Voatsiperifery

• voatsiperifery

  Malagasy

  "Voa" means fruit; the rest of the word names the plant. Sold in Europe under the Malagasy name, and as "wild pepper", which several other Malagasy Piper species are also sold as.

• poivre sauvage de Madagascar

  French

Mildly pungent and strongly aromatic — the opposite balance from black pepper. It reads as fragrance first and heat second.

High and fresh: woody and peppery with a citrus-pine lift, from a monoterpene-rich essential oil.

Reddish to dark brown small berries with a short tail. Processing changes the colour, so shade alone says little about quality.

Small hard berries with a stalk that stays attached; grinds like black pepper.

• Sabinene — A woody, peppery monoterpene and one of the main aroma contributors.(what sabinene is)
• p-Cymene — A fresh, citrus-woody note, and the component that rises most when the berries go through the wet process.(what p-cymene is)
• α-Pinene — The fresh, pine-like top note.(what α-pinene is)

Grind at the table or at the very end of cooking. Use it where you want perfume rather than heat, and do not waste it in a long braise.

A finishing pepper: ground over fish, shellfish, white meat, fruit and chocolate desserts, where its aroma is wanted and black pepper’s heat would be too much. It has been taken up mainly by European, and especially French, restaurant cooking.

• grinding — Best ground at the last moment, straight onto the plate: the aroma is the point, and it is the volatile half of the spice.
• toasting — Worth avoiding or keeping very brief. There is little pungency for heat to bring forward and a lot of aroma for it to drive off.

Crack a berry. It should smell of citrus and wood at once; old voatsiperifery smells of dust and little else, since it never had much bite to fall back on.

• A faint smell on cracking
• Berries that crumble

• Evaporation of the monoterpene-rich essential oil, fastest once ground

Piperaceae

A forest liana native to the Mascarenes and Madagascar, climbing up to fifteen metres into large rainforest trees. The berries hang on short stalks, which stay attached after drying as the small tail that marks the spice.

The rainforests of eastern Madagascar and the Mascarene islands.

• Madagascar (The eastern rainforest) — origin. The source of the traded spice, gathered wild.
• Réunion — notable producer. Native, and traditionally collected.

Berries picked by hand from vines high in the forest canopy — labour that, with the rarity of the plant, accounts for its price.

1. Blanching — In the wet process only: the fresh berries are dipped briefly in hot water.Why: Speeds drying and changes the colour.
2. Sweating — In the wet process only: the blanched berries are held warm and covered.
3. Drying — Sun-dried, with or without the two steps above.

Adulterated with related Malagasy wild peppers and with cultivated pepper; see the authenticity section.

Not cultivated in any quantity. The whole supply is gathered from wild vines, by village communities who climb the host trees to pick the berries by hand.

Wet tropical rainforest.

Whole, always. Ground voatsiperifery cannot be told from ground black pepper by eye, and its whole value is volatile.

• Whole berries with their short tails still attached.
• A named species and a Malagasy origin from a specialist supplier.
• A citrus-woody smell and a mild bite when a berry is chewed; a strong black-pepper bite suggests substitution.

Gathered and used locally in Madagascar and the Mascarenes, and a recent arrival in the international trade, where its rarity and the labour of collecting it command a price around ten times that of black pepper.

A small, high-value export trade from eastern Madagascar, at around two hundred US dollars a kilogram — at least an order of magnitude above black pepper — supplied entirely from wild collection.