Fresh green peppercorns (พริกไทยสด) in Thai food give an amazingly complex, aromatic flavor without being overpoweringly spicy. The first time I tasted them was like a revelation. It seems that cuisines from hot climates are more aware of the value of fresh herbs and spices. I agree with the thesis of this article; European-rooted chefs will eventually catch on.
I disagree that chefs from hot climates are more aware of the value of fresh herbs and spices.
European cooking has a long tradition of using fresh herbs and spices that are geographically available. Fresh herbs are an essential part of French cooking, and fresh paprika is essential to Spanish cooking.
It's the spices that don't grow in Europe that get neglected for cooking. I have a suspicion that gin distillers are a bit more discerning in the freshness of their spices though.
The specific aromas of what you're distilling come through very strongly when distilling gin, especially any aromas from essential oils.
I used to do home distilling, and I made gin from old juniper once and it was foul, you really need botanicals that are as fresh as possible.
Also, especially for the bigger distillers, consistency in your product is important, so they'll likely have quite thorough sourcing for their botanicals, rather than just buying them from a local wholesaler.
The interesting thing is the difference between aroma and taste.
I had a friend who tried making his own gin a few times. Since I have (far too many!) juniper bushes/trees on my property, I gave him some fresh juniper berries to try.
The resulting gin smelled absolutely amazing, but tasted like ass!
They'll usually grow them themselves where possible. Otherwise the seller has too much power and you could be forced to change flavour if you don't agree with their terms.
One the reasons “Restaurant Tim Raue” is one of my favorite haute cuisine restaurants in the Western world. His food is electric with well placed spices while using Western ingredients and techniques to create a truely unique and dynamic cuisine.
He still let’s the core ingredients shine and doesn’t “over spice” but somehow manages to take you on a road that begins with a fiery amuse bousche and ends the meal with numbing peppercorns sprinkled atop a fragarent orange slice.
"Spices were the first foods to be subjected to capitalist and imperialist processes of production and distribution."
No. In the Roman Empire Garum (a fermented fish sauce) was produced in industrial scale in the Iberian peninsula and exported as a luxury condiment all across the Empire.
Many other ingredients followed similar production and distribution.
What, do capitalism and imperialism not exist? I think that the issue here is one of poor wording; spices weren't the first foods to be subjected to the processes of production and distribution, they were they first to be subjected to these processes in the context of capitalism and imperialism.
I'm not convinced you actually understood my comment. I'm not saying that processing and distribution in the context of capitalism and imperialism are qualitatively different from processing and distribution in pre-capitalist society (although I'd say they are at least quantitatively different, and it would be an interesting discussion to have); I'm saying that it's possible the author intended to say that spices were the first to be subjected to these processes in the context of capitalism and imperialism, rather than the fairly ridiculous claim that spices were the first foods to be subject to the processes of production and distribution as implied by the original wording.
Garum is pretty much a spice though. As the father of a half-Cambodian child, i can assure you that fermented fish sauces are treated like a spice and not a side dish.
I may be really confused here. How is it that Rome being involved in the salt trade disproves the claim that spices, like salt, were the first foods to be subjected to capitalist and imperialist processes of production and distribution?
That's the issue. Spices in the article refer to asian spices in the spice trade, unlike salt, chilli peppers, (which are not native to asia at all), Garum, etc.
Saffron from Afghanistan: speaking of the Silk Road, saffron was worth its weight in gold. Alexander the Great would bathe in saffron after battle to heal his wounds, and Cleopatra bathed also in saffron before her trysts with Julius Caesar. In the Middle Ages you could be put to death for adulterating saffron. Anyway, my company is a group of military veterans who source saffron directly from Afghan farmers and hired almost 2,000 Afghan women this year. We source our saffron to The French Laundry, Dominique Crenn, Daniel Boulud, Blue Apron, and once to Mark Cuban on Shark Tank. :)
www.rumispice.com
It is highly unlikely that spice production will suddenly join local/slow trends, due to the climates required for their production, and the amount of manual labor required to process them.
Also, spices are perfectly suited for commodity production due to their handling characteristics.
Also scant mention of the role herbs and spices have played in folk medicine since the dawn of our species. One glance at Rodale's Encyclopedia of Herbs is enough to see that two or three generations ago, most American households would have employed some form of home remedy such as crushed barberries to alleviate the scratchiness of a sore throat ;)
Variety is, famously, the spice of life. But it is also the spice of spice. Exotic spices can often be sprinkled like the more standard condiments such as salt and pepper. By sprinkling spice on some parts of one's dish and not others one generates a stronger and more interesting experience overall. Presumably explained by the principle below:
It's too bad that an article focused on black pepper doesn't mention Cambodia and Vietnam. Kampot pepper in particular used to be the fancy pepper at good restaurants in France. If anything, India remaining stable-ish and continuing to export is what caused pepper to be a race-to-the-bottom commodity. It'll be great to see a resurgence, but honestly most people will never care.
"Spices were the first foods to be subjected to capitalist and imperialist processes of production and distribution."
Wheat and other staples have been used for such purposes for thousands of years. Some researchers think that the power of staples to act as currency for large scale civilizations is what led to their dominance - since nutritionally they aren't compelling.
I don't know anything about this, but I'm wondering, is the slow and quality food movement compatible with the need to fill the bellies of soon 10 bil people? Is this just privilege for the first world? I love a good trip to Whole Foods or Eataly as much as anybody else, but how do we make that scale?
Do you have any sources for this? I was under the impression that the goal of the "eat local" movement is to get consumers to eat food that naturally grows in their climate, not to start growing bananas under heat lamps in Canada.
There are various articles along the lines of https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/mar/23/food.eth... (which is a lot more sympathetic to "eat local" than some that I've read, but has some good examples of the kind of complexity involved in figuring out when one food is better or worse for the environment than another).
(I'm of the view that carbon dioxide emissions are simply too complex for any central labelling authority to figure out; the only way that can work is imposing a cap and trade system on emissions (like we did for sulphur dioxide) and then letting the market incorporate those costs into food prices)
So people in Canada should eat only Maple Syrup (and I guess Seals), the Midwest only Corn, and California only Almonds and Veggies?
This is completely unrealistic, and unhealthy as well.
There are lots of places were food grows OK (and humans lived that way for a long time), but the best is to grow food in the best place for it, not just "OK".
You use less fertilizer, and energy that way. The slight added transportation cost doesn't even come close.
And in any case, what's the value here? Why do that? What difference does it make where the food grows? I've heard silly things like "less pesticide" - but that makes no sense - what about the people living near that food? If they eat it does it somehow have less pesticide, but people far away get more?
Yes, the most generous interpretation of "eat food that naturally grows in their climate" is definitely "people in Canada should eat only Maple Syrup."
Are you willing to have a discussion and apply the Principle of Charity or not? And again, do you have any sources?
> The slight added transportation cost doesn't even come close [...] What's the value here?
If you preferentially buy food that does not need to be shipped long distances, you can reduce your carbon footprint.
> In 2005, the import of fruits, nuts, and vegetables into California by airplane released more than 70,000 tons of CO2, which is equivalent to more than 12,000 cars on the road.
I'm reminded that, during the war, when food importing to the UK was made extremely difficult and dangerous by U-boats, the country was a command economy, rationing was imposed, and the population was 10m smaller ... we were still unable to meet all our food needs domestically.
Canada's most prominent food related export is Maple Syrup. Is it such a stretch? For them that's a very efficient export. And the native population used to eat a lot of Seal meat, so clearly that's the most efficient food for that area.
> Are you willing to have a discussion and apply the Principle of Charity or not?
Go for it. The growing season in Canada is so short you'd have to farm a ton of land to feed everyone. Tell me how you'd make it work.
Again, you have not explained why bother doing that?
> In 2005, the import of fruits, nuts, and vegetables into California by airplane released more than 70,000 tons of CO2, which is equivalent to more than 12,000 cars on the road.
That's it?? That's nothing. But why are you looking at airplane to California? Most food is shipped by truck, and California imports relatively little food.
And how much extra energy does it take to grow food in the wrong place? It's a comparison, not an absolute.
"My conservative estimates are that under the pseudo-locavore system, corn acreage increases 27 percent or 22 million acres, and soybean acres increase 18 percent or 14 million acres. Fertilizer use would increase at least 35 percent for corn, and 54 percent for soybeans, while fuel use would climb 23 percent and 34 percent, for corn and soybeans, respectively. Chemical demand would grow 23 percent and 20 percent for the two crops, respectively.
In order to maintain current output levels for 40 major field crops and vegetables, a locavore-like production system would require an additional 60 million acres of cropland, 2.7 million tons more fertilizer, and 50 million pounds more chemicals. The land-use changes and increases in demand for carbon-intensive inputs would have profound impacts on the carbon footprint of our food, destroy habitat and worsen environmental pollution.
It’s not even clear local production reduces carbon emissions from transportation. The Harvard economist Ed Glaeser estimates that carbon emissions from transportation don’t decline in a locavore future because local farms reduce population density as potential homes are displaced by community gardens. Less-dense cities mean more driving and more carbon emissions. Transportation only accounts for 11 percent of the carbon embodied in food anyway, according to a 2008 study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon; 83 percent comes from production."
>Canada's most prominent food related export is Maple Syrup
Canada exports ~$200mm worth of maple syrup a year, and $5bn worth of wheat. Similarly, seals were only an important food source for the Inuit, who have never accounted for a significant portion of Canada's population.
>Go for it. The growing season in Canada is so short you'd have to farm a ton of land to feed everyone. Tell me how you'd make it work.
The growing season may be shorter in parts of Canada than in, say, Florida, but that doesn't mean it limits produce to a handful of things.
Pick any major city in Canada and you can get local, fresh berries when they're in season, lettuce, squash, beans, corn, wheat, any of the usual staples. It's only when you go above the Arctic Circle that your options get more constrained. Just because the growing season is shorter doesn't mean it's not possible to farm. You just need to pick appropriate crops and be more selective about their varieties.
An example of this is Winter Wheat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_wheat) which is a specific variety of wheat that grows much better in the northern praries. There's a lot of other crops like this with hardier, more durable varieties that have been adapted over decades by farmers. Fruits and vegetables of all kinds do just fine with the right choices and careful attention.
You won't get local avocado, bananas or oranges, but the same holds true for about a quarter of the continental US, states in a row from Washington over to Maine.
Instead there's apples, strawberries, blueberries, peaches and apricots. There's also a wide variety of livestock that don't have any trouble with the winter weather or can be housed indoors, from chickens to cows to goats to ostrich and emu if you prefer. There's also vast amounts of land for ranches in the western part of the country.
I don't know what your point is other than blathering on about total nonsense regarding maple syrup and seals.
(Honestly, the biggest single export from Canada is probably marijuana. In many cases it eclipses lumber in terms of revenues.)
Sigh. Please! Think, don't just react. I'm not criticizing Canada!!
> when they're in season, lettuce, squash, beans, corn, wheat, any of the usual staples.
What do you eat the rest of the year? That's the question. It's not a question on the ability of Canada to grow food.
If you only ate local, you are extremely constrained in what you can eat because things are only in season for a short time.
An additional question is: Where is the best place to grow a particular food?
For example, you mentioned Winter Wheat. Perfect! Grow that, and livestock, in Canada, and don't grow Wheat in Florida. Instead Ship Food! Let Florida grow oranges, and Canada grow Wheat, then trade, and get rid of this "local" nonsense.
> I don't know what your point is other than blathering on about total nonsense regarding maple syrup and seals.
Do you understand my point now? Or do you still think I'm somehow criticizing Canada?
By growing food in the best place for it you can save a ton of energy and fertilizer. Eat local is bad for the environment because it uses more resources, and because it forces people to have restricted diets.
I'm trying to be as generous as possible here. I think what you're saying is that only eating local in Canada would be inefficient, compared to importing/exporting.
And you're right, to a certain extent. We wouldn't have oranges or avocados, unless they were grown inefficiently. We would have to change our diets.
The point you're missing though, I think, is that pretty much any region that had a significant population before industrialization is able to grow and eat a reasonably well-balanced diet locally. Would I miss avocados and oranges? Definitely. Would it mean that I'd be incapable of eating a nutritious diet? Absolutely not.
> What do you eat the rest of the year?
Well, lots of vegetables will last a long time in a "cold room". This is an uninsulated room in the basement that usually hovers just above freezing point. Meat can be frozen, or preserved, or butchered as needed. Grains and legumes keep a long time (wheat, lentils, peas, etc). Dairy farms run all-year-round.
Around here, many people produce significantly more fruit than they could eat before it spoils; the solution is generally to freeze it or can it. At my house, we keep the deep freeze outside, so keeping frozen food is pretty much zero cost for a significant portion of the year.
I dunno dude, while my diet would be a little less interesting, eating entirely local would be quite plausible in the Canadian prairies. There's things I'd miss, but it wouldn't be nutrients.
[...but you can pry avocados out of my cold dead hands]
Chile was exporting saltpeter to Europe by steamship to fertilize local fields before the Haber process was invented. Nowadays it's a little bit like, "Well, the entire world is connected by kinetic prisms and half the food is almost-literally generated by nuclear fission."
If you can figure out the math, you're a better engineer than me.
Puts on goggles and aviator's cap to resume tilting at the Organic Lychee windmill
Transportation isn't always about the cost, it has a major impact on the quality of the food too. Not only is shipped food less fresh but it requires plant varieties that are hardy enough to withstand the trip, and often means produce is picked before it's quite ripe. I dare you to find a tomato from the most tomato-friendly part of the world that is better than a locally grown heirloom.
That actually has nothing to do with transportation per-se, and everything to do with stores liking to be able to store products before selling them.
If anything eat local makes that worse, since there is a very very short timeframe where the food is ripe, so you need long storing food even more than before.
With remote shipping you can rotate around the world and have crops ripen all the way around the year, so less storage is needed.
It's not hard when you consider regions where basically nothing grows well.
I'm pretty sure tomatos from averagely tomato-friendly part of the world are better than whatever you grow in my local darkness and rain. Not to mention winter.
People in worse climates are already behind when it comes to quality of life, and suggesting them to eat local is to suggest them to further lose their quality of life voluntarily.
This also depends on where you live. I eat local as in at least local to my country because I know the regulations etc. I know there is zero chance an animal had antibiotics while healthy for example, whereas in the country a few hours drive away, it's more the rule than the exception (Guess where I am).
"Local" as in "nearby" I try to buy because it gives me confidence in how the product is produced. I'm too fond of eating animals to become a vegetarian, but I could see myself eating only animals I have that I have reasonable idea of how and where they lived.
Completely agree with things like tomatoes though: it's much better for me to buy tomatoes shipped in a boat from spain than buying them grown in a heated greenhouse next doors. But that brings me to my next pet peeve: don't just eat local, if you want to eat local make sure to also eat seasonal.
Nice article. For anyone wanting to try more pepper, I like going to The Meadow when in NYC. Sometimes get a random vial of (expensive!) pepper. Plus you can sample a wall of bitters!
