Re: [CH] Piri Piri Peppers
Peter Moss (pmoss@yoda.alt.za)
Sat, 10 Aug 2002 04:37:10 RSA-2
> Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 18:12:15 +0200
> From: Frank <frank.neulichedl@conzepta.it>
>> am 07.08.2002 0:12 Uhr schrieb Rob Solarion unter
>> solarion@1starnet.com:
>> Dear Chile-Heads: The other day at Wal-Mart, I was looking
>> at the various peppers and spotted one I'd never seen before.
>> They are "Piri Piri Peppers" imported from Spain and
>> distributed by "Fragata", which is
> As far as I remember the name Piri Piri is used mostly in
> Portugal and Brazil. The name stands for a group of peppers,
> like peperoncino stands for chiles in italy. There are some
> varieties called Piri Piri, but for my mediterranean
> expirience (i'am from the northern italy) the naming is quite
> blury here.
Piri-piri comes from Swahili meaning hot-hot if that helps with
origins of the name. Mozambique used to have a large Portugues
community and piri-piri was used to describe either prawns or
chicken done with these chiles. It has also been adopted in SA.
There is an extensive thread on this in the CH archives.
The chile itself is a C. frutescens similar but smaller than
the Tabasco chile about half to quarter the size. It grows
"wild" throughout most of Africa being distributed by birds.
The African devil and Zimbabwe bird are but other local names
for the same chile that has some regional differences. A
friend brought some back from Mozambique and they were
considerably smaller that what grows here. However I also had
some from Malawi which were larger. YMMV.
It was on a suggested list of alien invaders in South Africa.
Jim (Mild to Wild) grew some from seed and can give you
impressions and comparisons to local to USA chiles. If I
remember correctly he gave it about a 9 on the heat scale.
Taste is typical of C. frutescens.
Germination of seed in general is poor and possibly may improve
with treatment similar to what a bird would give it ;-)
Hardy plant once established. I keep meaning to plant some but
have never got around to it. The seed I have is some 5 years
old now.
Regards
Peter
--
Peter Moss
After one hundred and fifty years and many thousands of firearms
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