The Book of Spices by Alain Stella
Paris, 1993.
While the book was somewhat disappointing for lack of recipes, it was an interesting history and catalogue of the world’s spices. Some of favorite excerpts from this book include:
In the beginning there were regions of Franche, each with their own way of cooking, their own produce, eating habits, rituals, and landscape. Then came the kings who united the provinces, and French cuisine made its entrance at court. A mirror is held up to the period and to a kingdom, royal courts were receptive to fashion, to the arts and to those foreign influences on which the history of France is built.
So was it that European ports starting out as springboards to discovery, turned into sounding boards for countless far-flung-cultures. The ever-curious cooks who, in their thirst for knowledge, unearthed with each new discovery of the flavor of spices from foreign lands.
The book mentions Bluebird spices, but we think our spice mixes every bit as good. From the cinnamon of mysterious and ancient origins perfuming the Mediterranean coast for three thousand years coming from Sri Lanka, to cardamom a most valuable seed of southwest India infused in everything including teas and coffees, to cloves a perfume of Ambon in the Moluccas to the studding of a whole orange with it to make a pomander imparting a delicate fragrance to clothes in a laundry or the scent of potpourri or perfume bouquets, to cumin and cardaway seeds from their ancient haunts in the Middle East, to the ginger of Asian origins and famous now served pickled with sushi as a mild garni, to nutmeg now condensed into Ecstasy but famous for its own personal graters in England, to pimentos chilies and paprikas of Mexican, Indian, or Chinese cuisines where peppers are slowly allowed to dry in the sun (from Serranos, to anchos, habaneras, pasadas, anchos, and pasillas, perhaps the most famous from Szeged region of Hungary for its paprikas) , to the Jamaican allspice, peppers (all kinds from the original version on the Pepper Coast of India to the infinite varieties available now, to saffron the best of which is still handpicked at a dried weight greater than gold, to vanilla originally from Tahiti and Madagascar but also made famous by its cultivation in Mexico, we find them indispensable at the château, all of them, but particularly our spice mixes.
We use a number of spice mixes at the chateau and hope you discover them as well.
