In her 1995 book, "Flavors of India," Madhur Jaffrey describes the state of Kerala, the home of black pepper, as "a warm, fertile heaven on earth, a sprawling Venice leavened with the lushest of tropical greenery, its land and waters proffering an endless array of edibles from the `king' of spices - black pepper - to king (jumbo) prawns, the size of small lobsters."

"Most families with small kitchen gardens," writes Jaffrey, "let the vines clamber casually up their pillars and porches, even up their garden trees, but those who grow it professionally make the vines climb up specially spiky tree trunks so that they get a good grip and bear fruitfully."

Though its cordlike stems do need support, Piper nigerum is really a tree. Its fruit is sometimes allowed to ripen into lipstick-pink berries the size of BBs. These lend a flowery scent to game dishes and a bright flourish to many contemporary chefs' creations. Stripped of their pink hulls, the fully ripened berries yield white pepper. Cooks appreciate white pepper in cream sauces and dishes where black specks might detract from the look. The green berries are useful, too, dried or pickled and sold in their brine. Milder and a little more subtle than other forms of pepper, they work especially well with seafood and poultry.

(Serves 4)

Grilled steak makes an extravagant vehicle for what used to be the world's costliest spice. Pepper-crusted steaks can be pan-seared, but unless you have a really good ventilation system by your stove, it's better to grill these outdoors. Four 12-ounce New York steaks Vegetable oil Kosher salt 1 cup cracked Tellicherry or high-grade black peppercorns 1. Build a hardwood fire in a backyard barbecue and allow the wood to burn for 45 minutes, or until it settles into a pile of red-hot glowing coals. If using a gas broiler, preheat the broiler. 2. Coat the steaks lightly with oil and sprinkle generously with Kosher salt. Just before you put the steaks on the grill, press each side of each one into the cracked peppercorns to coat. Grill each steak 3 to 4 minutes in one position, then, without flipping it over, turn 45 degrees and grill 3 to 4 minutes longer. Flip the steak and grill 5 to 7 minutes for medium-rare. Note: Authentic Tellicherry pepper is available from World Merchants by calling 206-682-7274 or ordering via its Web site, www.worldspice.com. Print friendly version.

But the vast majority of pepper comes to us black. It happens like this: Harvested just before it's fully ripe, the berries are left in heaps on the ground, where they stay moist enough to ferment a little. Eventually, the shriveled, blackened berries are spread out and dried to become the familiar peppercorns that fill grinders all over the world. The fermentation is what develops the flavor that makes these peppercorns the world's most important spice. No other pepper has the depth of flavor and pungency that black pepper has.

Pepper does not command the high prices it once did (for centuries, a pound was literally worth its weight in gold). But the spice is still quite precious in a culinary way. And while pepper is now cultivated all over the tropical world, no pepper is better than the pepper from that Indian state of Kerala. It was there, in the town of Tellicherry, that the British set up a spice depot in 1683 and forged a link between the names pepper and Tellicherry that endures today.

Tony Hill, who owns World Spice Herb and Teahouse Merchants on Western Avenue just below Seattle's Pike Place Market, travels to India about once a year and reaffirms Jaffrey's description of Kerala. "Oh yeah," he says, "it's beautiful. If you've ever seen the multiple greens that ivy can have when it has shiny new growth superimposed against darker green, older leaves, you'll have some idea of the myriad kinds of green you'll see in the pepper plantations. They interplant with - for lack of a better word - really fun trees, like a palm tree here and a kiwi bush there. And the pepper trees are growing all over everything. The whole effect is like Dr. Seuss."

Hill says that while Tellicherry used to mean peppercorns only from that town, these days it just means the highest grade of pepper. His Tellicherry peppercorns, though, really are from Tellicherry.

Brian Scheehser, executive chef at The Hunt Club in the Sorrento Hotel, exclusively uses Tellicherry peppers from World Spice. "About two years ago, I stopped buying regular peppercorns," says Scheehser. "Now Tony Hill comes in once a week and restocks my spices."

According to Hill, when he replaced all the pepper in the grinders at the Hunt Club, customers noticed right away. "Brian told me that that first night, three customers wanted to know where he got these incredible peppercorns."

Scheehser uses the peppercorns in the kitchen, too. "I toast a small amount of the peppercorns at a time, just roll them in a hot pan, and then I grind them and I get this incredibly flowery aroma. I always tell my cooks not to grind too many at a time, or the flavor disappears."

When they're cooked, black peppercorns grow tender and mild, only vaguely reminiscent of their uncooked, relatively harsh former selves. After reading Jaffrey's description of Black Pepper Rice, I sautÀeed some Tellicherry peppers in a pan and then added bay leaves, Basmati rice and chicken broth. Once everything was cooked together, the peppercorns grew pleasantly chewy, almost as soft as the rice, and they gave the dish a comforting warmth - no burning heat at all. Hill says that in Kerala, people make a rice dish very similar to the one I concocted, though theirs has cardamom and coriander. The spices are sold on the street in little sachets marked "trinity," ready to throw in the rice pot.

Just as peppercorns grow tender and lose most of their harshness when they're cooked with rice, so they become very agreeable when grilled or pan-seared into a crust over steaks. This old-fashioned backyard specialty is an American classic.

Greg Atkinson, Canlis executive chef, is the author of "In Season" (1997) and "The Northwest Essentials Cookbook" (1999) from Sasquatch Books. Barry Wong is a Seattle Times staff photographer.