Cabé Rawit

Capsicum frutescens (Malaysia, cabai burong, ‘bird pepper’; Indonesia, cabé rawit or lombok rawit). These are much smaller than the red and green chillis mentioned on the previous page (see cabé) and are consequently much hotter. It seems that the capsicum family was one of Columbus’ first worthwhile discoveries in the New World; seeds and cuttings were taken back across the Atlantic at once, and the Portuguese soon transplanted them to their new colonial possessions in India and south-east Asia. The Dutch later pinned onto them one of the Mexican names, chilli, so that the East India Company’s customers would not confuse this new spice with pepper. A variety of capsicum (C. baccatum, or C. minimum) often appears in English greengrocers’ shops as a neat little ornamental houseplant with bright red or yellow peppers growing profusely on it. Sometimes they are thin cones, sometimes eggshaped or almost spherical. The thin cones are nearly as hot as cabé rawit and my greengrocer no longer looks startled when I ask him for another ornamental pepper-tree ‘because I’ve eaten all the last lot’.