"The story of the fish pepper really spoke to me. It was an homage to enslaved African foodways, and that influence in Chesapeake Bay cuisine...."
In a world dominated by chiles like cayennes, jalapenos, serranos, and habaneros, there is one little known pepper. Its story is not tied to the Spanish and Portuguese caravels that cross from the new world to old, going east to west. Rather, the story revolves around people who traveled in the opposite direction, from east to west in brigs and schooners, namely, the nearly 12.5 million enslaved Africans who were taken from their homes to the new world.
The fish pepper was first cultivated somewhere in the Caribbean. The chiles made their way north, rather than east, to the Chesapeake Bay.
It is not entirely clear when fish peppers began to be cultivated in the Chesapeake region. One author, culinarian and historian, Michael Twitty, believes that, in the years after Haitian independence, Haitians brought the chiles to the Chesapeake region, where African-American slaves began to grow the peppers. There are also stories about how slaves would rub their feet with fish peppers to throw off the scent of the dogs as the slaves sought freedom. After the end of slavery, African-Americans throughout the Chesapeake Bay continued to grow fish peppers in their gardens. They also tended to use the peppers to flavor mostly seafood dishes.
By the turn of the century, however, the fish pepper largely disappeared. The decline coincided with African Americans moving from the rural eastern shore to Baltimore and Washington, D.C., along with changing food styles. Given the absence of written records from the African-American community during the times of slavery, as well as the dearth of records thereafter, the disappearance went largely unnoticed.
That was until the 1940s, when Horace Pippin made trades, offering seeds from the fish pepper to a local beekeeper in return for the use of his bees. (Pippin needed the bees for their stings, which was a well accepted remedy for arthritis at the time.) The beekeeper, H. Ralph Weaver, kept the seeds. Two generation's later, Weaver's grandson -- William Woys Weaver -- came across the jars of seeds. He shared the seeds with the Seed Savers Exchange; and, today, just about any fish pepper seeds one can find are the descendants of the Weaver's seeds.
Fish peppers set themselves apart from other chiles because of their multitude of colors. One can surely find red and orange peppers, but about 1 in every 50 will lack chlorophyll and be pale in color. As the picture above illustrates, I got quite a few red ones, which are more piquant than than the orange and green ones.
I wanted to pay homage to the ingredient and the African-American foodways where it played an important role. I did quite a bit of research before I found myself back before Michael Twitty. I have read his books and am quite the fan of his important work. You can read about some of that work when I explored his recipes for Kitchen Pepper and for West African Style Broiled Lobster Tails. Twitty has developed a recipe for Fish Pepper Sauce, which is a sauce that I could easily see being used to flavor seafood stews, or as a way to add flavor to other main courses. The recipe reminds me somewhat of eastern Carolina barbecue sauce, which is heavy on the vinegar and laced with hot peppers. (The eastern Carolina sauce also draws its roots from the cooking techniques of enslaved Africans.)
The recipe is easy to make. The hardest part was waiting the two to three weeks before I could use it. Then again, that gave me some time to come up with recipes. There will definitely be more to come with respect to this sauce.
FISH PEPPER SAUCE
Recipe from Michael Twitty, My Cooking Gene, pg. 24
Ingredients:
- 15 to 20 fish peppers
- Kosher salt
- 4 cups apple cider vinegar or rum
Directions:
1. Prep the fish peppers. Take fish peppers, and cut off the tops and tips of the pods. A few peppers, about 5, should be chopped to a pulp in a food processor. Add a pinch or two of salt.
2. Prep the sauce. Take this pulp and place it at the bottom of a jar. The rest of the peppers can be sliced down the middle, exposing the seeds or left whole. Place them on top of the pulpy mixture and cover in the bottle with apple cider vinegar or rum. Shake well and let steep 2 to 3 weeks before using.
PEACE.
