Tag: tasty

Red Design of Hot Calabrian Peppers

11.02.2020

If you want to know the true colors and appreciate the Authentic Mediterranean Food, you have to discover the natural design and taste of Hot Red Chili Peppers from Calabria.

This intense red color can be found in Calabria, a fertile land, ingenious, rich, ravished by the scent of pines, of white firs and of sea weeds, friendly, but where nature often seems to challenge man with its wild contrasts between mountain and marine environment.

Its natural beauties of great value blend with typical specialities and here ‘Its Majesty’, Calabrian Hot Chili pepper, is palatable and enhances the most simple flavours, playing the role of lord and master.

These hot chili peppers are native to Calabria, Italy, in the southern part of the country. Calabrian chili peppers are considered the “classic” Italian hot pepper. The region of Calabria, Italy, is in the southern part of the country, in the “toe” of the boot.

Calabrian Chili Peppers are members of the nightshade botanic family, also related to tomatoes and to eggplants. The Mediterranean climate is ideal for these small, round, fruity and spicy peppers.

COLORS AND NUTRITIONAL FEATURES

The only thing bolder than their flavor is their rich red color. These Hot peppers has all varieties: small, big, spicy, fruity, smoky, sweet and salty.

Calabrian chili peppers, like other members of “Capsicum annuum” contain high amounts of vitamin C, higher than citrus.

Chili peppers also contain

  • vitamins A and B-6,
  • potassium,
  • iron and
  • magnesium.

The spicier hot peppers contain capsaicin, which has been shown to help stimulate the circulatory and digestive systems. Capsaicin is also researched for its potential as a cancer fighting drug.

THE SHAPE

Calabrian chili peppers are generally round, with a bulbous shape, approximately the size of a large cherry. They mature to a bright, glossy red and have a short, squat stem.

Calabrian chili peppers are available late summer through fall. During these seasons, Calabrian chili peppers develop the best spice and smoky fruit notes, when left to age and picked when they start to show a slightly red exterior.

They are considered a medium spicy chili pepper, ranging from 25,000 to 40,000 “Scoville” units (the measure unit of spicy taste).

The Calabrian chili pepper is a variety of Capsicum annuum native to Calabria, Italy and often found

  • dried,
  • pickled
  • or stuffed and packed in olive oil.

It is a common component to all classic Italian antipasto platters. The small pepper is often referred to as the:

  • Hot Calabrian chili pepper, small red cherry, and
  • “Devil’s Kiss”.

Both they are the best known hot pepper in Italy. The preferred name in Italian is “Peperoncino Piccante Calabrese“, which translates the usual expression ‘Hot spicy pepper of Calabria’.

THE HISTORY

Very few people knows that Pepper varieties of Capsicum annuum originated in what is now Central and South America and the Caribbean, or what Christopher Columbus referred to as the “West Indies.”

It was Columbus, who brought the first peppers back from his travels, thinking they were related to black pepper, or Piper nigrum, one of the most coveted spices from the Indies.

Afterwards, from Spain and Portugal, varieties of Capsicum annuum spread across the Mediterranean (also Calabria) and across the Arabian Peninsula to India and then into China.RECIPES

A particular recipe is that of Hot Calabrian chili peppers traditionally stuffed with chunks of tuna and kept in jars of olive oil. These small, but spicy peppers are good for stuffing. The cooking will mellow the spicy taste, but the flavor of the pepper will enhance the internal stuffing of meats, anchovies and capers, or cheeses.

In Calabria, these small, round, spicy peppers are also stuffed with a mix of local tuna and bread crumbs, into jars of olive oil to preserve them. The peppers are packaged and sold online and at Italian specialty stores.

Calabrian chili peppers can also be pickled in a vinegar brine.

Here three simple recipes:
1. Remove the stem and top, scooping the seeds out with a spoon, then slice Calabrian chili peppers and sauté for topping burgers or steaks.
2. Chop Calabrian chili peppers and toss with spinach or broccoli and garlic for a quick sauté.
3. Use Calabrian chili peppers as a primary ingredient in “Pasta all’arrabbiata”, a dish of pasta with tomato sausage, rich of spicy peppers seeds.

Honey of Calabria

25.1.2020

DELICIOUS HONEY OF CALABRIA

A must of Calabrian food is Honey, a delicious product, an authentic mediterranean piece of culture.

Main types of honey in Calabria are the following:

  • Wildflowers – ‘Miele Millefiori’
  • Eucalyptus – ‘Miele di eucalpito’
  • Fir Honeydew (Spruce & Fir)
  • Orange Blossom Calabrian
  • Strawberry Tree
  • Bergamot Flavored Honey
  • Bergamot Honey
  • Citrus – Orange, Lemon, Grapefruit
  • Chestnut Calabrian
  • Orange Tree Honey Calabrian
  • Spicy Flavored Wild Flower Honey.

Generally, it is used for the preparation of traditional sweets (Pignolata, Mustaccioli, etc…), but orange blossom Honey is employed also in folk medicine (bronchial infections). Only in recently honey has been characterized and appreciated as monofloral.

Main places of production are Amaroni (Catanzaro) Italy and San Ferdinando (Reggio Calabria), where honey is of a ‘clear’ or ‘dark’ quality.

CHESTNUT HONEY

This kind of honey  is perfect  with  Pecorino cheeses or with semi aged Pecorino, flavoured with Balsamic Vinegar.

The production comes from a very big diffusion of the chestnut trees, which often represent the wilder part of the region, both far from the sea and best-preserved. The rich woods of Chestnut cover great extensions of the land.

This environment is pure and without traces of pollution, so that in summer swarms of bees release tons of wonderful nectar, which is perfect for delicious contrasts between aged cheeses and meat dishes.

Namely, this honey is full of impalpable grains of chestnut pollen and these give it a flavor decidedly particular, moderately sweet and bitter aftertaste.

The presence of pollen is due to the chestnut blossom, not particularly beautiful, but long with a sharp smell, sticky to the touch, rich in pollen and nectar, which, depending, on the altitude is everywhere in the months of June and July.

The outcome is a Chestnut honey very rich in fructose, which crystallizes only after a long time, dark  (from brown to black), strong, intense, tannic and woody.

“MILLEFIORI” HONEY

Usually, this treasure of thousand of flowers, patiently elaborated by swarms of bees, is moderately sweet and wonderful  with semi aged Pecorino, for example Mount Poro or Pecorino of Crotone.

The quality of this clear honey comes from a slow creation by spontaneous roaming of bees collecting the nectar from several floral sources.

The wildflower meadows of Calabria are the place where bees search wildflower floral sources. The natural conditions vary during the year, so that the taste of wildflower honey slightly differs from year to year.