Malagueta pepper

• pimenta malagueta

  Portuguese — Brazil

  In Portugal, and in Portuguese-speaking Africa, malagueta is often used for small hot chillies in general rather than for this one cultivar group.

Clean, sharp, quick heat with a fresh vegetal note. In oil or vinegar the liquid takes the heat and the fruit softens.

Sharp and green, with little of the fruitiness of Capsicum chinense.

Pale green through yellow-green to bright red; small and slender.

Thin-walled and small; eaten whole from the bottle by the brave.

• Capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin — The pungency, fat-soluble and readily extracted into oil — which is why malagueta oil is the usual way the chilli reaches the table.(what capsaicin is, what dihydrocapsaicin is)

Use whole in moqueca, or pound with garlic, lime and salt for a table sauce. For a bottled sauce, acidify with vinegar, or keep an oil infusion refrigerated and use it quickly.

Moqueca baiana, vatapá, acarajé and caruru in Bahia; molho de pimenta with feijoada, churrasco and fish throughout Brazil; and the bottle of chillies in oil on the table. It pairs with dendê oil, coconut milk, lime, garlic, coriander leaf, prawns and white fish.

• infusing — Steeped whole in oil or vinegar for days or weeks, the chillies give their heat to the liquid, which is then spooned over food. Capsaicin is fat-soluble, so an oil infusion carries more heat than a vinegar one.
• grinding — Pounded with garlic, lime and salt into molho de pimenta, a fresh table sauce.

Firm, glossy fruit with a taut skin.

• Soft spots
• Mould

• Softening and mould in fresh fruit

Solanaceae

A bushy Capsicum frutescens bearing small, slender, upright fruit a few centimetres long that ripen from pale green to red. The species also includes the Tabasco chilli.

Capsicum frutescens originated in lowland tropical South America. Malagueta is its Brazilian form, grown especially in Bahia and the northeast.

• Brazil (Bahia and the northeast) — major producer

Picked green or red; both are preserved, the red fruit hotter and sweeter.

1. Preserving in oil or vinegar — Whole fruit packed into bottles and covered with oil, vinegar or cachaça, which becomes the table sauce.Why: Extracts the heat into the liquid and preserves the fruit.

Grown widely on small farms and in home gardens; the plant is perennial in the tropics and crops over a long season.

Hot and humid tropical lowlands.

Fresh or bottled. Outside Brazil the bottled chillies are the realistic form; a bird’s eye chilli steeped in vinegar is a close relative if nothing else is found.

• Firm, glossy fruit.
• For bottled malagueta, a vinegar or acidified product rather than raw chillies in plain oil.

The name tells a Portuguese story. In the fifteenth century the Portuguese traded melegueta pepper — the seed now called grains of paradise — from the West African coast; after they encountered American chillies, the name passed to the new pungent spice, and in Brazil it settled on this local Capsicum frutescens.