Tastes!

A personal, pictoral encyclopedia of herbs, spices and essential tastes.

[jamesrbarrett]

About

This blog started with a lunch at a Microbrewery (The Devils Backbone, Nelson County, VA) which is surroundced by great views and no Internet. My wife and I decided to see if we could come up with at least one spice or herb for each letter of the alphabet (without cheating by Googling or acess to my set of food encylopedias at home. We came up with answers to most letters (I am missing a few letters so far (I, W, and Y, with a few others a bit of a stretch (Hysop, Kimchi, Quince, Xanthin, and Zest) but I have hope).

Then I decided to take a portrait of my alphabetical subjects. So far each portrait is of things I have prepared or at least had in our kitchen. 

The purpose of this blog is to share my enthusiasm for cooking and food photography.

(Note - you can click on any picture to get a full size version of the photograph.)

[jamesrbarrett]

A is for Allspice

Allspice is the only spice that grows exclusively in the Western Hemisphere (http://theepicentre.com/spice/allspice-2/ accessed June 2014). Not surprisingly the pungent allspice was historically confused with peppercorn. The Spaniards called this spice pimienta - AKA  the Spanish name for peppercorn (as well as the sweet pepper pimento, etc, etc).

In pre-colonial times, allspice was used by native populations for various reasons, including preservation of meat .... and corpses:

"Allspice was used by the Mayans as an embalming agent and by other South American Indians to flavour chocolate. The name ‘Jamaica’ comes from Xamayca, meaning ‘land of wood and water’ in the language of the Arawaks. These natives used allspice to help cure and preserve meats, sometimes animals, some times their slain enemies. The allspice cured meat was known in Arawak as boucan and so later Europeans who cured meat this way came to be known as boucaniers, which ultimately became ‘buccaneers’."

( from http://theepicentre.com/spice/allspice-2/ accessed June 2014)

Chemically, allspice  contains eugenol, - a key compound in cloves, one of allspice's taste - relatives. It also has a rubefacient class of oil which irritates the skin,  causing blood vessel dilation, and therefor a sense of superficial skin warming. This effect was used by Spanish conquistadors who put allspice inside their shoes, to alleviate soreness. It also caused a pervasive aroma around the shoes, which today is a key element of various men's colognes (think "Old- Spice", just saying). I personally find it effective in clearing  a kitchen of various odors (e.g. saute/ fry odors) - crush a few berries into a pot with a quart of simmering water, remove from heat after a few minutes, and leave, off the heat for up to a couple hours! Or you can use a cinnamon stick - very helpful in clearing a kitchen before guests arrive!

Culinarily, allspice is used in both savory and sweet dishes. The classic savory uses are both Kosher dill (cucumber) pickles and the iconic Jamaican Jerk pork and chicken dishes. Sweet applications of allspice include spice cake,  fruitcakes, and especially, pumpkin pie. It is also an essential part of some liqueurs such as Chartreuse (from http://theepicentre.com/spice/allspice-2/ accessed June 2014).

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[jamesrbarrett]

B is for Basil

Basil (sweet basil - Ocimum basilicum) probably originated in Africa but was first domesticated in India but is now best known for the raw purees pesto in Italy (pesto being the Italian word for the pestle of mortar and pestle), and pistou ,in Provence, France (McGee).  A chiffonade of basil  with olive oil is the dressing in Insalata Caprese (Mozzarella and tomato salad). The flavors in basil have a wide range of aromas and tastes, including lime, lemon, cinnamon and camphor (McGee). Indeed the flavors also vary with age (McGee), in my opinion the best and most delicate tastes are found in younger leaves.

[jamesrbarrett]

C is for Cloves

 In the above picture, cloves are used with an orange to make a pomander, nowadays a fragrant Christmas ornament. Such pomanders can last for a couple months, or a year if treated with additional spice oils and powders. Pomanders were used in medieval Europe as protection from witchcraft (see, for example, the central role of a pomander in the Roman Polanski movie, “Rosemary’s Baby”).

Cloves are the unripe flower bud of an evergreen myrtle tree. The name clove comes from, in several languages, words for nail(s)  - which refers to the shape of the dried bud, They are one of the strongest  tasting/ smelling spices.

Historically, cloves were one of the most important spices from the Spice Islands of the Moluccas, Indonesia, conquered by Magellan of Portugal. When Arabs sought to export cloves to Europe, Portugal took quick steps to control trade. Once the Dutch controlled the Moluccas, production was restricted to the single island of Amboina and foreign clove traders in the Moluccas were executed. However, the French and others successfully established clove production elsewhere; today major production occurs in Madagascar and Zanzibar.

Oil of clove (80% eugenol) is used medically for dental problems to to effectively numb nerve endings. In European and  American cooking, cloves are best known in baking (Christmas pudding, apple pie) as well as savory dishes such as baked hams, onions, and as a pickling spice. Cloves are used in India, Malaysia and China in savory dishes. However, today, the vast bulk of cloves are used in Indonesia for a flavored cigarettes called kretek (which can be as much as 40% shredded clove).

[jamesrbarrett]

D is for Dill

  Both the feathery leaves and the seed of dill (also dill weed) are used as flavorings. This member of the carrot family is found in European (Scandinavia, Germany, and Greece) as well as Indian  and Southwest Asia.

In the above photo, dill is a key component for making Gravalax, salmon cured with dill, salt and sugar. The gravlax I have made comes from Julia Child’s Quick Gravlax recipe in the Cookbook, “Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home”. (The traditional recipe  in the same cookbook takes four days.) Dill is also used in traditional cucumber pickling (My favorite recipes comes from my Grandmother’s Depression Era cookbook, “The Settlement Cookbook”, circa 1928.

[jamesrbarrett]

K is for Ketchup

Ketchup (or sometimes in the US, catsup or catchup) most likely originated in China as "ketsiap" a fermented fish sauce, or a variant of soy sauce ("kecap"). Non tomato based kecthups preceded our most popular sweet tomato version, especially the British mushroom ketchup; other early variants used oyster, mussels, or walnuts. Between modern ketchup and it's early antecedent, soy sauce, the vast majority of hum,ans use these condiment sauces every day

Today Heinz ketchup dominates the Western markets, with as much as 80% of the British market. An amusing historical sidebar to Heinz Ketchup is that the original Heinz product was labeled catsup but, in order to distinguish themselves from other manufacturers, re-branded it as ketchup (http://mentalfloss.com/article/29649/whats-difference-between-ketchup-and-catsup,; accessed 28 July 2014).

Early marketing of Heinz marketing empathized the labor saving convenience of their product:  ketchup was a common product of the US in the late 19th century through the American depression. Indeed, the Settlement Cook Book (author TBD) offers a recipe that takes, depending on tomato variety 6 to 18 hours to produce (and then to can). Quite often home made ketchups are watery and thin tasting. The Settlement Cook Book (and the current label on Heinz ketchup bottles which lists as first ingredient as *ripe* tomatoes) is the use of very ripe tomatoes. Besides enhanced flavor, ripe tomatoes contain pectin which is key to producing a very thick, slow moving sauce.

The above picture shows my first attempt at making ketchup, following the recipes in my Grandmother Meyer's Settlement Cook Book (with personal variations in spices and vinegar). and from National Public radio (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/07/11/200865030/Taste-Of-Grandmas-Kitchen-We-Hack-An-Old-Ketchup-Recipe, accessed 26 July 2014).

[jamesrbarrett]

T is for Taste - the 5 basic tastes humans have

Historically,  four distinct tastes are perceived by the human tongue: sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. Recently a fifth taste has been generally accepted: the umami (from the Japanese word that roughly means tasty).

[jamesrbarrett]

Bitter Taste

TBD

[jamesrbarrett]

Salty Taste

  Salt is the only rock mankind regularly consumes. It comes in many shapes and sizes. Mark Kurlansky’s book, “Salt, A World History” has a in depth look at salt and man through history. For example, the Chinese were perhaps the earliest people to mine salt; they used bamboo pole (which is impervious to salt water) to bring saline water from deep underground. This technique is the forerunner to that process used by modern manufacturers of table salt in the Midwest US. An in depth discussion of salt  in food is given by Harold McGee in his classic, ” On Food and Cooking”.

[jamesrbarrett]

Top: a single (man-made) pyramidal crystal of salt, Above: three forms of salt - black, pyramidal and pink salt. Some black salt occurs natually, e.g. in Hiawaii. Perhaps the most famous pink salt come from the Hymalyas and is of\ten used in cooking/ presentation of fish or meats by heating a slab to high temperatures and then placing the food on top, just before serving.

[jamesrbarrett]

Sweet Taste

Sweet taste, is perhaps the first taste we sense (in the form of mother's milk). Chemically, the  sugars we consume come in two chemical forms - the simplest chemically and easiest to digest, are the monoscsaccharides (like glucose and fructose), and the more complex are the disaccharides (the most important for us is sucrose, or table sugar. In ancient times the two best known sources of sweetness were fruit  and honey. Some fruits are up to 60 percent sugar, while honey can reach 80 percent (Harold McGee, "On Food and Cooking). These forms have been celebrated throughout the history of mankind, around the world (see McGee). Undoubtedly the most celebrated use of sugar for sweet confection is the combination of table sugar with chocolate. Chocolate comes from  the bland bean of South American bean - from the caco tree. To make chocolate from these beans took humans centuries to discover. The magical chemistry in the production of chocolate results in one of the most chemically complex set of compounds. But taste-wise it remains lacking something until it is married with sugar. It is a chemical version of a Kabuki dance  - a simple compound of table sugar with an extraordinary complex compound of chocolate - sweet chocolate is celebrated in all manner of desserts from the luxurious Queen of Sheba cake (Reine da Saba torte) to the most popular and portable dessert, the chocolate cupcake (illustrated above).

[jamesrbarrett]

Sour Taste

TBD

[jamesrbarrett]

Umami Taste

TBD