Spices from the Eastern Islands

A complete world of spices is waiting to be found by exciting cooks. Cooking these days can seldom do without spices from the East. They can certainly make a bland unexciting meal come to life and create a flavour explosion. Today due to widespread trade links you can discover spices from all over the world to give your food a flavour of a particular place or culture. For example, people who want to cook Indian food would use seasonings such as curry, cumin, turmeric, mustard seeds, garlic, cinnamon, black peppercorns, pink peppercorns, granulated onion, cayenne, and paprika. These spices give Indian/Thai/Asian dishes their characteristic colours and flavours.

If you visit the original spice island you will find many fantastic and exotic varieties of spice. Zanzibar was known as the main spice island and was popular for centuries for spices such as cloves, garlic, ginger and these days Tahitian Vanilla Beans. Spices are just not from the Western spice islands. Even places like the Caribbean offer first rate spices. Think of Cayenne and hot chilli powder made from scotch bonnet peppers. For those of you who are into hot and spicy food you need to look into Cajun seasonings. These are made of hot peppers predominantly.

There are plenty of varieties of spices on offer from all over the world today. Spice prices vary across the globe from city to city and country to country. For example you can buy Organic Vanilla Beans in the Seychelles for $10 per kg but in a place like London or New York you can easily end up paying $1000 per kg for the same Organic Vanilla Beans. It is a question of economics. The spice Saffron, Botanical name Crocus Sativus, is the priciest spice in the world. Derived from the dried stigmas of the purple Saffron Crocus, it takes anything from 70,000 to 250,000 flowers to make one pound of Saffron. In order to produce a single kg of Saffron the flowers have to be hand picked in the autumn. It is an extremely laborous task. Nature is most clever. Luckily Saffron is only required in tiny quantities when cooking. A small amount of strands will enhance the flavour of any substantial dish.
Vanilla which stems from Mexican Vanilla Beans, is the second most expensive spice in the world. One can find Vanilla in use everywhere globally. It has a beautiful subtle balsamic woody and fruity flavour and is popular in ice-creams, deserts and baked biscuits and cakes. Because it is so expensive cheaper synthetic Vanillas on the market today are used rather than real Organic Vanilla Beans. Consumers today demand real Vanilla flavour prepared with real Vanilla Pod. Nobody want to have artificial synthetic chemicals in their meals anymore. Use Vanilla Pod in all your cooking and obtain the best mother nature to offer .