TK10 Flavor DNA

chef’s note
Greetings from Tasting Kitchen.
Spices are the backbone of any
cuisine. In a restaurant kitchen, if you run
out of something as simple as white pepper,
operations can quickly grind to a halt. People
say that food is the spice of life, but we would
not have developed a love for food if it were
not for spice.
In my hometown of Belfort, France, a
gentleman from Pakistan had a store where he
sold spices, medicinal herbs and coffee. In the
summer he would grind all kinds of mysterious
spices, and the town would fill with the smell
of cinnamon, anardana or ajwain. My grandmother used to buy saffron from him
every Sunday, which she used to make paella.
When I was in culinary school in Strasbourg in the early ‘80s spices were not
that common in the French kitchen. You had the usual suspects like black pepper,
curry, cinnamon, paprika and a few others but not very much variety.
I started to get interested in spices when I worked in the West Indies, where
for over 200 hundred years the Dutch, English and the French dominated the spice
trade. To this day you will find spices there that are not available in the West.
My Sous Chef Nigel took me to the spice market on Antigua and later on the
islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. They were hundreds of spices there: seeds,
roots, and powders, each with their own color, texture and smell. I was completely
taken aback by the range of spices, all presented in big jute sacks and sold by
beautiful women dressed in colorful clothes.
It was a feast for the senses, and I bought so many spices there that my car
smelled like curry for the next three years.
JEAN ALBERTI
12
| TK | flavor dna
flavor dna | TK | 13