Mid-month: Herbs, Spices and Condiments

A little later than I wished for but here we go. What I love about this topic is all you can do with spices, how you can transform a meal, how you can mix different herbs, spices and condiments to create fabulous tastes and smells. If you add a little cumin and cilantro you will create an Indian like taste and smell. A little chillie, lemon and cilantro, it will remind you of Mexican and so on. Talking about Mexican, I just came across this site I would like to share. What called my attention to it is my absolute love for spicy food, therefore any site or store that offers a nice selection of chillie peppers and other seasonings is worth my investigation. This site is called Pendery's - a world of chiles ands pices. They also have very interesting cookbooks everyone should check out. One of them really called my attention and I am thinking in getting it, it is a mexican cook book about the best 50 salsas.  So... the choice of the month is: Chili

CHILE - CHILLI - CHILLY- CHILIE - CHILLIE 

Above all, which one is correct? We all write it differently. I tend to write it the latter way, even though I found myself not being consistent. From the dictionary.com it seems the correct ones are chili or chile.
ITS STORY
s the fruit of the plants from the genus Capsicum, members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae. The capsicum (Chilli Pepper) plant is indigenous to South and Central America, where they grow wild. The very first concerted cultivation of the plant is believed to have taken place around 7000 to 6000 BC and traces have been found at prehistoric burial sites around Peru. By the turn of the 15th century, when the Spanish and Portuguese landed in Latin America, chillie peppers were widely cultivated for human consumption.

They were introduced to South Asia in the 1500s and have come to dominate the world spice trade. Few could have imagined the impact of Columbus' discovery of a spice so pungent that it rivaled the better known black pepper native to South Asia. India is now the largest producer of chillies in the world.

Chilies were cultivated around the globe after Columbus. Diego Álvarez Chanca, a physician on Columbus' second voyage to the West Indies in 1493, brought the first chili peppers to Spain, and first wrote about their medicinal effects in 1494. From Mexico, at the time the Spanish colony that controlled commerce with Asia, chili peppers spread rapidly into the Philippines and then to India, China, Korea and Japan. They were quickly incorporated into the local cuisines.

An alternate sequence for chili peppers' spread has the Portuguese getting the pepper from Spain, and thence to India, as described by Lizzie Collingham in her book Curry. Collingham states in her book that the chili pepper figures heavily in the cuisine of the Goan region of India, which was the site of a Portuguese colony (e.g. vindaloo, an Indian interpretation of a Portuguese dish, Carne de Vinha de Alhos, meat with a marinate of  garlic and wine). Collingham also describes the journey of chili peppers from India, through Central Asia and Turkey, to Hungary, where it became the national spice in the form of paprika.

Chile peppers are perhaps the first plants to be domesticated in Central America, where there is evidence that they were consumed in 7500 BC. 

There are about 25 species in the genus Capsicum and they originate from Central and South America. Several species have been domesticated to produce many cultivated types, ranging from mild and sweet to hot and pungent.

ITS SMELLS, SCENTS AND TASTES
Can be described as:  fiery, spicy, intoxicating, hot, sweet, sexual
CULINARY USES
Chillies can be added to just about everything you cook. You can add it as you are preparing the food, in a marinate, sprinkled on top or as part of a sauce or chutney. Nowadays the usage of chillies in the kitchen is worldwide used.
HEALING POWERS
Fights inflammation, arthritis pain, helps reduce blood cholesterol, triglyceride levels, and platelet aggregation, clears congestion, boosts immunity, helps the spread of prostate cancer, prevents ulcers, helps with weight loss, lowers the risk of diabetes type2 and so on.
LIST OF CHILLIE PEPPERS
Instead of re-creating a list I found this link that has them all well compiled and organized along with a little description: www.chilipeppermadness.com/chili-pepper-types.html. One they do not have though  which I absolutely LOVE is the Galician (north west of Spain) Pimiento de Padron.
HOW TO GROW CHILLIE PEPPERS INDOORS
Apart from the beauty of the plant itself, growing chillie peppers indoors is not that hard as long as they get sufficient amount of sun every day. Do make sure to grow them in a nice size pot, have rich organic potting soil and once the frost is over and the warm sun it out, bring them back outside.

For this posting I grabbed information from the following links:
www.whfoods.com
www.plantcultures.org
en.wikipedia.org