8/10/2018 0 Comments The role of spices--the pastSpices spice food up, and open new horizons of our tasting adventure. There are many aspects that foods of different cultures distinguish themselves from one another, but the seasoning with spices is nevertheless an important one. While the main ingredients of the cuisine can be somewhat different as well, people tend to attribute the “taste” or “flavor” of a certain cuisine to the seasoning rather than certain ingredients. For example, Kung Pao Chicken (宫保鸡丁) is seasoned with a concoction of spicy, slightly sweet, slightly sour, sauce made with chili pepper, prickly pepper, some sweetener and a tad of vinegar. This flavor is deemed “Chinese”. The same main ingredient (cut up chicken breast meat) can be cooked with curry spices and be considered as “Indian”. If you use jerk spices on the chicken, the dish will have a Jamaican flavor. The list could go on, but I think you get my point. It is pertinent to say, that the soul of a certain cuisine may be captured by a few essences, and seasoning/spice is certainly one of them.
Having grown up in a culture that uses a large variety of spices on a regular basis, I was somewhat shocked to find that, in traditional Western cuisine (with the exception of fancy French cuisine), spices are used so sparingly. Salt and pepper are the mainstay, but besides that many families do not have the need to stock other spices unless they have a particular cooking/baking project that requires spices. I have visited a few families of different socioeconomic backgrounds in the U.S., and though I saw several bottles of spices (e.g. barbecue spices, Italian seasoning, roasted garlic) in their pantry, the bottles are either still sealed or mostly full even if the seal has been broken, a good indication that these spices rarely find their way into the daily cooking in such families. Then I started wondering, why is this the case? Why is usage of spices not so prevalent in Western cultures as in Chinese culture (or other Asian cultures, or even Latin American cultures)? One main reason that I can conjecture is rooted in the region of growth of most spices we know nowadays. It turns out that tropical areas are particularly rich in spice plants. Indeed, if you look at the spices in your own pantry and look up the origin of such plants (e.g. cinnamon, vanilla, bay leaves), you may realize how many of them are from tropical areas: cinnamon is native to India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Bangladesh; vanilla was first cultivated in Mexico by inhabitants of East Coastal Mexico; bay leaves have a few different origins, including India, Indonesia, and West Indies. In addition to tropical areas, the Mediterranean region also produces a variety of spices, mostly herbs such as basil, mint, and rosemary. As you may have noticed, the regions that produce spices and herbs are either warm, or have abundant sunlight, or both. In fact, temperature and sunshine are two key conditions of successfully growing spice plants and herbs, which unfortunately, cannot be easily satisfied outside of tropical climate or Mediterranean climate, until modern agricultural advancement has made it possible to create an artificial environment with electricity. What this means is that, for people outside of tropical or Mediterranean climate to enjoy the spices, trading is essential, and it is the traders that first introduced spices to the world cuisine. Since both Chinese culture and most Western cultures have to receive the original gift of spices from somewhere else, the distance and easiness of such spice exchange understandably have a large impact on its prevalence. China is adjacent to many tropical regions (e.g. Myanmar, India) by land, and historically the borderline between China and other tropical neighboring countries has been shifting back and forth, with frequent interaction between people from both sides. As a result, many tropical spices entered China as early as 2000 years ago. By the end of Ming Dynasty (mid-1600s), frequent trading on the sea has largely increased the availability of different spices, reduced the prices, and most Chinese families have incorporated the spices into their everyday cooking. In addition to trading, some original foreign spices have been cultivated in certain regions of China, where the local climate happens to be suitable. For example, Hunan province boasts of producing one of the spiciest chili peppers thanks to its hot and humid summer even though it is not in tropical area. Taken together, the relative convenience of trading and producing a variety of spices jointly boost the usage of spices in Chinese cuisine. If you are familiar with the world map, you will soon realize that the root of most Western cultures, i.e. Western Europe including Britain, France, as well as Scandinavian countries, is quite far from any tropical regions, so it must be imaginably difficult for the spices to reach these faraway lands. Arab traders who first brought the exotic spices and information about them to Europe took care to guard the routes of spice exchange, and keep the prices of spices high enough that only the rich or the royal people had access to them. Even after the famous explorer Columbus opened the route of trading through the sea, the prices of spices were still kept high since different countries competed for control of such rare resources. Consequently, even until mid-20th century, spices were deemed as luxuries in the kitchen. You can spot this historical influence even today, when you see that a 0.12-ounce Bottle of bay leaves (maybe enough for a few stews) by McCormick is over 4 bucks in a Western grocery store, but a 4-ounce bag of bay leaves (probably enough to last 10+ years) is less than 3 bucks in an Asian grocery store.
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