Espelette peper

It was when I was working on my book called Joie de Vivre with Maison Courvoisier, that I fell deeply and utterly in love with piment d’espelette, so present in that region’s cuisine. I even came home with a big cord of peppers, manually tied on a farm, so red and luscious (usually 7-14 cm long) that I had to dry them in my kitchen much longer than I anticipated to do.

With number 4 on the Scoville scale, this is not the most spicy pepper there is, no. Quite far from that, but in taste, it is unique and praised just for that, and primarily used dried in a powder ranging from orange to red, particularly on hay and fruit notes and a touch of grilled notes, with slight bitterness.

Full of character, the pepper is more pungent than spicy, and, for that reason, used in so many dishes, from simple cheese spread to sautéed pepper and meat and fish dishes. The real one is the one with an AOC sign on the package, meaning that the ground particles cannot be larger than 5 mm, have no colourings or any additives, and have been obtained from a single farm (no mixing between farms).