Peppercornication! Tis the Season for Fall Carrots

I remember, back in the mid-sixties, my fine and particular friend grumbling about some fuss regarding salt. Salt is salt, he flatly declared — wrongly but firmly. Salt was salt and parmesan was in a green cardboard can, grated and it turns out not even cheese. It was the post-war heist of food, bread was bread. You need never again make a pie, never again know the season of anything.

Do you realize that this is the best month, here in the Northwest, to buy carrots? They are just now being harvested and just now reaching the peak of their taste and brilliance. Peel them, soak them for a few minutes in cold water, then pat them dry. Chop the carrots into diagonal chunks, put them in a bowl with perhaps florets of cauliflower or small quarters of onion, six new cherry tomatoes, a few whole chanterelles, add olive oil and salt and pepper, and if you have it some sprigs of thyme.

Lay all of that on an ovenproof tray or sauté pan and put it in a preheated 425-degree oven. After ten minutes or so, turn the pieces, their down side should have slightly browned, and do the other side. (You could lightly sprinkle the carrots with a brown sugar or maple sugar.)

Twenty minutes or so and the carrots should be softened and ready. If they need more time, leave them in the oven until they are softer. Sometimes I will add a tablespoon of harissa near the last few minutes, to add a spice. Serve with olive oil and cilantro. Carrots in the fall: they are not the same as carrots in the winter and spring. Fall is their opening night.

But this is about peppercorns. There are fresh peppercorns and old peppercorns, peppercorns that people cared for, and peppercorns that filled buckets. There are peppercorns that everyone in the kitchen can smell when you are simply grinding them in your pepper grinder. As my son said when he was 12: Whoa, pepper! Those are the ones that you want, and it can take a bit of hunting to secure them.

It is said that the first peppercorns introduced into Italy caused such a stir that the travel agents were kept busy. If there is such a thing as peppercorns, what else is out in the world that we must try? Peppercorns are as deeply a part of Italian cuisine as parmigiana and tomato. There is a fine chapter in the little paperback Dinner in Rome about peppercorns and the Italians.

There is a wonderful grocery shop in Stockholm, ROT, in Sodermalm, that we found one Sunday morning when we were hunting to get Covid shots so we could fly home. It had dozens of wicker baskets on display in their corner window and, on one outdoor side, ten bins of local apples and pears, filled to the brim. Six different apple varieties, with leaves and stems on many of them. None of the apples were polished.

We bought one of the wicker baskets and I asked, have you any peppercorns? Sure enough, and of course, they had 16 varieties, all in fresh packaging and none in stingy little bottles.

Peppercorns are like dried beans; it is near impossible to tell their age until you use them, so you must rely on the quality of your shop and do some testing. The best peppercorns will, when you crack or grind them, smell like pepper, fresh pepper. They are not all the same. And some have passed their time.

When you find the best ones, then you will use it on your pastas and soups and meats and salads and be proud every time. It will be the difference, and, these days, it is the difference that will secure the best results. DeLaurenti’s has good peppercorns but World Spice on Western Avenue has the best peppercorns and have paid the most attention to having the best.