black pepper

Nepali pepper Also called Szechwan Pepper or Timur Pepper can be found in Oriental stores. Timur pepper/Szechwan pepper (pimpinella anisum) is native to the Szechwan province of China.  Though it bears some similarity to black peppercorns, they are not actually of the pepper family, rather the dried berry of a tree in the prickly ash family.  The Szechwan pepper is one of the few spices important for Tibetan and Bhutani cookery in the Himalayas, since very few spices can be grown there.

Fruits are globose and are encapsulated in a grayish, pimpled purse-like  jacket when young but splits into two halves upon maturation of the seed. A mature seed is oval and jet black in color with a highly wrinkled surface, hence often mistaken for a pepper as the English name indicates.

The rural people  apply the powder of its seeds on their legs to get rid of leech infestation while crossing a forest in the rainy season. The seed emits a characteristic pungent odor so strong that even the sticky leech loses  its foothold! It can be verified by a locally popular maxim, which goes - "Timur in the mouth of a leech is like a hammer on the head of a nail." It also possesses formidable disinfectant properties and is used largely as a safety measure as well as a flavoring essence during wild mushroom cooking.

The seeds possess several medicinal properties like curing stomach aches and toothaches; but in heavy dosage it may prove toxic. People make tasty curries just by mixing it with a pinch of salt and piece of green chile.