In season: peperoncino

A view thoughts on eating products from the right season and some recipes to preserve peperoncino...

Lately when I visit markets in the area, or when I enter a supermarket, I find big bunches of various types of peperoncino everywhere. Finally! During the last months we always had to use dried chillies when cooking, while the fresh ones were not in season yet and therefore not available. Actually I guess this is a good thing about Italy. Even in the bigger supermarkets there still seem to be seasons, something we completely lost in the average Dutch supermarket. Whenever you feel like eating strawberries, lettuce or green beans, you can find them, while this is actually summer produce. When it is not possible to get the products from the Dutch soil, you will just find products imported from all different places in the world, causing an enormous ecological footprint. Or products come out of one of the many greenhouses we have at home, which has quite an ecological impact as well. In Italy this seems to be a bit different, although I would not be surprised if this is also changing slowly.

Of course it is a very difficult debate to decide what choices are best to make when it comes to buying food. We are maybe a bit spoiled these days, that it is possible to make seasons 'disappear' by importing products in the 'wrong' season from different countries. You could argue that this might also be a good thing when you look at the social factors, because by importing green beans from African countries in the Dutch winter you support the local economy in those countries. But if you would purely look at environmental factors, what would be the best choice to make? Eating locally, eating organic, either local or from far, eating food from greenhouses or from the direct soil? I find it all quite difficult and although I have a great interest in this topics for a few years already, it remains a complex field of study.