Nicely Spicely

A couple of months ago we bought a cookbook called Indian Every Day, from which we have tried five or so recipes thus far, all of which have turned out deliciously well. Browsing through the book, we were struck that several of the recipes called for spices or herbs that were more-or-less unfamilar to us, so, when we noticed that the author had taken the trouble to list a few on-line suppliers for some of the harder-to-find ingredients, we made our way to one of these sites (‘the Spice of Life’ ) and placed an order there which eventually ran to a couple of dozen items…

Among the spices that were mentioned in the book, we ordered carom seeds (also called ajwan or ajwain seeds), apparently much used in lentil and bean dishes, and asfoetida, an extremely pungent spice also mentioned in connection with pulses, as both a flavouring with an oniony or garlicky flavour, and as an antiflatulent aid to digestion. We also bought some nigella seeds and some black cardamom pods (we had only ever tried the green variety before), and a couple of souring agents that neither one of us had previously experimented with: mango powder and tamarind. Dried curry leaves were also on our list, though I have since read that these are of little culinary value, as not much of the leaves’ flavour apparently survives the drying process.

Straying away from Indian spices, we picked up a pack of caraway seeds, and one of juniper berries while we were there, although doubtless these are readily available here in Sweden, too. Likewise mace is almost certainly stocked in our local supermarket, but, as we’ve yet to think to look up the Swedish name for it, we opted to just add some of that to our list. We bought sumac, which is something I’d heard of, but had never knowingly cooked with, and we ordered a couple of ready-blended spice mixes too: some Jamaican jerk seasoning, and some garam masala. Besides that we also ordered a few stuffs just for the sake of it, because we’d never heard of them and they sounded interesting, so now we have some annato seeds, some cassia bark and some zedoary root, all ready for us to find a recipe that needs them.

The present images are taken from an on-line exhibition entitled Spices, Exotic Flavors and Medicines, hosted by the UCLA’s library, which I found by way of link posted at mysterium a few months ago. Posted by misteraitch at December 18, 2003 02:22 PM | TrackBack