Spice

I like spicy food. To me, spicy doesn’t mean hot, but made with a variety of spices (but I do love hot food too, as my family and friends will attest). My Mum has a dedicated spice cupboard – not little jars in a pretty display on the wall or on the counter, but large mason jars with whole and ground spices, always kept in the dark.

I was taught that you need to keep them out of the light, so they don’t dry up and lose their potent power. So as an adult, I created a spice cupboard in my home, with glass jars of various sizes holding the wide range of spices, in the dark of a cupboard in the kitchen.

I was excited about a recent trip to the isle of Grenada, since its known as the Spice Isle. Foremost known for its nutmeg, I was delighted to find that Grenada’s landscape produces an abundance of fruit, vegetables and spices. I was lucky to be able to try most of them, and to visit a spice boucan, where they sort and dry spices for sale. To see the women carefully removing the red mace exterior from the dark brown nutmeg was fascinating, as you forget that these things are grown, picked, sorted and bottled before it reaches you in a grocery store.

I loved seeing the variety of spices – nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, clove, bay leaves, tamarind – and other local faves, cocoa for the production of chocolate, peas for rice ‘n’ peas, and calaloo leaves for iron-rich soup. Mango, papaya, guava, banana become a daily routine blended into fruit punch. With the fresh fish and seafood available, it was a gastronomic event at each meal, to see how local chefs would see what was seasonal and fresh for that night’s meal.

At one dunner at La Luna, an elegant local hotel and restaurant, the Italian owners have an Italian chef for their restaurant, an oddity on this island. Although the dishes served were Italian style – antipasto, pasta, grilled vegetables – the ingredients celebrated the local bounty, with fish and seafood, and spicy aromas from the local spices were the first assault on our senses, before we tasted and savoured the meal. Despite the overtones of another culture, the spices and foods of Grenada shone through.

photo: spices and food products of Grenada, May 2008 by WH

Posted by Waheeda.

~ by Waheeda on June 23, 2008.