Relief Persistent Cold Treating Senile Dementia Throat Soother Diseases of the Scalp Keeping Your Tummy Healthy Tasty Digestive Mix Pepper in International Cuisine Indonesian Satay Using Green Peppercorns in Your Cuisine Traditional Mulligatawny Soup Is Pepper Good for Preserving? Making Coconut Cream at Home Making Desi Ghee at Home Conclusion Author Bio Introduction They tell a story about some extremely avid treasure hunters in the Caribbean about 20 years ago. They managed to get a treasure map about a buried treasure box, buried 400 years ago by some shipwrecked sailors, and with dreams and visions of gold coins and jewels and other precious stones, they began digging at night in all secrecy. In two hours, they struck a box of wood, and they dragged it out. They opened it and plunged their hands in only to find the box full of peppercorns. Those peppercorns had grown moldy, underground, because they had not been dried in the sun. So there were treasure hunters with a moldy smelling sneeze, making powder, which once would have commanded a King's ransom. 400 years ago, this treasure would have been priceless. Today, like other spices, it is universally available all over the globe and anybody considering pepper priceless, like his ancestors used to do is either living in a remote area with no access to a grocery store or mall or does not know about pepper. So, for all those people want to know all about why this spice was considered to be the best ransom for kings and emperors, by Roman conquerors, here is a bit about its history. The pepper is supposed to have originated in the South of India, especially in the Tamil Nadu region where it was called pippali. In ancient times, the ships loaded with peppercorns were collected from areas like Tuticorin, Chettinad, Madurai, the Malabar coast in Kerala and Kanya Kumari (Cape Comorin) and sent all over the globe. Of course, the Romans considered this to be a great addition to their cuisine, and even Pliny the great historian of ancient times made sure that he spoke awarded pepper in his gastronomical delicacies gathered for posterity. He was dismayed with the fact that India drained the Roman Empire of 50 million sesterces every year with her different spices, of which pepper played a very prominent role. Black pepper, which is commonly called as Millagu in the local Tamil vernacular, was of course an integral part of all the cuisines of this area. So they tell a tale about a Tamil cook having to feed a hungry British officer. So he mixed up pepper and water, and made mulligan tanni-literally pepper water, which has been immortalized as mulligatawny in Anglo-Indian cuisine. Pepper was introduced to South Asia somewhere around about 4000 years ago, when it started to be cultivated extensively in Indonesia, Borneo, Java and Sumatra. The word pep comes from adding the missing zing or pepper to your spirit, so when pep talks are peppered with lots of moralizing and lecturing, they can spice up the proceedings really well. Many of the wars in the medieval times in Europe were caused to gain complete power and access to the trade routes to India. That is why, the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the British kept asking their soldiers and navigators and explorers to look for easier ways to get access to shipping routes to places where they could get spices. It is said that when Vasco da Gama reached Calicuta, the traders asked him what he was looking for. "Christians and spices." was his answer. He started up the trade route for Portugal to India, but that soon was taken over by the British.