Zest Lounge : Spice – The Gold of India

Spice – The Gold of India
Posted on: Thursday, January 22, 2009

Each time I hear someone talk with unabashed passion about 'Indian food', I wonder… what really is the 'Indian cuisine'? Is there a ubiquitous melee of flavours that comprise the Indian palate – a confusion of textures and taste that you'll find anywhere you go, across India?

For someone born and brought up here, the distinctions are simple. The unmistakable aroma of the hing-zeera tadka of an arhar daal from Uttar Pradesh cannot be confused with the fresh, coriander seed bouquet of sambar from Tamil Nadu, though both use the same lentil.

And yet, there indeed is a very unique collective identity to this body of culinary artistry: an identity that lies in the incomparable blend of spices that are so critical to Indian cooking.

Without its wondrous storehouse of spices Indian cooking wouldn't be what it is today, and neither, perhaps, would the shape of the world.

In fact, the mention of spices never fails to conjure up images of seafaring bandits and adventurers in search of spices, crossing seas and mountains and river and ravines to reach India, leaving in their wake historical economic upheavals that have influenced the shape of our world today.

Wars were waged, kingdoms rose and fell, new continents were discovered, economies transformed and history defined over the global tussle for monopoly over this seemingly innocuous, aromatic category of vegetation.

Some spices are believed to have medicinal, aphrodisiac and sometimes, even magical properties and have been used as palliatives for a bewildering range of conditions.
They were, in fact, once costlier than gold.

For centuries, India's wealth of spices attracted Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Arabs to the tropical Malabar Coast. In fact, India traded in spice with Egypt as early as 1700 BC. Buddhism took Indian spices to China. The Arabs transported them via Egypt to the Levantine Coast and further onto Europe. The Europeans took over the trade from the Arabs, and eventually colonised large sections of the world in their pursuit of these exotic treasures. The first spice treaty is believed to have been signed by the Sultan of Calicut, with the Portuguese in 1489. Interestingly, most of European traders found it more lucrative to trade spices within the Asian region, rather than carry them back to Europe.

In culinary traditions of the ancient world, spices were combined with alchemical precision to obtain specific flavours and textures. Expert cooks prepared extremely sophisticated dishes and closely guarded their recipes. Shrouded in secrecy, these were handed down from generation to generation like heirlooms.

A skilled cook will select the right spices to enhance the base flavours of the food. These blends differ from household to household and from family to family. Indian cooking, though not necessarily hot, is distinctively spicy and characterised by the use of a greater range of spices than any other cuisine of the world.

In their historic journey to our kitchen shelves today, spices have seen the downfall and rise of many empires. It is only in recent years, since the beginning of the 20th century that spices have become accessible to people all over the world.

And yet, even today, most of the world depends on India for its seasoning.