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Chili peppers
Chili pepper (from Nahuatl chilli), also known as, or spelled, chilli pepper, chilli, chillie, chili, and chile, is the fruit of the plants from the genus Capsicum, members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae.Although botanically speaking, the fruit of capsicums are berries, the peppers are considered as vegetables or spices for culinary purposes. Depending on flavor intensity and fleshiness, their culinary use varies from use as a vegetable (e.g., bell pepper) to use as a spice (e.g., cayenne pepper).
Chili peppers originated in the Americas. Their cultivars are now grown around the world, because they are widely used as food and as medicine.
The chili has a long association with and is extensively used in Mexican and certain South American cuisines, and later adapted into the emerging Tex-Mex cuisine. Although unknown in Africa and Asia until its introduction from the New World by the Europeans, the chili pepper has since become an essential pillar of the cuisines of Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Pakistan, Southwest China (including Sichuan cuisine), Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bangladesh, and many other cooking traditions.
The fruit is eaten raw or cooked for its fiery hot flavour, concentrated along the top of the pod. The stem end of the pod has most of the glands that produce the capsaicin. The white flesh surrounding the seeds contains the highest concentration of capsaicin. Removing the inner membranes is thus effective at reducing the heat of a pod. (Source: www.wikipedia.org)
