Pepper...Good with Fruit and Ice Cream Too?!

Some countries have experienced food riots recently due to price hikes and shortages.
In The Daily Grind (The Guardian, May 31st), Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall reminds us that cooking ingredients such as pepper that we now take for granted in the past "fortunes were made from it, battles fought for it, ransoms and dowries paid with it. What Keralans call "the king of spices", pepper, was once very precious indeed".

We mostly restrict its use to main dishes when Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall suggests "it's good with fruit, too. A few grinds of black pepper over strawberries, stirred into fruity ice-creams or sorbets, sprinkled over a salad of sliced oranges, over pineapple or juicy nectarines may sound wreckless, or pretentious, or both. But try them and you'll see these combinations work and are not to be sniffed at"...

I did have a chance to sample black pepper ice cream and it was a treat.

Recently, I tasted a a plum crumb tart accompanied by basil ice cream, an unusual combination masterminded by pastry chef Glenn Schwabik.

What spices get you going?

Somehow related: Smoke, Spice and Catalan, Vilosell 2005, a Tomas Cusine Wine