It can be eaten raw, in salads or in dips, it is used for a classic risotto, to dress a salad, as a pan-fried side dish, but traditionally its best use is pickled. It has a peculiarity that makes it unique among peppers: it has a delicate flavor and, above all, it is easily digestible due to the low quantity of solanine, a substance that is indigestible for most people. Its advantages are many, in addition to those reported: a group of researchers from the Department of Biology and Biotechnology of the University of Pavia has identified in the Voghera pepper a large concentration of vitamin C, vitamin E, provitamin A and carotenoids, capable of contributing to combat diseases such as aging, metabolic and neurovegetative diseases and tumors.
Due to the low quantity of solanine it is easily digestible
Furthermore, the presence of capsaicin in peppers is very important for the human organism, which has proven useful in the management of inflammatory pathologies, even important ones such as rheumatoid arthritis, in reducing "bad" cholesterol levels in the blood, helping to counteract the obesity and above all to cause the programmed death of tumor cells by limiting the growth of the blood vessels that supply blood to the tumor.
For a long time, in the last century, Voghera rhymed with pepper. Cultivated almost everywhere in the plain between Pavia and Alessandria, it was known and appreciated far beyond those borders. Voghera hosted an important fruit and vegetable market and also exported those easily digestible green peppers outside Italy that almost everyone grew in their own gardens.
In its golden age, the Voghera pepper was also known in Germany and the United States. Then in the 50s, the tragedy: a fungus hit the roots of the plants, causing them to die quickly." Olezza, representative of the six producers who join the Slow Food Presidium, explains: «The cause? excessive cultivation: by dint of sowing it in the same gardens, the disease spread". It took fifteen years of work aimed at recovering the seed, but finally the Voghera pepper has returned to the fields and on the tables, becoming a Slow Food Presidium.
It was also exported to Germany and the USA, then a disease decimated the crops. It took 13 years of studies and experiments
To escape fusarium, the pathogen that inflicted so much damage on pepper crops, those who could moved a few kilometers. «My grandfather, once married, moved to the Corana area, a town not far from Voghera with sandier soil and here he continued to reproduce Voghera» says Olezza. «He really always believed in us, despite being the only one left, and he managed to convey the same passion to me. Today we learned the lesson, we never put peppers in the same portion of the garden for at least three or four years and the production specifications provide for annual rotations."
Its shape, unlike other peppers, is cubic, quadrilobed, i.e. with four ribs, measuring on average between 8 and 12 cm. Among the aspects that are most striking – he explains further. Olezza, there is certainly the colour: «The pepper is light green and therefore is called “white”. When fully ripe it becomes yellow, almost orange, but the peculiarity is that it is already good when it is green: for this very reason, Voghera is normally harvested one or two days before it turns yellow. It is the moment in which it is most consistent, ideal for being preserved in pickle, as tradition dictates".
The recovery project began in 2005 which, in collaboration with the Gallini Agricultural Technical Institute of Voghera, the Institute of Plant Pathology of the University of Milan and the Agricultural Research Center of Montanaso Lombardo (Lodi), within a few years allowed the production and marketing of Voghera peppers to resume.
Now the aim is to relaunch the processing industry
The producers today are united in the association for the promotion and protection of PepeVo, of which Olezza is also a member, who personally takes care of the reproduction of the seed: «I would say that I have an almost morbid bond with this variety of pepper – he jokes -. I can taste the real taste of pepper, while the others seem more watery to me. I may be biased, perhaps because I was born and raised among my grandfather's plants, but I have Voghera in my heart: I find it tastier and I offer it to market customers more willingly than others."
«The Slow Food Oltrepò Pavese Convivium has been dealing with Voghera peppers for more than a decade, both in terms of research on the scientific and historical front and in managing to involve new producers and promote the product» he concludes Elisa Nervetti, Slow Food representative of the Presidium. «Now, declares Elisa Nervetti, Slow Food representative of the Presidium, we are working towards a new objective: to make consumers understand that peppers are good as soon as they are harvested and that processed products are equally tasty».