A new pepper available? HOLD THE PRESSES! All we need now is our fervent chile pepper horticulturalists to start spreading the seeds (literally) around so there can be some more information on how well it grows, best climate, average length of time before harvest, etc. It really looks like a cherry pepper, but with a little ‘bite.’ Full article quoted from the New York Post Online.

ONE HOT PEPPER
By CYNTHIA KILIAN

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Peppadews are poised to take the city by storm, whether stuffed or in martinis.

March 22, 2006 — IT isn’t often chefs get a new ingredient to throw into the mix, which may explain why they have warmed to the Peppadew - a “sweet piquant‚ pepper” now hitting the U.S.

The Peppadew is being touted as the newest fruit to hit the world market since the arrival of the kiwi 26 years ago.

In 1996, so the story goes, Johan Steenkamp discovered in his South African garden a strange bush bearing small bright fruit that looked like a cross between miniature red peppers and cherry tomatoes. He did some research, found it to be a new species, and set about securing global plant rights.

The company says the species is believed to be native to Central America, but where this particular variety originated is unknown. “Maybe it was propagated by an obliging bird,” suggests their Web site, peppadewusa.com.

To make sure no little birds do that today, they closely guard the seeds and turn the plants into the ground after each season. They also give farmers only seedlings - not seeds - partly to control the breeding of the best plants, they say.

They’re less stingy with products, however. Peppadew goat and cheddar cheeses, pizza, veggie burgers, salsa, steak rub and even potato chips are poised to hit stores soon. “The minute you taste one, you kind of fall in love with them,” says Kirsten Hindes, director of specialty foods at Whole Foods, which stocks Peppadews in its olive bars. “They’re completely different than any other pepper because they have that sweetness and that little bit of a bite.”

And though most people aren’t even aware Peppadews exist, those in the know form “a very loyal following,” Hindes says. “There’s a frenzy if they’re missing.”

Peppadews are available only seedless and pickled in a sugar, vinegar and spice solution. The brine apparently tempers their heat to a pleasant glow. A company spokesman tells us that straight off the bush “once your tongue touches the inner skin, you can cry it is so hot.”

He agrees they could be related to habeneros, which they resemble in shape.

An undocumented type of habenero sounds about right to Paul Bosland, director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, N.M. Bosland hadn’t heard of Peppadew, but from a description he guesses it’s a variety of capsicum chinense, a hot pepper group.

“What we kind of think now is that the Portuguese traders who were in Brazil - where chinense originates - would probably have brought some of those seeds along their spice-trading route from Portugal to Africa to the Middle East,” the horticulture professor says. “And that’s how they were introduced into Africa.”

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