SpiceLines

Vanilla orchids bloom only once, for a few hours, when they must be
pollinated by hand in order to produce beans. To read more about
vanilla production in Veracruz, see In the Land of the Vanilla Orchid.

True confessions: I secretly started this blog as an excuse for travel to spice-perfumed places.

So when I’m not at the stove, sautéing Almost Naked Finnish Potatoes with Garlic and Sour Cream or simmering a pot of pale green salsa for Aurora’s divine Chicken Echiladas in Tomatillo Salsa with Garlic and Cumin (see The Spice Kitchen for all the recipes), I’m in Paris lusting for a copper tarte tatin pan at Dehillerin, trolling the dill-scented aisles of Kuznechy market in St. Petersburg, or tracking the elusive vanilla orchid to its birthplace in Mexico.

If this index of wondrous culinary destinations sparks your appetite for spicy travel, there’s more to come: In 2008 I’ll be sampling South India, Singapore and Spain—and delectable spots in between.

Bali

On Bali, Surf's Up--and So Is the Food

Charleston

13 Reasons I Love Charleston: Shrimp and Grits, White Peaches and Buttermilk Biscuits
S.N.O.B.'s Spicy Shrimp and Grits with Country Ham, Tomato and Cayenne

Helsinki

At Kauppatori Market, Salty Licorice and Garlic Potatoes
A Warm Teapot for Cool Mornings

London

How to spend $11,863.14 in Two Hours on Marylebone High Street

Take a right turn onto North Greensboro Street. There, looming out of the darkness, are a pair of piercing headlights.

Now turn into the parking lot, deserted except for five other cars parked in a row facing the hulking white delivery van, its cutout window spilling greenish florescent light into the night. Outside two men in tee shirts and leather jackets hop from one foot to the other in the 28 degree chill.

It’s not what you think.

First, I admit that I’m biased. I really love using the volcanic stone mortar and pestle I found in Singapore 15 years ago.

There’s something about the raspy thunk of the pestle as it smashes whole spices against the side of the rough, grey-speckled mortar that’s satisfying on some deeply primitive level. And the release of fragrance molecules into the air can be intoxicating. The scent of freshly crushed black Tellicherry peppercorns, pounded by hand, is a pleasure you can’t experience with an electric grinder.

Naturally I can’t tell you where to find this particular mortar and pestle—in Singapore everything keeps changing.

The very first recipe I ever made from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking was Soupe Au Pistou.

I was 25 years old, in grad school trying to be a filmmaker, grading hopelessly ungrammatical papers for an advertising professor, juggling a cranky boyfriend with the endless demands of Ulysses, my family’s beloved Hungarian vizla who had come to live with me. Somehow, between obsessively watching Jules et Jim and every other film Francois Truffaut ever made and rounding up actors and crew to make my own 16mm masterpieces, I had to eat.

Now this was before the glorious days of takeout—in Austin, it scarcely existed. So anything I cooked at home had to be fast, easy and delicious. Also cheap. I gobbled hundreds of warm corn tortillas, oozing with Monterrey Jack, ripe diced tomato and fiery jalapenos in escabeche, standing up in the kitchen. A friend survived on pimento cheese sandwiches, and red beans and rice made in his mom’s old pressure cooker.

So many of you have been writing lately that my Blog To Do List now includes a discussion forum. Look for it soon. In the meantime, here are answers to a few of your spicy questions:

Candi wants to know how to locate a supplier of “fruit of the ash tree (fraxinus).”

Hmmm…I wonder if you are thinking of Zanthoxylum or prickly ash, a genus of thorny shrubs which reside in the Rutaceae family (which also includes citrus) rather than Oleaceae (where Fraxinus can be found).

The Zanthoxylum genus, which includes Z. piperitum and other species native to Asia, produces a reddish burr-like fruit commonly known as the Sichuan peppercorn. This is a misnomer, as the spice is not even vaguely related to the true peppercorn or piper nigrum. Sichuan peppercorns have a mildly pungent, lemony flavor and a fizzy, numbing effect on the tongue—which is probably why they are casually lumped into the pepper category. They are a key ingredient in Chinese Five Spice powder and in Sichuan cooking. Fuschia Dunlop’s marvelous book Land of Plenty, offers recipes like Fish with Chiles and Sichuan Pepper which uses over a tablespoon of the tingling spice.

Dried green peppercorns from India have a fresh, aromatic flavor that complements
rich foods such as duck, pork, and steak au poivre, as well as cream soups and sauces.

Ah, the 1970’s. It was the decade—or was it the moment?—of nouvelle cuisine, of Paul Bocuse, Michel Guerard and Alain Senderens. Of large plates with very small, very precious daubs of food. Of baby vegetables barely cooked. Of dishes like sweetbreads in sea urchin cream (Senderens) and eggplant puree delicately bathed in saffron scented steam (Guerard). No more heavy sauces, no “disguised” food.

Everything was light, fresh, regionally inspired. A revolution, actually, one that’s still going on.

About this time there appeared a new twist on the classic steak au poivre: seared beef in a white wine-brandy sauce finished with a little cream and spicy green peppercorns that tumbled out of a can…steak au poivre vert.

In The Book of Spices, Alain Stella traces the emergence of green peppercorns in French cooking to Claude Terrail, chef at the Tour D’Argent restaurant in Paris. “In the early 1960’s he brought back a few bunches of green pepper from a voyage to Santo Domingo and used it to add a dash of sunshine to his stuffing for duckling,” Stella writes. Soon after, Paul Corcellet “launched a vogue” for mustard with green peppercorn. Brined green peppercorns became the rage.

True red peppercorns are the fruit of the piper nigrum vine. Hand plucked when
fully ripe, they have a sweet, fruity flavor with mild peppery heat. The peppercorns
shown here are freeze-dried on the Poabs Estate in India.

These are the real thing.

No, I’m not talking about “pink peppercorns”, those rosy-hued imposters that you see in gourmet peppercorn blends. Those are not pepper at all, but the dried berries of schinus terebinthifolius, a tree native to Peru. Today, most baies roses, as they are also known, are grown on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean.

True red peppercorns are rare even in the lush, monsoon drenched equatorial regions where the piper nigrum vine flourishes—and in the past, if you found them on a spice merchant’s shelf, they were likely to be pickled or brined.

But all that’s changing with the introduction of freeze-dried red peppercorns. The flavor is extraordinary: sweet and fruity, with a sunny warmth that builds to a spicy crescendo.