How to spice up the winter with hot spices
When Vasco da Gama returned from his first voyage to Kerala, the weight of spices carried back by him was enough, ostensibly, to pay six times over the cost of his maritime adventure. Spices, of course, have been a valuable commodity exported from South and Southeast Asia, right from ancient times. But while it may no longer cost the earth to pop in a few peppercorns into a stew or a stick of cinnamon in a dessert, in Indian kitchens, the spice box is invaluable for more reasons than just money.
Unlike Western cooking, where the focus is on a single main ingredient, Indian cooking is inseparable from its complex use of spices. We may often complain about how our cooks tend to drown everything in masala, and, well, garam masala, retailed as a universal mix, rather than individual spices, but a judicious use of spices can transform any dish from the banal to the exquisite. Just think of dal without tempering, or a mutton curry where the top notes of powdered mace uplift the whole creation.
Indian cooking is largely seasonal and spices were used for their medicinal properties as well. (The most common example is turmeric, anti-inflammatory and antiseptic besides being tellingly regarded as “auspicious”, and mandatory to Indian cooking.) Like other ingredients, they have been traditionally grouped under the ayurvedic categories of “hot” and “cold”. This relates to the physiological action of these ingredients. The theory of “hot” versus “cold” guna (property) of foods supposedly travelled all across – to West Asia, Spain, South America and even China (the yin-yang principle is said to be a spin-off), according to food historians like KT Achaya.
At any rate, winter spices, as we today call them, are used not just in Indian cuisine(s) but around the world, where “Christmas flavours” of cinnamon, nutmeg, star anise, all spice (kebab chini in India) and cloves are a bunch of “hot” spices spreading culinary cheer.
GLOBAL FLAVOURS
Colonial travellers and chroniclers like Niccolao Manucci, whose accounts I have just bought, record the prevalence of something called “burnt” wine, boiled with spices, in India, to soothe the stomach (!) and keep out the cold. This is but mulled wine, a well-known Christmas tradition. Chef Willi Haueter, the genial Swiss-born, world-travelled executive chef at The Imperial, Delhi, gives tips to do this at home: mix water and sugar and add ginger bits, a few star anise, cloves, orange and lemon juice (and zest) and bring all these to a boil. Let this rest for 15-20 minutes, then add any red wine and let the brew sit for a while. Warm it up (to 900 C; that is, just below the boiling point) and serve hot whenever you want to drink it.
You can attempt plum puddings with ginger, nutmeg and cardamom, ginger bread with all spice, and as Haueter suggests enhance tomato sauce for pasta with a dash of cinnamon powder. But one dish I will certainly try is pan-fried fish (sole or snapper) with a sauce made with green grapes, ginger, star anise, cinnamon in butter and glazed with white wine (just add the wine to the butter-spice mix). You can add some almond flakes or pinenuts, salt and pepper and pour over the fish. Voila!
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