Pepper, the very foundation of the spice trade! Where would we be if Marco Polo had not ventured into Asia so long ago! But pepper was well known in the ancient world long before that. Edward Gibbon, in his Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire mentions the trade in pepper at the time of Severus Alexander, Roman emporer from AD222 to 235. For pepper to have been in such widespread trade by that time, it must have been in popular use for quite some time already.
Black pepper is produced from the unripe berries of the pepper plant, Piper nigrum. It is actually the same fruit as white pepper. For black pepper, the fruit is allowed to dry in the sun, where a tough wrinkled black skin forms. White pepper is the same pepper fruit, but with the black skin scaled off. Malabar pepper has a very fresh, lively flavor, much in demand by the best chefs.
One additional note...sometimes you see black pepper sold as "Tellicherry" pepper, with a claim that it was grown on the side of Mt. Tellicherry or some other fanciful claim. Not true. The largest and finest of the Malabar peppercorns are chosen from each harvest and marketed as Tellicherry pepper. That is the only distinction. We're not certain where the 'Tellicherry' designation came from, but it does not signify a different variety of black pepper. Tellicherry pepper is the same as Malabar pepper.
If you've read about the health benefits of black pepper, you have almost certainly come across some mention of it being 'required' for absorption of turmeric. This is such a widespread claim that almost no one questions it. However, it is simply not true. The requirement for absorption of turmeric's active compounds is a fat. For a more detailed explanation, see our full article on black pepper. Black pepper definitely does assist in the bioavailability of turmeric, but not by specifically enabling its absorption.
If you're unable to have black pepper, you can leave it out of the recipe for golden paste. You'll need to have the golden paste more often, but leaving out the black pepper will not inherently diminish its effectiveness.