The Spice of Your Life
By “Awake!” correspondent in India
“VARIETY’S the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavor,” wrote 18th-century poet William Cowper. This lively saying alludes to the zest and color that food spices add to what we eat. And in our land of India, spices play an especially important role. Why is this so?
As you probably know, the staple food of India is boiled rice. Rice alone, especially polished rice, is rather tasteless. Watery tropical vegetables such as eggplants, gourds, okra, gherkins, spinach, and so forth, are also a big part of our diet. So without something to liven the meals up, the Indian diet would be a bland one indeed. Hence, to excite the taste buds, the Indian cook adds tongue-tingling spices. Let’s “sample” some of them.
Black pepper has been called the king of spices, and is probably the most popularly used spice on earth today. It comes from a climbing vine that can attain a height of 33 feet (c. 10 m). Native to the Malabar coast of southwest India, the pepper plant begins yielding berries after two to five years. In suitable areas it may bear peppercorns for up to 40 years.
From very early times pepper was one of the chief items of trade between India and Europe. It has thus even influenced the course of world history! But this longtime, worldwide demand for the lowly peppercorn does not solely center around its natural properties for enhancing food flavors. It also releases stomach juices to neutralize the gassy effects of our vegetable diet and relieves difficult digestion. In India, pepper and other pungent spices help balance the cooling nature of the watery foodstuffs residents of India consume.
But if black pepper is “king,” then cardamom is “queen,” being next to pepper in demand and popularity. It has a penetratingly fragrant aroma and a bittersweet, slightly lemony, flavor. Cardamom, either in seed or capsule form, is a favorite spice in cakes, biscuits, drinks, Arabian coffee, fruit salads, ice creams, and in soups, meat and rice dishes.
This delightful spice comes from the warm, moist and shaded hills of southern India. Cardamom belongs to the ginger family and, like ginger, has underground stems. However, lovely, greenish-hued, lilac-veined flowers emerge from the secondary stem that grows above ground. A mature healthy shrub can produce about 2,000 of the characteristic three-sided seed pods each season in a ten-year life.
But let’s not forget our pungent chilies. Fresh green and dried red chili pods are the hottest condiments known to man. From these cayenne pepper is made. (Not to be confused with black pepper, however.) Chilies are the seed pods of the tropical shrub called capsicum. It grows like the tomato plant and is, in fact, related to the tomato. But it surely doesn’t taste like a tomato! After a mouthful of food, liberally seasoned with chili, the uninitiated inevitably experiences an inflamed tongue, watering eyes and a runny nose. It may thus seem hard to believe that capsicum is also a relative of the bland potato. But botanists say it is!
Not all our spices, however, will make you suffer such distress. Delicate cinnamon, for example, is quite mild when you contrast it with chili! It originates in the sunbathed, monsoon-drenched hills of Sri Lanka and adjacent southern India. Actually, cinnamon is the inner bark of the laurel tree, a bushy evergreen. After being cut out, it is allowed to dry in the sun. The bark then curls into the familiar, light-brown, scroll-like “quills.”
Trade in cinnamon spice goes back some 3,600 years. In Bible times it was considered one of the “choicest perfumes” and was used as one of the ingredients in an anointing oil that was exclusively used in Jehovah’s worship. (Exodus 30:23-33) By the end of the first century of our Common Era, cinnamon was apparently still considered a valuable item of trade, inasmuch as the Bible refers to it as part of the stock of “traveling merchants.” (Revelation 18:11-13) At one time its source was such a tightly held trade secret that true cinnamon was more costly than gold! Just a small amount was a present fit for a king.
Fortunately it does not take a king’s wealth to enjoy these spices today. Likely, most of them are available in your locality, and if so, we encourage you to try them. Try some of the hotter ones in small doses, though, until you get used to them. If they are judiciously used, spices can help you create truly tasty meals.
No wonder peoples of the past exerted strenuous efforts to find the Indies—“where the spices grow.” They can really put a little spice in your food and in your life!
[Pictures on page 22]
Black pepper
Cardamom
[Pictures on page 23]
Chilies
Cinnamon