Black Peppercorns: Green Pepper Blanched and Sun-Dried

Black pepper is the unripe green fruit of the pepper vine, dipped in hot water and dried until the skin shrinks black and wrinkled. Picking starts when the first berries at the base of a spike turn red. Crushed in a mortar, the dry corns give crushed black pepper. The picture: unripe green pepper spikes on the vine at Trivandrum, Kerala, in November.