A spicy treat

Spices are so important in cooking; they are an integral part of every kitchen. Whether you use the simple salt and pepper or the more complicated and exotic mix of spices, no dish can be the same without a touch of seasoning. I love cooking, and I love spices of all kinds. I have visited the spice markets in many cities in India, and I’m always mesmerized by the experience. The sounds, the pungent smells just take over your senses and transport you to a whole different planet.

Recently, I went on a short vacation to Kerala in the south of India with my husband. We visited a little town called Thekkady which is famous for its spices, and so as a treat my husband decided to take me to visit a spice plantation there. I was very excited; since I wanted to know all about spices, how they grow and how they are treated before packaging them off for the markets. And so, off we went to the plantation, where the owner took us on a little tour. The owner was such a charming little man, with his little ways to keep his audience interested in his small talk! He would take us to a plant, ask us to guess which one it was, and then almost in a theatrical way he would pick a little pod and make us smell and taste it before revealing its name!

The first one on the visit was a cardamom plant. I saw the pods and guessed it was a pepper plant. Well it wasn’t, and I knew it when he picked up a green pod, split it and made us taste the seeds. I have never tasted cardamom as strong in flavor as this, and that he explained was because it was still very green. Once the pods are ripe they are picked and dried under the shade, that’s why the skin retains its green color. Next he took us to a huge tree, took out a little knife and scraped up a little piece of the bark, and I immediately knew it was cinnamon, since I do have a little knowledge about the basic spices. Yes, cinnamon is actually a bark of a tree and even when scraped right off the tree it still is incredibly flavorsome. The leaf of this tree is actually the Indian bay leaf and is used extensively in Indian recipes.

The next stop was at a pepper plant; well actually it isn’t a plant at all it’s a flowering vine. The pods of pepper are picked at different times in their growth stage and treated differently to get green pepper, white pepper and black pepper. And so we kept going from one plant to another. He had an amazing variety of spices growing in his plantation. We saw vanilla, cocoa beans, coffee plants, ginger, pineapple, asafetida, cloves, star anise, and a few herbs like holy basil, sweet basil, lemongrass and even a rubber tree. He showed us how they collect rubber and process it for industrial use.

My head was spinning by the time we finished the tour, I’d learnt so much I wasn’t even sure if I remembered it all. But my favorite was the vanilla. Vanilla belongs to the orchid family and is one of the most expensive spices in the world. The vines produce a fruit which when left on the plant will ripen and grow into a vanilla pod. The pod on its own doesn’t have any flavor or smell. It needs to be picked at the right time and dried in the right way, only then will it give out its amazing flavor. There’s nothing more fantastic than the flavor of fresh vanilla scraped out right from the pod.

That afternoon I came away with a large bag full of fresh spices and a heady feeling from all the pungent smells!

Linus Orakles
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