Fw: [Sca-cooks] Discussion of usage of capsicum peppersinAsiainourperiod.

[Craig Jones]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sca-cooks-bounces+drakey=webone.com.au at ansteorra.org
[mailto:sca-
> cooks-bounces+drakey=webone.com.au at ansteorra.org] On Behalf Of Phlip
> Sent: Friday, 21 January 2005 10:26 AM
> To: SCA-Cooks
> Subject: Fw: Fw: [Sca-cooks] Discussion of usage of capsicum
> peppersinAsiainourperiod.
> 
> More comments fron Gene Anderson on the pepper question...
> 
> Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...
> 
> > Chiles were instantly popular--Columbus thought he'd found
> > the Indies and that the capsicums were a new kind of pepper--
> > hence the confusion still with us.  He brought some back to
> > Europe, I believe.  Certainly by the 1540s they were indeed
> > pretty well known.  The Portuguese had a rep for taking every
> > new useful crop with them on voyages--they had maize in West
> > Africa before 1500.
> 
> > There are several species of Zanthoxylum used.  They are
> > the "brown pepper," "flower pepper," etc., of the books.
> > Water pepper is usually something else:  Polygonum spp., the
> > rau ram of Vietnamese cooking.
> 
> > There is also a plant called Hydropiper, which literally
> > means "water pepper," that is called "water pepper" in the
> > lit.  It's a spicy leaf like rau ram.
> > Gene

Ok.  That's what I had suspected.  Can you ask Gene a followup question:
"I light of your response, what's the difference between water pepper
and smartweed?"  Do we have exact species names for them?

Cheers,

Drake.