Sarawak White Pepper – Don’t forget to eat it today!

Black and white pepper isn’t just for seasoning

Sprinkling a dash of black pepper does more than please your taste buds. The piperine in it increases the bioavailability of many substances through a bunch of cool processes, which results in more nutrients reaching your cells.  Not only that, but did you know piperine can act as an anti-depressant, pain reliever, and antacid, boost brain functioning, and help you sleep?! Can someone please pass the pepper STAT!

I’d advise to get peppercorns like the ones shown in the picture above, rather than grind-ed pepper from the supermarket. Once you grind, you’ll start to lose a lot of the wonderful volatile pepper oils.

Sarawak White Pepper.

When you’re going for nuance of flavor, Sarawak White Pepper, named for the Malaysian state where it is grown, is the top white pepper. In fact, I believe we Malaysians don’t really appreciate the Sarawak White Pepper. This pepper is actually very sought after by top chefs around the world. While other peppercorns are soaked, Sarawak corns are held under a constantly flowing stream of artesian spring water, yielding a smoother and whiter product. The berries are larger, brighter and more flavorful, with a mild, peppery, sweet aroma (somewhat reminiscent of allspice) and a robust, rich, winey/floral flavor. The finish is hot. The shell is thinner and more fragile.

Sometimes I forget how hard it is for farmers to grow the Sarawak Peppers. These farmers are not rich, dirt poor is more like it. I mean, just look at the house shown behind the tall bright green pepper plant in the picture above. It’s really a hard life, and it makes me feel very blessed that there are people out there who toil to bring me food to the table.

In most gourmet supermarkets around the world, the price is about double that of most peppercorns but this pepper is well worth it. We Malaysians get it dirt cheap, so we should use it more often! Perhaps because it’s cheap we don’t appreciate it. Perhaps if the farmers and the distributors were to jack up the price will we fully appreciate how truly wonderful this stuff really is.

The rest of the culinary world treat it with reverence. About time we do to.

Taken from feeds.killeraces.com/~r/wisebread/~3/9DA4_7HTm7Q/bioavailability-how-to-get-more-nutrients-from-your-food, mysarawak.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/sarawak-pepper/ and thenibble.com/zine/archives/varietal-peppercorns9.asp