442. That's the number of pepper varieties that are grown just down the road from us in Parma, at Azienda Agraria Sperimentale Stuard. Only 20% of them are original species, the rest have been cross-bred by Mario Dadomo, making it Italy's, or I think possibly the world's, largest collection of peppers. It is wonderful to see that although many veggies are becoming less diverse and standardized, it is not true for Parma's peppers. Although Italian spicy food may be more associated with Calabria, and hot chili peppers are often associated with India or South America, Parma has the right climatic conditions to grow such diverse varieties of peppers.
Rows and rows of peppers grow in alphabetical order, with appropriately heated names like Apologize, Ciao, Bodyguard, and Sahara. Red, orange, yellow, purple, green, chocolate-brown, black splattered across the rows of plants like a Jackson Pollock painting. Long, round, fat, wrinkled, split, squat, berry-like, phallic, olive-shaped, and bulbs of strung Christmas tree lights are only a few adjectives to describe the shapes. I especially liked the topepo - a pepper that looks like a tomato - hence tomato + peperoncino. The diversity was overwhelming and fascinating. Some pointed vertically like reprimanding witches fingers. Some sprouted spiky red tubes with a sparse amount of leaves. Some had nearly-black dark purple leaves with green undertones that looked identical to basilico rosso. Some dangled sadly, rotting from the season's cold and dropping easily to the ground. Some were like an open box of Crayola - red, orange, yellow, green and purple begging to be picked. Some looked like marbles or Christmas ornaments, bunched together.
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| Twinkled like a starry night. |
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| Peter Pepper. mmhmm. |
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| basilico rosso? |
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| grapes? berries? ornaments? peppers? |
We followed Mario through the field, stepping over the low rows of plants and burying our feet into the mud saturated by the weekend's rain. Our tongue's burned as we tasted different peppers and we tried desperately to remember not to touch our eyes with our spice-stained finger tips. Despite the balmy autumn weather, Arina's nose is still glowing like rudolph since she touched it yesterday morning.
taste the habanero's burn.
Mario started growing peppers 15 years ago as a hobby and could tell a story, and/or history, behind every pepper. SiQuiero was grown to mark his wedding with his Spanish wife. Habanero Chocolate is not named brown because that sounds less appetizing. One pepper from Bolivia only grows in the early spring, typical to the weather of the Bolivian Andes. Many people think that it is the seeds that give out the spice in the bite, but it is in fact the membrane - but the seeds are attached to the membrane so the association, although wrong, makes sense. Birds cannot detect the heat from peppers and in this way as they prefer to nibble on the little peppers, the ''shit'' of the birds, as Mario so awkwardly explained, will spread the seeds and create new pepper plants. And of course, the smaller the pepper, the spicier in general.
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| Mario and his pepper catalogue-bible. |
It awe-astounding to see such a field of peppers - really just beautiful against the dreary Saturday morning fog. It is also a pity that it costs about 2,000 euro to register a new variety, so that the majority of his peppers are not protected. He is trying to promote his e-commerce business online and needs help with translating the Italian catalogue into English so that more people internationally can buy the seeds. Arina and I offered to help translate in our spare time, for our own interest in peppers and all that is spicy - tutti piccante - and in exchange, he gave us two plastic bags to fill with our hearts desire from his pepper collection. It reminded me of going apple-picking in the fall, but instead of baking pies, we'll be making hot hot hot sauce.
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| and this what's left, even after we gave handfuls away at Caro's brunch. |
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