500words

There are over 9,000 curry houses across the UK and really, who doesn’t love a curry? A couple of my favourites include Jack Monroe’s chickpea and peach curry , a crunchy and sweetly strange combination that has quickly become one of my new favourite comfort foods, self-proclaimed curry-evangelist Nisha Katona’s Bengali prawn and pea curry , and anything made with a tub of Chinese curry paste. But all these dishes taste so different and look so different, so what actually makes something a ‘curry’? The word curry is a catch-all term which has been adopted to refer to soup and stew dishes from India, South-East Asia and parts of Oceania. The fact that we categorise dishes from these diverse countries together explains why there is such a range of ‘curries’ on offer – really, these dishes are completely unrelated to each other. In fact, the term curry is derived from the Tamil word ‘kari’ which simply means ‘spiced sauce’.  When it comes to the herbs and spices used in these ‘spiced ...

  If you are thinking of a career change, please do not consider being a vanilla farmer in Madagascar.   By all accounts it is a horrible, dangerous and difficult job. Vanilla comes second only to the spice saffron in value, with a kilo of black vanilla pods selling for hundreds of pounds.   Natural vanilla bean extract only accounts for about 1% of the flavour produced (the rest is synthetic) but demand for real vanilla beans is rising because we increasingly demand “natural” ingredients in our products.     Most vanilla beans come from Madagascar, where the fluctuation in the price of vanilla takes a toll on the fates and fortunes of the local community.   Vanilla orchids only bloom and fruit annually so farmers must put all their efforts into a single crop and one payment per year.    No part of the farming or curing of vanilla beans is mechanised and children often miss school to help with the demanding work of hand pollination (neces...

  Pepper: The Spice that Built World Trade From early times pepper was cultivated in the tropics of South East Asia where it was highly regarded as a condiment and, with Cinnamon, was the first spice to be traded throughout the Indian sub-continent.   At the height of the Roman empire’s power, Pliny (AD23-79) tells of his astonishment over the speed at which pepper gained popularity in Rome, noting that it was bought by weight like gold and silver! It sold for today's equivalent of £400 per lb and was one of the five essential luxuries that made life worth living and were the basis of the empire’s foreign trade, the others being Chinese silk, German amber, African ivory and Arabian incense. The King is offered fruits of the Pepper Harvest From "Livre des Merveilles du Monde"  Marco Polo's journeys   As overland trade grew in importance so did pepper and by the early Middle Ages it became a unit of international exchange, tributes and taxes were levied in pepper, ...

  Volatile Oils – Spices   A spice refers to a vegetable substance which is used for adding flavour and sometimes colour to foods. Spices are obtained from various parts of plants, such as the flowers, seeds, leaves, bark and fruits. The flavour and aromatic nature of spices are caused from the volatile oils contained within the various parts of the plants. These oils may contain up to several hundred chemical compounds, and when combined, this mixture gives different spices their characteristic flavours and aromas.  In ginger, for example, these flavours are apparent in the fresh form. However, many spices change, or develop, their flavour only upon drying and grinding. When the whole spice is broken or ground, volatile oils are released. However, over time the flavour and aroma will dissipate and this is why spices have much greater flavour and aromas when newly ground. An example of how different volumes of volatile oils can impact taste is in cinnamon. Cinnamon powd...