PRESS AND NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Posted on Sun, Jan. 26, 2003
A Pepper Epiphany
Linda Bladholm
Pepper is the world's most popular spice, with Americans alone
consuming more than 100 million tons of it a year, according to
the American Spice Trade Association.
Native to the Malabar Coast of south India, pepper is the pungent,
pea-sized berry of a perennial climbing vine called Pipernigrum.
It reached southeast Asia more than 2,000 years ago and has been
cultivated in Malaysia and Indonesia ever since. Today it's also
grown in Madagascar, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Central
and South America.
Billy and Danny Brugger of North Miami Beach were bitten by the
pepper bug a dozen years ago, after tasting a premium variety
from Costa Rica while Danny worked at Bay Harbor Fine Foods. Today,
Brugger Bros. wholesales and retails certified-organic Talamanca
pepper from Ecuador.
Their pepper passion doesn't stop there: They grow pepper plants
on the balcony of their Eastern Shores condo, pounding the fresh
green peppercorns into pungent pastes to liven up seafood and
just about anything else.
Billy, 49, and Danny, 47, were born in Puerto Rico to a Swiss
father and an American mother who met in Cuba. The Bruggers moved
to Miami in 1967, where both brothers worked in the family meat-packing
plant before becoming lobster divers in the 1970s.
Soon after their 1991 pepper epiphany, they hooked up with a grower
in the Talamanca region of southern Costa Rica and began peddling
the peppercorns to high-end restaurants like Cafe Maxx in Pompano
Beach and the Cheeca Lodge in Islamadora.
When root rot destroyed the crop, they switched to a supplier
in Honduras and then Ecuador, in the foothills of the Andean rain
forest. There, on Big Bambœ Farm, spikes of berries are handpicked
when large, sweet and almost mature but still greenish, then briefly
boiled, lightly fermented and dried in ovens.
Talamanca black pepper has a citrus-pine aroma and intensely spicy,
almost fruity flavor that leaves your mouth tingling after the
initial pleasant sting. The white pepper (really a light grayish-tan)
is even hotter without the complex fragrance.
Talamanca black pepper is $7.75, white pepper $8.75 for 4 ounces;
get either with a PepperMate pepper mill for $45; 305-949-2264.
Also at Bay Harbor Fine Foods, 1077 95th St., Miami Beach; 305-865-0331.
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