A Pepper Tiger

Pepper's my favourtie spice. We never had to buy any in the fifteen years we spent in Moraghat Tea Estate, where it grew in abundance. We planted some vines in Bhatkawa T.E. and some here in Thanai, too. The photographs above, however, are of the peppercorns we bought in Tinsukia town yesterday. Our vines haven't fruited yet.

We bought one kilo of black and half a kilo of green for just R.120. What a steal!

Green peppercorns are popped into boiling water for a couple of minutes, when they turn black and are ready to be dried in the sun for storage. The black ones that we found in the bazaar yesterday had already been boiled and were damp, so we gave them another good boil at home.

I plan to use the green ones for another couple of days before boiling them up.

The veggie bazaar at Tinsukia is one of the most colourful I've seen, and if I hadn't been on a pepper chase, I'd have stopped to take pictures!!