The sun and heat of the long summer days have accumulated in the sturdy stems and leaves of our pepper plants and we’ve come into full harvest on several varieties with more to come.
For spice, you can find on our website Jalapeno peppers and the relatively milder Pimento pepper. Green and red, respectively, both concentrate most of their heat in the white membranes (or “veins”) and seeds of the fruit, leaving the flesh considerably less spicy. To tone down the heat when cooking with these peppers, simply remove the membranes and seeds or use only a part of them. Even milder than the pimento is the Poblano pepper. Deep green almost to the point of looking black, these are popular for roasting and stuffing to make chile rellenos.
On the sweet pepper side, we’ve got the famous heirloom Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Italian Frying Pepper (what a mouthful!) along with golden-hued Mini Bell peppers and the noble red Corno di Toro. Both Jimmy’s and the Corno di Toro excel in stir-fries or sautéed and tossed with pasta or meat. The Mini Bells are an adorably tiny cousin to the larger sweet bell peppers still ripening in the field, perfect for snacking on raw, coloring a crudite or chopped and added to a salad.
Whether spicy or sweet, peppers have more Vitamin C than citrus and add a healthy blend of fiber and other micronutrients to your meal. Spicy peppers derive their heat from the compound capsaicin – a substance that is used medically to relieve inflammation related to several chronic health conditions and is currently under research as a possible treatment for prostate cancer. For many of us, the burning sensation that comes with eating (or even simply touching) the hottest peppers can be a deterrent, but the nerve stimulation and endorphin release that follows exposure to capsaicin may actually be very good for us.
Add a few pounds of peppers to your next order and sample from the variety currently coming on. There will be more varieties to come, as well, so keep checking the catalog.
All the best from the farm!
