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"What,
it's already
Peperoncino
Festival again?"
Domenico,
owner of the Diamante hot shop "Greenhouse" had beefed up his
shop and himself - a sure fire sign that another year went by and the
annual Pepreroncino Festival was close. "Quindici
anni tutti piccanti" - fifteen totally hot & spicy years
was this year's motto, as the pepper fest was already in its 15th year.
And it was bigger than ever.
By
the way, without his pepper "hair", Domenico would make
a perfect double for rock legend Peter Gabriel.
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There are not too many other
hot places with such a
sign!
Show that to the mayor of Albuquerque, Dave ;-)
Days
before the festival, a brand new giant pepper pod erected on main street
announced the big fifteenth.
The
traffic sign at the bottom gives an idea of the pepper's size. Too
bad it wouldn't fit into our car - this baby sure would look sharp
in our backyard.
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Meanwhile,
city officials recognized Diamante's tourist value as a focal
point for capsicum heatseekers: the entrance sign says: City of
murals (wall pictures) - and the peperoncino." Peperoncino of
course is Italian for hot peppers, as visualized on the sign by a
hot pod that can't be ignored. 
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A little Excursion before the Festival
Once
more we arrived a few days early, as we also had various business
appointments in Calabria to take care of. For example, we had a meeting
with Dolci Pensieri di Calabria, chocolate manufacturing partners
of our company, Suncoast Peppers. The factory is located in
Rende, about one hour driving southeast from Diamante. Several ideas
for Pepperworld products that we discussed via phone and email
needed to get finalized with real life samples. Creating and tasting
samples of chocolate propducts - hey, someone's gotta do the dirty
job. One of the projects included figs, chiles, and chocolate of course.
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There's
a special kind of figs growing in Calabria - "Fichi di
Cosenza" - light colored inside, juicy and smaller than most
other varieties we have seen and tasted so far. The mature fruit
turn yellow like honey melons, and they're as sweet and flavorful
as such.
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Sun
and sea breezes allow for air-drying figs in this area, a traditional
method for preserving this fruit. But there's another procedure as
well, and that's baking the fresh figs in the oven at 360 F (180 °C).
In the oven, the fruit is going through an interesting
"metamorphosis" - the sugar starts to caramelize, the
fruits get a nice chewy consisteny and a great aroma.
For
many years, Doli Pensieri have been producing those oven-baked figs,
"natural" and covered in chocolate. Now our idea was to
fill the figs with habanero-spiced dark chocolate cream before
dipping them in chocolate; they're making such a habanero choc cream
for Pepperworld as a spread anyways.
"Metamorphosis" from fresh fruit to baked one
to the finished sweet treat from Southern Italy.
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Dolci Pensieri
di Calabria's Antonio
Rao with
an oven load of freshly baked Cosenza figs.
After
a few hours of interesting experiments, we finalized the
prototype. In addition to the habanero-spiced dark chocolate, we
decided to add a toasted almond to the filling for some extra
crunch. The whole thing dipped in dark chocolate... heavenly.
During the colder months, this sweet treat will be available
online at our shop, but only within Europe.
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News with Niní
Back
in Diamante, we went to Café Niní, the gathering point on the Lungomare
(seaside promenade). Cafe owner Nini Belcastro is known as the
"Beethoven of the ice cream makers" -- while the famous composer wrote
many of his masterpieces without the ability to hear them, Nini can't
taste most of his ice cream creations because of his lactose intolerance!
Yet the Calabria-born maestro comes up with cool new creations every
year.
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His ice cream is so famous here that Nini
recently opened his first "subsidiary", Cafe Nini Rome.
Besides new ice cream creations, the inventive guy also comes up
with new and ususual cocktails every year His
latest one is called "Metamorphos". Ingredients
include local beer (yes, Italians are brewing beer!), blueberry
schnaps (!) and ground chiles. 
Cheers!
Here's chilehead Piet from northern Germany, tasting the metamorphic
concoction. Piet and his girlfriend Irene came visiting Diamante
after reading my previous reports about the event. Both Piet and I
liked Nini's fiery "Afro" cocktail better, also the exotic "DaiquiriPic".
Both Piet and I agreed that Metamorphos needed a little more
kick. Piet is also the guy who shot that "Peter Gabriel"
picture at the top of this page.
When
I get around to it, I'll dedicate "Capsicum Cocktails"
a special article, complete with recipes. Prepare yourself by
putting fresh ice cubes in the freezer! It
always interesting how Nini presents his
creations: 
Above the ice cream counter, there was a film set with director "Pepper
Chili" - the movie's title is "La Palla di
Eros" - the Love Arrow. That's the name of his dark chocolate
ice cream with a heavy dose of local hot chile.
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Nini
Belcastro, Diamante shoreline in the background
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Pepper
Pope and Pepper Puppets Together
with the northern German chileheads, we strolled "downtown"
Diamante to see how local businesses had prepared for this year's Pepper
Fest. Here are some impressions.
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Another
Cafe displayed a pepper-decorated mannequin, which looked more Dutch
than Italian to us, though...
When
a butcher shop has a chile pepper in its signage and ristras are
dangling from the ceiling, chileheads are almost automatically drawn
into the store. Here we purchased a salsiccia piccante, an
airdried salami sausage spiced with chiles and fennel (a popular and
tasty spice combination in Southern Italy).
A
quick trip to the village south of Diamante, Belvedere Marittimo.
The lamp store there (above) is selling that incredible chile
chandelier that I had already introduced in my 2005
Report. After reading this report, Irene fell in love
with this lighting and was looking to take one of those back home to
Hamburg. So we took her and her friend Piet there.
Fortunately,
the lovely lamp was in stock, and Irene was able to take a close
look from the stepladder. The glass chiles are mouthblown especially
for this chandelier.. When the lights are switched on, the whole
things looks quite impressive.
The
shop owner did a great job turning everything into a compact package
and we took it to Germany in our car, as the couple was traveling by
train.
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 The
Pope of Peppers?? This drugstore arranged
a book about Papal pal Paul with peppery pods.
Mary
had a little lamp
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More in common than just Flag Colors 
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Not
only do Italy and Mexico have the same flag colors - both countries
have regions that are particularly popular for their peppers --
Calabria for their peperoncini, and Yucatan for their habaneros.
A
reknowned expert in the field of habanero peppers is Dr. Tomas Gonzales
from Yucatan - per invitation of the Accademia del Peperoncino, he
came visiting Diamante together with a delegation of Yucatan
habanero producers. The Mexicans had an info booth at the festival,
and many Italians were in for a hot surprise when tasting powder
from Yucatan habaneros: The delayed heat of the habs differs from
the direct bite of their local chiles, and keeps building up...
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Tomas Gonzales
from Yucatan (l.) with Harald
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Tomas
came well-prepared for a presentation of his region's signature
peppers, as well as Yucatan culture in general. I was lucky that I
brought my notebook PC, as I met Tomas at the hotel and he had his
Powerpoint presentation on a memory stick. So I was honored to get a
personal presentation and learned a lot about peppers and people from
Yucatan. I was also happy to hear that Hurricane Dean, one of the major
storms threatening the Yucatan island this summer, didn't do much harm
to his people and to the habanero plantations.
Now for the Peperoncino Festival...
As
every year,
the Peperoncino Festival wouldn't be complete without the Campionato
italiano mangiatori di peperoncino, the Italian Chile-Eating
Championship. The competition drew a bigger
crowd than ever and was broadcasted on national TV. We
already reported in detail about a previous contest (see here),
and this year's competition wasn't much different. Last year's champion Aurelio Schiavo
participated again, and he was able to defend his title by munching 560
grams (about 20 oz.) of fiery-hot chopped chiles. Tomas Gonzales'
presentation was scheduled at the same time, so we watched that instead.
But first some festival impressions. Because September is still warm
during the day in Southern Italy and many of the foods offered are
sensitive to heat, the festival starts at 7:00 pm, around sunset.
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Hundreds
of booths lined the seaside promenade,
downtown, and spread even around the town, as they're beginning to
run out of space by now. Meanwhile we're also seeing those offerings of generic jewelry, leather belts and toys made in China
that are showing up on markets and festivals elsewehere as well,
but the major part of the offerings are "prodotti tipici
Calebresi", genuine local
products. Whether
it is sausage, ham, cow or sheep cheese like pecorino -- many food
items are spiced up with a hefty portion of peperoncino here in
the south. This is not just a matter of taste -- especially in
earlier times without refrigeration, the chiles helped preserving
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But
plain hot peperoncini are popular as a condiment as well, either whole, in slices or chopped. Most of the time, they're preserved
"sott 'olio", in olive oil or sunflower oil. They're
stirred into pasta and spread on bruschetta, tasty toasted slices of
wheat bread that serve as an appetizer.
The
great thing about this festival is that there's stuff to taste
everywhere. But it isn't always easy to concentrate on the hot stuff
on the plates... ;-)
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When
it comes to peperoncini, Southern Italians like to point out the
red pods' reputation as a poor man's substitute for blue pills. I
think this is perfectly visualized by the gentleman on the
piucture to the left. But if chiles are "Viagra dei
poveri" (Viagra for the poor), how come the cayenne is
pointing south? Maybe
the products shown below coud help here ;-) 
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Peppery
Puppet on a String
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The
next day the guy had refined his presentation, turning his pepper
assembly into a sort of puppet on a string. Good to see the folks
down here have a good sense of humor. Of
course it is all a matter of taste. Quite tasty is the herb-filled
pork roast that's famous in this area. One needs to get used to
the presentation including the pig's head. The rest of the
presentation is again a matter of taste...
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All
night there were various excellent folk, jazz and rock bands on
stage, entertaining the visitors for free. And visitors came plenty
-- every night after about 8:00pm, many places were packed to the
max.
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Besides
food and beverages, each Peperoncino Festival also has a wide
variety of cultural events, including movies, art and music.
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We
were glad to see our pepper pal Massimo Biagi was here again as
well. The horticultural professor from the University of Pisa managed to have pods of more than
200 capsicum varieties from around the world all ripe
concurrently, just in time for the show. An incredible feat. Here,
our northern German chileheads are visiting is booth, overwhelmed
by the pepper offerings. In fact, it is almost impossible to see
pods of so many different capsicum varieties in one place.
Massimo looked a little stressed, for good reason. The festival
organizers had placed his tent next to some act with continuous
extremely loud disco music this time, making conversation almost
impossible. Of course this did not keep hardcore chile fans from
visiting the holy grail of pepperdom.
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Local
nurseries offered a broad range of peppers as well, altough not as
many different ones as the professor from Pisa. In
honor of the Mexican guests, Massimo had created a fresh habanero
salsa that was extremely tasty, and extremely hot as well. Tomas Gonzales
was quite pleased to find an Italian fixing such an authentic
salsa.
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Besides
a lot of factory-made non-food chile-themed products,
it was great to see original arts and crafts as well, like
these handpainted pepper plates.
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Quite
creative were these weird but loveable chile gnomes by Nuova Ceramica
of Belvedere Marina.
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In
fact, we were so intrigued by the creativity of Giuseppe Ateniese
and his wife Daniela that we visited their workshop after the show and
finally decided to let them create the 3D clay version of our company
maskot "Pepper Sam", part of our "Sam's Pepper Town®"
brand.
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We
enjoyed watching Giuseppe creating the prototype to our specs.
Look at the details, like the pepper colt and the pepper bullets
on the belt...
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Later
on, the individually handcrafted pepper guys got hardened in the kiln
(a special high-temp oven), then Daniela hand-painted them, also
with a lot of attention to detail. Now they're available at
Pepperworld as a limited edition.
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Pepper
Pals
The
best thing about the festival is that you get to meet many of
those pepper pals that you normally only "talk" to via
email, as they're often located far away.
For
the family photo album, here's Tomas Gonzales from Mexico meeting
with Harald from Germany and Claudio Dal Zovo from Verona, Italy.
People who would have never met without the power of peppers.
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Another
one for the album... Tomas Gonzales and his lovely wife Rosa-Nidia
would have loved to take home this beautiful chile pepper christmas
tree, but it was just a little too large for their luggage...
So
instead, Rosa-Nidia had to settle for this neat pepper pendant.
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Calabria learns about Habaneros - first Hand
Authentic
music and dance performances set the audience's mood for Mexico. Despite
the Italian beer by the Dreher Brewery, Renate and I really felt like being
"south of the border".
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Tomas
explained the whole process, from seed to salsa, including various
methods of cultivation. He also elaborated on typical Yucatan
dishes, including those made with habanero peppers. Our
friend Nunzia Bruno (right) served as a live translator and had no
problem translating the pepper professor's English-language presentation
to Italian.
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Then
Tomas Gonzales gave insight into live and landscape of Yucatan,
illustrated with many pictures of peppers and people. Tourists
love the Mexican peninsula for its beautiful beaches and ancient
Mayan ruins, but chileheads of course know this region as the
home of the habanero. In fact, the pungent pods are an important
economical factor in Yucatan, and there are even discussions to
gather some sort of regional protection for Yucatan Habaneros, not
unlike peppers in other countries, like Pimentón
de la Vera in Spain or Piment
d'Espelette in France. 
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We
also learned from Tomas that the Yucatecos call really, really hot
habanero salsa
"xni-pec" (pronounced "shnee pek"). Xni is the
ancient Mayan word for "dog", pec for "nose" -
typically moist, just like a human's nose after consuming the fiery
condiment.
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Back to the Italian Peperoncini...
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A
completely different chile is Pellegrino - this new
Italian variety, developed by Mario Dadomo in Parma (see here)
is based on a peperoncino variety from Calabria. The prolific plants
produce countless tiny slim pods with a nice bite.
Mario
named the chile after Southern Italian entertainer and comedian Gianni
Pellegrino. The popular artist is also the host of the annual Italian Chile-Eating
Championship. "Gianni is rather small but quite vivid, and he
has a tongue sharp like hot chile, so the naming makes a perfect
fit!" Mario told me when visiting him at his research station.
Since
we grew a nice Pellegrino plant in our Pepperworld test garden, I
took some pods with me, and when I had a chance to meet Gianni, I
gave a pod to him from that plant named in his honor.
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Gianni
had not seen the new variety named after him, so he was quite
thrilled. Here he is posing with the tiny pod, as well as one of his
legendary pepper outfits. For European readers: Pellegrino seeds are
available online at the Pepperworld Hot Shop.
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Our 2007 Restaurant Recommendation
Still
excellent in food and service is Palmino Raffo's "Sabbia d'Oro"
restaurant, see here.
This year's new discovery is close to Palmino's place, just a few
hunded meters up the coast - "Ristorante Al Rudere". While
officially part of Belvedere Marittimo, it is physically located at
the southern end of Diamante, at State Street 18 (SS18).
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The
absolute highlights are their delicious seafood dishes (especially off
the grill), but also their pasta dishes (optionally "piccante",
of course, and served in a "boat") are wonderful. Reservations
recommeded. Phone (+39)
0985-808876.
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Living in Style in Diamante
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Meanwhile
the real estate business seems to have discovered Diamante as well.
The beaches around the town are being spared massive
development so far, though. Instead, rather elegant
communities are popping up a little further up in the hills along
the coast line, like this one here (see arrow). Of course we were
curious enough to walk up and have a look at the almost completed
dream homes. Renate had to problem at all to pick one. Just imagine
the view from the pool while sipping on a glass of Nero d'Avola.
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Tasty Stopover on the long Way Home
OK,
time to stop dreaming and to drive back home. Visitors like from Germany
who came to the southernmost tip of Italy by car are facing quite a
ride. Highways and most other main travel routes are in excellent
condition, but the sheer distance calls for a stopover. Ours was in
Perugia this time, in the region called Umbria. On Pepperworld I've
reported about Perugia and this city's connection to chocolate - see my
article here
(German language). Still we were surprised to find a
chocolate-themed hotel here, the "Etruscan Chocohotel". For
chocoholics like us, this was of course the hotel of choice.
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Already
from the outside the hotel is colored in chocolaty brown tones. In
the lobby, guests are greeted by a bathtub filled with massive
chocolate chunks. This is the kind of stuff that normally would
only appear in your dreams. Nice
touch: With your room keys you get a nice big chocolate bar.
The hotel floors are named like "Dark Chocolate",
"Milk Chocolate" etc., and while walking the hallway to
our room, we noticed that each one not only had a number on the door
but also a sign made from real chocolate wrapping paper from around
the world. Of
course the Chocohotel also has a chocolate store. In addition to
high-end chocolate, we found interesting products like cacao hair
shampoo (dark and light, depending on your hair type), as well
as chocolate-hazelnut bathfoam. Many
dishes on the in-house restaurant have chocolate as an ingredient.
And with items like choc-filled cornetti, chocolate cake and
chocolate muffins, we loved the breakfast buffet. Each table was
decorated with dried cacao fruit and cacao beans. Hotel
Info:
www.chocohotel.it
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My
Idea of a nice Bath Each
room has a uniqie "Chocodesk" - ours had a nice
collection of hot chocolate mugs underneath a glass desktop. 
Grooming
Products for Chocoholics
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