Traveling Around The Spice World

There's a Cajun word, lagniappe (pronounced lan yap), which means "something extra." It makes me think about the subtle little something extras in nature, that help make life worth while. In the case of spices, it did more than that -- it changed the world. Once more valuable than gold, they were in part, what drove man to seek new worlds.

The spice plants, which yield the the pungent and fragrant substances used all over the world as condiments, are almost all natives of the tropical regions. If you really thought about it, I doubt most of us would want to live without them. That little extra something in the foods that eat, sometimes makes all the difference between a good meal and a bad meal.

Since discovery, most prices now grow on many continents and places they were not native to. However, there was a time when they came only by way of camel caravan and by ship. Here in the United States, we owe in part our history, due to the high price of pepper during the Middle Ages. That high price, sent explorers and sailors off on a quest to be the first to find a sea route to India.

One Vacation in the Spice World Is To Start With Peppers

Today, many act as if essential oils are a new discovery. Whole industries and business are created over the "miracle of essential oils." If you are not a user of essential oils, then perhaps you've never thought about them. Well, let's take a little closer look at that aspect of traveling around the spice world.

In a nutshell (no pun intended), the plants that provide spices owe their flavor to the essential oils in them. We eat the fruit, or seed, of some of them, as in the case of pepper, cayenne, pimento, nutmeg, mace, and vanilla. From others, such as cinnamon and cassia -- we use the bark. Still other spice plants provide their flavor from the essential oils in the rootstock, such as in ginger.

Known to man (in India) since pre-historic times, pepper, is the most widely used of all the spices. It was even used in Egypt as early as the days of Ramses II (not for food as much as for embalming). There are of course, several kinds of pepper.

There was a time when it was referred to as "black gold" long before the modern usage of the term "black gold" was applied to oil gushers. In some countries it was used as a form of money.

The commonest variety is know to commerce as black pepper, or piper nigrum, as the botanists call it. It is the ground-up berry of a plant that once grew wild in the East Indies. It was later cultivated, not only in India, but also in Thailand, southeast China, and Malaysia. Today, the two largest producers and exporters of pepper are Vietnam and Brazil.

It is a creeping or climbing plant with a dark-colored stem. The drooping branches bear spikes of green flowers which develop into bright red berries, the size of peas.

The pepper plant is propagated, or reproduced, by cuttings which do not produce fruit for the first three years. In the fourth year they bear, and yield more and more berries every year until the eight year, when the plant begins to decline. There are two crops a year.

These, when dried, are the peppercorns of commerce. Each berry contains a single white round seed. A vigorous pepper plant will yield as much as six or seven pounds of pepper.

The plant, in cultivation, is always supported on poles or on companion trees planted for that purpose. The pepper stem twines around this support and can achieve a considerable height. Trees were more often used in the past than poles, as the plant thrives best where there is a certain amount of shade.

The berries are gathered as they change from green to red. This is the period when they are most pungent, or have the sharpest flavor.

After gathering they are spread out on mats in the sun to dry. As they dry, they become wrinkled and black, and in that state are known as black pepper.

White pepper comes from the same plant. It is simply the white seed of the peppercorn freed from the dried, pungent outer skin. Taking off the skin is called the "decorticating" process.

Thus, you see, white pepper and black pepper actually come from the same berry. The difference is in their flavor.

Full black peppercorns are richer in the essential oils of the pepper, which are contained in the skin of the berry.

The seed without the skin is much less pungent and is sometimes preferred in light-colored foods as it does not show dark specks in such foods.

To decorticate, or take the skin off the peppercorns in the past was very labor intensive. It required workers to soak them until they became soft, and the covering was able to be rubbed away from the seed. That process would produce the grayish or white peppercorn, which was then exported in whole form to be ground or sold whole by spice merchants.

Cayenne pepper is not related to black pepper as a plant, however it is instead a capsicum, or chili. The kind of chili usually used to make cayenne pepper is called "bird's-eye chili." This is the reason why the marketing name: "Bird's Eye Chili" is a familiar brand of chili spices on American grocery chain shelves.

Most of it before World War II came from Africa, although Japan and Zanzibar, as well as India, produced it. When African shipments of cayenne pepper were shut off during the war, however, the United States Department of Agriculture ruled that a certain very hot grade of American-grown chili peppers could properly be cayenne (even if they are not true members of the plant family).

A few little odd, but true facts about cayenne peppers is that these very hot little chillies are (among many other uses):

• An important part of curry mixtures
• Used in canary bird feeding at molting time to deepen the color of the new feathers
• Used in topical ointments medicinally
• Used in mouth wash gargles
• Used for digestion ailments
• A key ingredient in throat lozenges (combined with sugar and tragacanth)

Cayenne pepper in a favorite spice used in many ethnic dishes, not just Cajun cook creations. The pepper, ground from the hot chillies is used as a seasoning in meats, fish, and sauces. The whole chillies are used extensively in the manufacture of pickles.

Red pepper, which is a milder capsicum than cayenne, is used in much the same way. It grows extensively in Louisiana and throught the Americas.

The plant that yields these valuable products is the capsicum, and there are several species, varying only in shape, size, and color in the fruits that they bear. All have the same strongly pungent quality.

They are cultivated in most tropical and subtropical countries. The consumption of them is enormous.

Curry is one of those things found in our spice racks and shelves that we think of as a single spice. I did a little survey among friends and family and without exception -- every one of them thought there must be a curry plant somewhere that we get curry from. Not true.

This "spice" is a generic term for many many recipes for a one size fits all spice. Usually, it is a combination of turmeric, cummin, coriander, fenugreek, and red pepper. In the past the tern curry was really a corruption of the Tamil word kari. That meant to many a gravy-like sauce. However, to other languages and cultures, it was word for side-dishes to be eaten with rice or bread.

In the past in India, house servants generally ground red peppers in a curry mixture each morning with a pestle and mortar, combined with various herbs, spices, and seeds. Some of what was used was mustard, ginger, cardamom, coriander, and cumin.

Often, fresh coconut was added, and each family had its own formula, the secret portions of which were closely guarded secrets. The secrets of curry are still handed down in families and just as closely guarded today.

Now, in many parts of the world, curry is eaten at least three times a day by all the inhabitants. This is especially true in India and through Asia. It has two valuable functions:

1. It makes a more pleasing diet made up of rice with mere flavorings of meat, fish, or vegetables more interesting.
2. Curry helps to combat the oppressive heat by raising the body temperature so that the air seems cooler than it is.

It's more common here in the United States, Britain, and Canada to know curry as a spice that is largely based on ground turmeric -- with a distinct yellow color. So don't expect curry in India and other countries to be like what we are most familiar with. Outside more western palates, curry is often red or brown colored in some combination of five spices. However, curry can and often does consist of twenty or more additional spices.

Chilies is the Mexican name for all varieties of the capsicum, and in Mexico the quantity of chili eaten is quite as great as the quantity of salt. Because of the numbers of immigrants from Mexico over generations here in the United States,

Chili peppers are hugely popular and now as uniquely American as apple pie. In fact, it might be the new apple pie of taste buds.

Throughout Mexico and the United States many varieties of Spanish types of capsicum are grown extensively.

The plant has a branching stem growing about two feet high, and there are long, narrow dark green leaves, white flowers and buds that are in some varieties long, like cherries.

Though a tropical plant, the capsicum will grow in our gardens. The pepper made from the dried chilies is a very valuable product, acting as a stimulant and as an aid to digestion. It is considered of particular value in hot countries, just like the curry mixtures are.