Scrumptious Pantry Shows Off "Beaver Dam Pepper" All Over Town

By Anthony Todd in Food on Sep 20, 2012 4:20PM

The Scrumptious Pantry's wonderful products have been seen on Good Morning America, are up for an award from Martha Stewart and, on a much less glamorous note, reside in our own humble pantry. They make all sorts of stuff, but our favorite products involve pickling.

Scrumptious Pantry creates unique pickles out of heirloom vegetables and their flagship product is the Beaver Dam Pepper, an heirloom variety brought from Hungary to the United States in 1912 that came so near extinction that it made it into the Slow Food Ark of Taste. Scrumptious Pantry helped bring it back from the brink, and now restaurants and stores all over town are teaming up with Slow Food Chicago to serve the pepper during this centennial celebration week.

Between Friday, Sept. 21 and Sunday, Sept. 23, a slew of restaurants will be making special dishes with the Beaver Dam Pepper. Birchwood Kitchen, Green Zebra, Lula Café, Uncommon Ground and Vera will be joining in the pepper-fest, with dishes like Basil Cavatelli, roasted summer fennel, Beaver Dam Chili coulis, and pea tendrils (Green Zebra).

Scrumptious Pantry will also be at a bunch of farmers markets alongside Slow Food Chicago, telling the story of the pepper and letting people sample the pickles. They'll be at Daley Plaza on Thursday, Green City Market on Saturday and Logan Square Farmers Market on Sunday. Last, but not least, you can check out samples of their products at Provenance, Standard Market and City Olive during this weekend.

If you don't run into some heirloom peppers this week, you're doing something wrong! Or, you could always buy a jar on their website.