Negro Pepper (Xylopia aethiopica)! Did You Know?

 Did you know that West African cookbooks (Cameroon), the spice is referred to as kieng, but there are a ton of other names used for this pepper? Here are some of the names:

Grains of Selim, African grains of Selim, Moor pepper, Kani pepper, Senegal pepper

Used plant part
 Fruits; they look rather like small, twisted bean-pods. They are dark brown, cylindrical, 2.5 to 5 cm long and 4 to 6 mm thick; the contours of the seeds are visible from outside. Each pod contains 5 to 8 kidney-shaped seeds grains of approximately 5 mm length. The hull is aromatic, but not the grain itself.
Plant family 
 Annonaceae (custard apple family).
Sensory quality
 Aromatic, quite pungent and slightly bitter, comparable to a mixture of cubeb pepper and nutmeg.
 Negro pepper is often smoked during the drying process which results in an attractive smoky-spicy flavour. See also black cardamom for another example of smoke affecting the flavour of a spice.

Origin
 Tropical Africa (Ethiopia to Ghana), where both the species X. aethiopica and X. striata are used for local cooking. In South America, X. aromatica (burro pepper), has found similar applications among Brazilian Indios.
Etymology              
 Xylopia is a com­pression from Greek xylon pikron [ξύλον πικρόν] bitter wood, aethiopica refers to the origin of the tree (though most of it grows in Ghana).

God Bless!

Simone :)

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