The power of pepper ⏲️ 6 Minute English

[0:08]Hello, this is 6-minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil. And I'm Becca. In this episode, we're discussing a food seasoning that's so popular, we eat around three quarters of a million tons of it a year. We're talking about pepper. Do you add pepper to your food, Becca? I do, Neil. Yes, I think it's an easy way to add some spice. Yeah, I love a bit of pepper. I grind pepper onto everything. Well, not everything. But I do like it. Given its popularity, it's surprising that most people know very little about pepper. Did you know, for example, that peppers are the fruit of vines, often growing over 10 meters high? Our ancestors would be surprised how little we know. From ancient Greece onwards, pepper was prized as the black gold of ingredients, and explorers crossed oceans in search of it, discovering new continents along the way. In this episode, we'll get reacquainted with pepper and learn some useful new words and phrases too. And remember, you'll find a transcript for you to read along with us as you listen on our website, BBClearningenglish.com. Okay, first I have a question for you, of course, Becca. Although it's black pepper, you're most likely to see in shops and restaurants in the UK, there are hundreds of different varieties worldwide. But what is unusual about fuquak, a white pepper from Vietnam? Does it A, make people cry, B, taste like parmesan cheese, or C, cost more than gold? Well, I don't think it would be as expensive as gold, and I kind of want it to taste like parmesan cheese. Okay, well, we'll find out later in the program. Matilde Rollinger is the daughter of Olivier Rollinger, an award-winning French chef, famous for his use of spices. While other little girls of her age were sprinkling sugar on their breakfast yogurt, Matilde was the only girl in Paris sprinkling pepper. Today, Matilde runs the A Piece Rollinger spice shop in the Opera area of the city. Here, customers can find a huge range of peppers, from fruity red Cambodian campot pepper, to Borneo's Sarawak black pepper with its woody aroma. These peppers have strong, distinctive tastes, but curiously, they enhance rather than overpower the flavor of the food you're eating, as Matilde explained to BBC World Service program The Food Chain. It will give a kick and transform it, but you will still have the savor of the different ingredients. It will not disguise the other ingredient, but it will push them. It's a flavor catalyst. We can say in punctuation, like it's a exclamation. Like an exclamation mark. Exactly. Matilde says pepper gives food a kick. To give something a kick means to provide it with extra stimulation or excitement. Pepper also makes flavors more intense. Matilde calls it a catalyst. Something that causes another action to start, or makes it happen more quickly. In fact, she says pepper is like an exclamation mark. Saying something is like an exclamation mark, means it shows strong emotion or excitement. The same thing an exclamation mark does in written punctuation. Matilde's spice shop holds pepper tasting sessions where she explains to customers the origin of her peppers and how they grow, changing color as they harden in the sun. Reporter John Laurenson attended one of these tasting sessions for BBC World Service program The Food Chain. The different colors of pepper though, as Matild started to say, do not correspond to the different varieties, but to the maturity of the peppercorns and what people do to them. They're green when they're young, black when they're mature and dried, red when they're very mature. Grey pepper is an industrial creation, not a botanical one, ground to a fine powder, it is, says Matild, grey dust. She's not very keen on that one. The color of pepper is not determined by the variety, but by its maturity. A food's maturity describes the stage when a food is fully grown and ready to harvest. For peppers, this is when they wrinkle and go black. Often, a pepper mill is used to grind pepper, to crush it into powder by pressing it between two hard surfaces. This happens with gray pepper, an artificially produced pepper mix, which Matilde is not keen on, meaning she doesn't like it. We've learned so much about pepper. I'll look at it differently the next time I sprinkle some on my food. Okay, Neil, I think it's time to reveal the answer to your question. Yes, I asked you what's unusual about fuquak, a white pepper from Vietnam. I answered B, because I want it to taste like parmesan cheese. Well, you're lucky, because it is, in fact, B. It tastes like Parmesan cheese. Well done. Okay, let's recap the vocabulary we've learned, starting with the phrase give something a kick, meaning to add extra thrill or excitement. A catalyst causes something to start, or speeds it up. If you say something is like an exclamation mark, you mean it signifies strong emotion, surprise or excitement, just like an exclamation mark does in writing. A food's maturity refers to the stage when it's fully grown and ready for harvest. To grind food means to crush it into powder by being pressed between two hard surfaces. And finally, if you're keen on something, you like it and enjoy doing it. Once again, our six minutes are up. But remember, you can find worksheets, quizzes and loads more resources to improve your English on our website, BBClearningenglish.com. See you there soon, but for now, it's goodbye. Goodbye.