Throughout history, many expeditions have come to
India, or landed up in America, looking for the
spices
from its Malabar Coast. It is said King Solomon sent Phoenician sailors
to India to purchase spices. A very important part of the trade route,
The Malabar coast was the destination for Chinese, Greek, Roman traders
in silk and spice. Cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pepper were as prized as
precious stones. And after the arrival of Vasco da Gama in 1498, the
Portuguese controlled the enormously lucrative spice trade to Europe
instead of the Arabs. To understand the importance of spices in the
world, take a look at this figure: India produces about 2.5 million
tonnes of spices every year and exports about 200,000 tonnes including
value added products. The world import of spices is estimated at 450,000
tonnes and India's share is about 44 percent!.
Down the ages the three functions of spices in Indian cooking
- medicinal, preservative, and seasoning - got separated. Until recently,
taste was the criteria for using a specific spice or herb. As more
and more master chefs and gourmets research the origin of Indian cuisine
to seasons, festivals and regions of India, there is a better understanding
of the role spices play in our well-being. Granny was right: You are
what you eat. We Indians have always known that, which is why herbs
and spices, found in every home, are incorporated into our foods and
beverages for better health. Not only does the food look, smell and
taste delicious, it heals, soothes and rejuvenates. Ayurveda, the
indigenous system of Indian medicine, uses a large number of spices
in its combination of preventive and curative medicines. The proponents
of Ayurveda, understood the importance of preventing diseases and
used key spices to achieve this objective.
Ancient Ayurvedic treatise lists numerous spices for their medicinal
properties. Pepper was used to cure digestive ailments. A turmeric
paste was applied to burns, itchy skin etc. Ginger was the tried and
tested remedy for liver complaints, anaemia and rheumatism. If you
suffered from nausea, fever, headaches, or eye diseases, you'd be
sure to get a dose of cardamom. Coriander was meted out for insomnia,
cloves for spleen, kidney, and intestinal disorders.
No two people in the country will agree on the exact recipe of a
favourite dish. Recipes are handed down from generation to generation,
verbally in the kitchen and are closely guarded secrets in most cases.
But all agree, a dish is well cooked when the spices blend into the
gravy and the meat. The spices should not be have disparate flavours,
or taste raw. No one spice should over-power the other and be so intrusive
as to completely hide the true taste of the vegetable or meat being
cooked. It should help maintain and enhance the character of the dish,
give it colour and fragrance and leave you wanting more!.
Masalas are spices and other seasoning ground together to form the
basis for Indian sauces. Wet masala is ground in a stone mortar; liquids
like water or vinegar are added during the grinding process to create
a harmonious blend. Sometimes nuts, coconut, onion or garlic can also
be added. In the South freshly ground masalas are preferred to make
the gravies that go with the staple, rice. In the north, which has
a longer winter when fresh spices are not easy to get hold of, dried,
powdered spices are commonly used to flavour the gravy-less dishes
preferred with rotis that are the staple. There are no hard and fast
rules for the use of spices in particular recipes, but there are basic
guidelines based on commonsense. Turmeric, coriander, cumin, pepper
have too strong and bitter a taste to be good additions to desserts.
However saffron, cardamoms, cinnamon that are used to make garam masala
are freely used in sweets. That's because most of the halwas etc that
call for their use are winter favourites and a little heat is welcome
in the cold northern winter.
There is another type of masala westerners might be unfamiliar with
and that that is the chaunk or tadka. Whole dried spices like kashmiri
chillies, cumin and coriander seeds, karipatta etc are added one by
one to hot oil until they begin to sputter or pop. This tempering
is then poured over dals and raitas. That's the extra zing that makes
Indian food so popular the world over!
