Cinnamon

One thing is certain based on the experience of 40+ years of teaching botany; very few people know what they are really eating or where it comes from. Providing such information, enlightening a few people, is part of the fun of teaching the botany of economically important plants. So TPP was delighted to find this rather nicely illustrated article about cinnamon at the HuffPo. Last year the Cinnamomum shrub in our glasshouse up and died, and as yet a replacement hasn't been obtained.  So if anyone has a trip planned to Sri Lanka, pick up a seedling for TPP; he'll be very grateful. Oh, yes, the cinnamon fern (Osmunda) has nothing to do with cinnamon; however it does describe the color of the mature fertile fronds and its spores.

Seasoning starter kit

The morning newspaper had side column suggesting a list of 10 must have seasonings for the brand-new, novice cook.  Having a deep philosophical conversation before consuming your full titer of caffeine is not a good idea, so the Phactors decided this was safe to discuss being fairly mundane.  First, the initial assumption must be that this starter kit is for someone whose idea of "home cooking" is to put the frozen pizza into the oven.  Second, what kind of things do "novice" cooks first begin to try?  Doesn't entry into cooking usually begin with confections; things like brownies and cookies?  Even the Phactors seldom make red pasta sauce from scratch anymore.  Maybe a salad dressing is easy enough, and certainly seasonings for grilling or frying meat.  Third, obviously these are in the dried not fresh seasonings.  So here's the newspaper's suggested list of 10: salt, pepper, bay leaves, onion powder, garlic powder, seasoning salt, dill weed, summer savory, parsley, basil.
Granted the Phactors have an herb garden, but TPP can count on one hand the number of times he's used summer savory in the past decade.  And while we use a lot of dill weed in marinades and dips (OK that might be the reasoning for the seasoning.), it's not on my top 10 list of necessities.  Of course presently the Phactors go through an alarming amount of coriander, cumin, and tumeric, as well as a lot of cinnamon and oregano.  We use a lot of paprika, chili powder, dry mustard, and hot red pepper (flakes & powdered).  Parsley is an essential, but it's never out of season and it's never dried.  Wouldn't even a novice cook have onions and garlic bulbs?  If you're cooking something that calls for onion and garlic, why use powdered?  Is this asking too much of a novice?  After all, salt is on the list.  Checked a really simple cookbook and oregano and dry mustard were common enough, but garlic powder, onion powder, summer savory, dill weed, basil, not at all.  So here goes, the Phactors' starter kit: salt, pepper, oregano, basil, cinnamon, chili powder, dry mustard, red pepper flakes, cumin, coriander.  You have to encourage people that cooking is an adventure, right?  Your imput and justifications are welcomed. 

Spicy suggestions needed

The Phactors host visiting foreign students regularly.  One liked us well enough to return for a visit and she brought us some fancy and rather exotic spices, so how about some suggestions on how to use a couple of these items.  First are peri peri peppers, which is doubly redundant because peri peri means "pepper pepper" literally, but probably better translated as "little pepper", which they are, one of the many varieties of little, often appallingly hot "bird" peppers so-called because birds disperse them.  The Phactors have quite an array of chili peppers around but mostly of the Tex-Mex sort, so peri peris are rather new.  Another spice, and a new one on our lengthy life list, is cinnamon flowers, which can also be called cassia buds, but then again cassia is a type of cinnamon. So this is either a flower bud or very young fruit.  They look rather like cloves, which is also a flower bud, but they are even harder.  An exploratory chew found them to be a hot, spicy, cinnamony, and sweet, sort of like a red-hot candy.  So what do you do with them? 

Botanical quest - daun salam

What a botanical challenge for a Saturday in mid-January here in the center of North America. The recipe we must cook for this evening's meeting of our dinner club is opor ayam (braised chicken in coconut cream sauce). Nothing quite like a pleasantly spicy tropical feast for a winter dinner! But the recipe call for daun salam and even with my considerable knowledge and experience with Asian spices and cooking condiments, this is a new one because so far my travels have not included Indonesia, much to my regret. Daun salam is the Indonesian equivalent of our bay leaf (Laurus nobilis, Lauraceae), but one cannot be substituted for the other as they are very different plants and very different flavors. So now where to find Eugenia (Syzygium) polyantha (Myrtaceae)? This will be quite a challenge and no viable substitute exists. In all truth our club members, even as semi-sophisticated lovers of cooking and good food, will probably be unable to tell whether or not the recipe contains daum salam or not because it is probably new to all of us. So off to the Asian grocery shoppes we go. And don't tell anyone, but some kaffir lime leaves and lemon grass may go missing from the university greenhouse!

Fruit Quiz, Spice Quiz, Veggie Quiz - Take the Challenge

Here's an interesting online fruit quiz that was found via a recent commentor's web page who without noticing that the goods had been given away in a more recent post correctly IDed the eerie lights picture quiz. Congrats to meristemi. There are some interesting botanical posts there at meristemi. By the way, the Phactor totally aced the fruit quiz (11 of 11), so do let us know if you manage to match the master. There's also an obscure spice quiz and an unfamiliar vegetable quiz, links at the end of the fruit quiz too. The veggie quiz was the easiest (no sweat getting 8 out ot 8), but even the Phactor missed 5 of the 11 spice questions. Yikes! Go ahead leave a comment bragging if you do any better. But come on, when you have to guess between ginger and tumeric, well, it could go either way.

Turmeric: the spice of life

Herbs and spices have long been considered essential in many cuisines adding interest and flavor to otherwise bland and boring food. Cereal grain endosperm and starchy staples such as potato and cassava make up the overwhelming majority of human calories, but they come up short in terms of taste.

My modestly-hot, award-winning chili almost killed one of my colleagues of Scandinavian descent. An obvious observation is that spicier cuisines are found closer to the Equator. But why is this so? Are people from tropical cultures used to spiciness because most spices are from tropical plants?

In study after study, spices are found to have medicinal benefits. The most commonly used spices of the lower latitudes consistently have the highest antimicrobial activity. So in hot climates, especially before the widespread use of refrigeration, cultures that used the most spices ate the safest food. People who liked spicy food were healthiest. So the whole thing makes biological sense. Where spices were rare and expensive, and where food was not such a health risk, people learned to like bland.

A chemical in turmeric (yellow powder, upper left) seems beneficial in helping the immune system deal with Alzheimer’s disease.

And now another chemical in turmeric, a member of the ginger family, relieves bowel inflammation and may be useful in treating Crohn’s disease. I post this to curry favor with my F1.

The essential oils largely responsible for spices’ flavors have long been known to have medicinal qualities, although determining the precise compound, and then safe and effective doses, requires scientific study, something oft overlooked by herbal fanatics. Understand, these are toxic compounds (used in the broad sense of that term) but the amounts in spices when used in food level doses are harmless. No question about it, you can OD on nutmeg, but consumption of spices can be considered part of a healthy lifestyle. And who wants bland anyways? Oh, yes, my Scandinavian colleague.