A taste of home
This Saturday the gang had decided to do a Chinese take-away food Christmas meal — something that probably should become a tradition — but when I arrived, Peter Grant surprised me by handing me a jar of Peppadew peppers.
“Peppadew” is actually a company that takes these delightful little South African peppers, and pickles them with a unique sweet and citrusy brine, the end result being a crunchy little pepper with a lovely sweet/tart flavour, and a sneaky little pop of heat.
The peppers are actually an African cultivar named “Juanita” or sometimes “Sweet Piquanté”, but I’ve only heard them referred to as Peppadews. They are an African thing, and while I’ve seen things marked as “Peppadew” in American markets, these that Peter gave me are from the actual Peppadew company.
Some time ago, Peter and Dorothy had gone to our local butchery with a bag of boerewors seasoning so that worthy could make up a run of those classic South African sausages — and I was delighted to see that Peter and Dot had brought a mess of boerewors.
I sat down at the table with a plate of boerewors and some peppadews, sliced the sausage into coins, slapped on a chunk of the peppers … and just savoured the meal and the memories that it brought back.
This is a fine little omen, ladies and gentlemen. It’s going to be a good year.
Ian
It is always so comforting when we get a true taste of home and not someone's "imagination" of what it's supposed to be like. The smells, the tastes the mouth feels, it's all a part of the magic that allows us to time travel, if only for a moment.
Oooh! Pickled peppadews? Yum!