Pleasant House

spices in Mexico

One of the reasons I love food and cooking so much is because it allows me to connect with other people. And I mean that very broadly. I can connect with my neighbor, with someone on the coast, and with people who speak a different language in my country or their own–all through food.

The early explorers and merchants brought their own ways of eating with them to other lands, as well as spices that were used as currency or desirable commodities, to enhance the local ingredients. Over time, these imported ingredients began to become part of the local identity. Many of the dishes that now represent a certain region have a multi-ethnic lineage that we might not expect. Studying the history of one’s cuisine can actually turn into an intersting sociological study.

My daily upkeep of the lifestyle blog apartmenttherapy.com’s The Kitchn led me to write about this. The Kitchn published a post about thyme, which got me thinking about the moment that I became congniscent of this herb. It had always existed as a powder in my mom’s spice cabinet, but it didn’t really have an identity to me until I tasted my first Jamaican beef patty as a youngster and set out to recreate the recipe. I discovered that thyme is a major component of beef patties and also a popular ingredient in rice and peas, a Jamaican and Caribbean staple. As my interest in formal cooking grew, I was already a step ahead of the class, as I was familiar with thyme, one of the essential components of a French bouquet garni. An herb connected me to these two cultures in a very simple way.

homemade Jamaican beef patty

I later found myself working in a fine-dining Mexican restaurant for a short time. What I learned about authentic, regional Mexican cooking was mind blowing. I had my hands in so many different exotic spices and ingredients, and the fact that I was using them in such a sophisticated environment changed the perceptions of a young person who had somewhat preconcieved notions of a culture he really knew nothing about. Ironically, great food can make you appreciate a culture and bad food can help to stereotype it, in a way.

I loved the food that I prepared in the Mexican restaurant, and it didn’t take long to realize that I was already familiar with many of the ingredients because of my interest in Caribbean food. I knew the various stages of ripeness in plantains, how to prepare a chayote (and knew at least two words for it), and I knew that habaneros and scotch bonnets are similar but still different kinds of peppers.

This was the time that Nuevo Latino food was taking off due to such chefs as Norman Van Aiken and Allen Susser in Florida. Van Aiken made a name for himself by being part of a culinary movement that gathered this melting pot of ingredients from all over Latin America, the Caribbean, and his South Florida home–referred to more generally as “The New World”–and created a fresh, spicy, soulful, colorful, and modern cooking style. It’s as if he and his “New World cuisine visionaries” put several related languages together to invent their own dialect. This was one of the early examples of fusion cooking, and I like to think, a pretty successful one.

curry goat mise en place

I experienced a similar “a-ha” moment in cross-cultural cooking recently after reading about Chef Rick Bayless’s adventures in India. I have mused about authentic Mexican cooking to coworkers and friends, describing it as rich, complex, earthy, spicy (at times), and often fragrant. Mole is an example of a regional Mexican recipe that is worthy of any of these descriptors. I have always thought of mole as being like curry, another favorite food. Moles and curries both begin with fresh and dried peppers and spices, called garam masala in India, which are often combined with nuts, fruits, vegetables, or even chocolate, into a paste. That paste is then fried in oil and turned into a sauce by adding water or broth. Within that sauce, meats and vegetables are cooked.

I love the idea of this connection. But for some reason, it wasn’t until Bayless posted this captioned photo from India (I was following him on Twitter) that I had my “a-ha” moment. I guess it can’t hurt to have an expert validate what I had felt in my gut–some sort of culinary seven degrees of separation.

Historic place: for centuries this street in Kochin was the heart of world's spice trade. From here mole spices came.