Flash in the Pan

I don't often hurry to dash off a review right after a product comes in, and it generally happens for one of two reasons: a) it's a winner, or b) I want to warn people off from a potential mistake. Unfortunately, it's the latter in this case. Gourmet Gardens, an Australian-based company, has a line of herbs and spices that "are picked fresh, washed, chopped and sealed in unique squeezable clear tubes. " Better you should use the tube and discard the contents.

I received a number of variations and tried the basil - which was mixed with milk whey, dextrose, and a bunch of other stuff. I know basil. I've tasted basil. Gourmet Gardens: this didn't taste like plain basil. There was an unpleasant sweet aftertaste as well as other things that I can't quite dexcribe and don't know that I'd like to. But, hey, diligence is why I make the non-existent bucks for this blog, so I tried the lemon grass. Again - opened the tube, squeezed some out onto my finger, put it into my mouth, made a face, and chucked the tube into the trash can.

Any cook would be better off wtih dry herbs than this, and fresh aren't that hard to come by or prepare. Steer clear of this product. As the PR contact wrote me, "There is no equivalent product on the market – cooked or dried – that can compete with Gourmet Garden. " Thank heavens for small favors.

Labels: herbs, opinion, product, review, spices

What a marvelous book Ian Hemphill has created. If you have any interest in spices - which is to say, if you have any interest in cooking, this is a must. There are some recipes by his wife, Kate Hemphill, but this is primarily a practical reference from a second-generation spice merchant and obvious expert. The volume starts with interesting history that applies a pragmatic eye. For example, he dismisses the notion that people used spices in the dark ages to mask tainted foods because anyone who could have afforded the then-astronomical prices of the spices would likely have had money for something fresh. Instead, he attributes the growth of spices to improve bland food and, interestingly, to help moderate the strong gamy taste of many meats and poultry at the time, which might explain the concept of covering over a taste or aroma.

Of course there are sections on growing and using spices, and I found interesting the section on the spices and herbs that specific cuisines use. An approach I hadn't seen before is using relational weights - for example, in Indonesian cooking if you used cloves, turmeric, and coriander seed, they would likely be in a ration of 1 to 5 to 8. My first impression was that there were supposed to be proportions of spice blends, but that didn't make sense when you had, say, 15 different ingredients and you know that the cuisine in question doesn't use all of them every time. And there are recipes for specific spice blends at the end of the book. No, this chapter was to give you a feel for how the given cuisine uses and combines spices - very good to know.

What really grabbed me, though, were the entries for individual spices and herbs. Each includes the following: origin and history, processing, buying and storage, use, other names for the item, names in other languages, suggested quantities for a given type of dish, and what other spices and herbs that work well with it.

You do need to keep in mind that the book is from Australia, because some terminology might throw you. For example, there was a recipe for a savory biscuit. I was thinking the flaky type you bake, and then I suddenly remembered that in Australia and the UK, biscuit can mean a cookie or cracker. You will also find a few spices that aren't readily found in this part of the world. That said, at $24.95, this is a bargain.

Labels: book, cookbook, Hemphill, herbs, reference, review, spices