The quick answer: Anyone can flavor food with sugar or salt, but artistry with spice combinations is the true measure of a cook.
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Christmas Parties
We’re really “B” list people, the beautiful wife and I, but dear friends invited us to their “A” list Christmas dinner-party. It was elegant, fun, and healthy. The dinner menu included mushrooms stuffed with butternut squash, asparagus, green salad with wonderful fruits, and grilled salmon. After such a healthy meal, chocolate Bundt cake hardly seemed decadent.
After dinner we shared favorite Christmas stories, some touching and a few hilarious. Mine was from a college Christmas trip across Nevada, when my car broke down in the middle of the coldest night of the year, in a tiny depressed town, and being offered help by an old man that as far as I could tell was either homeless or very poor. Though the man has long ago passed from this world, the memory of his kind generosity still lights my life.
On the hilarious side, one couple told of their first Christmas after getting married, also during college. Because money was tight he had secretly gotten her a present. In the way of young love, his wife had done the same. On Christmas Eve, as a maneuver to retrieve the gift from his hiding place, he announced he would go downstairs, where the bathroom was located, to take a shower. He got the water running, undressed, but before slipping into the shower, darted into the adjoining room to retrieve his hidden present. At the worst moment, he heard his wife coming down the stairs. She had decided to retrieve her present for him while he showered! Trapped and unaware of her purpose, he slipped into a closet to hide until she returned upstairs. Unfortunately, he chose the closet where she hid his present.
I’ll spare you the rest of the story, but we laughed until we cried. I think it a good segue into our next subject—spices.
Spices and Herbs
In our series of grocery store aisle visits, we now come to the spice aisle. We lump spices and herbs together but there's a difference—herbs come from the leaves of plants, while spices are processed from the seed, fruit, skin, or root. Spices are healthy ingredients, in part because they’re an alternate to just dumping sugar and salt on food. The complexity of our seasonings is a measure of our (food) culture. A command of spice combinations is one measure of a cook’s prowess. There’s good information on the Internet for the curious cook; another good reference is The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs.
Spices conjure up romantic images of ancient camel caravans and the adventures of Marco Polo. Spices were the stimulus behind exploration of the New World, and the wars over the Spice Islands (known for nutmeg, cloves, and pepper; now part of Indonesia).
The spice wars are over now. Who won? McCormick & Company—they’re the masters of the spice aisle in the local grocery. Remember Schilling spices? The brand’s gone, bought out by McCormick. Lawry’s seasonings are there, but McCormick owns them too.
Here’s an interesting fact about the spice aisle—the foods in the other aisles (think chips, crackers, soft drinks, margarine, etc.) have been processed into unhealthiness. But spices remain remarkably unchanged—no other food group has survived so unchanged. I find nothing artificial in the spice aisle. Spices not only flavor our food, they’re considered healthy and are rich in antioxidants, which accounts for their long shelf life.
Spice Economics
Have you noticed the rising cost of spices? With control of the spice aisle, McCormick has been able to steadily raise prices. This presented a window for Trader Joes’s, which introduced their Spices of the World brand (shown in the photo below). The local TJ’s offers twelve common spices in 4” tall bottles, usually priced at $1.99, a fraction of the cost in regular grocery stores.
The best example is ground dill: the local grocery charges the equivalent of $426/lb. (in 0.3 oz. bottles) while TJ’s sells the same product for $48/lb (0.5 oz. bottle). No other food has such an outrageous store-to-store price difference. Here are other comparisons:
- TJ’s rosemary is $42/lb. versus $104 for McCormick's version at our local grocery.
- TJ’s thyme is $34/lb. vs. $162.
- TJ’s oregano is $11/lb. vs. $97.
- TJ’s curry is $18/lb. vs. $67.
- TJ’s garlic powder is $12/lb. vs. $28.
Fair warning: When I returned to my grocery to photograph the spice aisle all the spices were on sale. There’s a strategy here that I see in other aisles: Combine high prices with frequent sales, lest the native become restless. I resent this manipulation—people aren’t dumb, they’ll figure this out, and see the grocery chain as predator rather than trusted purveyor. You can see the same behavior with packaged breakfast cereals (where you pay dollars per pound for what is bought at pennies per pound), and other products.
Here’s a trivia question: What’s the cheapest commonly used spice? Garlic.
Shelf Life
This will make you laugh. After studying the spice aisle I saw one difference between spices and other packaged foods in the store—spices don’t have shelf life data, there’s no expiration date. Because they’re high in antioxidants, spices have a long shelf life, but it’s not forever.
You can check the age of your McCormick spices this way: Any spice showing Baltimore as the address (they’re now located in Hunt Valley, MD), is at least 20 years old! No one keeps spices 20 years, right? Wrong. I checked the 64 spices in our drawer; we have a bunch of cans and bottles showing the Baltimore address.
Spice Mixtures
One way to add value, or at least convenience, is to blend spices that go together and create a new product. I didn’t realize it until now, but curry is an ancient example. Curry is actually a mixture of turmeric, ginger, coriander and other spices. Other examples:
- Herbs of Provence: thyme, rosemary, savory, basil, lavender, etc.
- Italian herb mix: marjoram, thyme, rosemary, savory, sage, oregano, basil
- McCormick’s Bon Appetit: salt, MSG, celery seed, and onion.
- Lawry’s Seasoned Salt: salt, sugar, paprika, turmeric, onion, cornstarch, garlic, tricalcium phosphate (prevents clumping), etc.
- TJ’s 21 Seasoning Salute: onion, black pepper, celery seed, cayenne pepper, parsley, basil, marjoram, bay leaf, oregano, thyme, savory, rosemary, cumin, mustard, coriander, garlic, etc.
- Cajun’s Choice Creole Seasoning: salt, red, black, and white peppers, garlic, and other spices.
Excepting curry, these pre-mixed spices have limited use. The beautiful wife, however, likes to use the Italian herb mix.
Spices for Singles
I discovered a new convenience product, on the market since 2010: McCormick’s Recipe Inspirations. These are pre-measured spices, sold on a card with six separate pockets. To cook, you simple open the card and dump the spices onto the food. This is a product for less discriminating novices, rather than experienced cooks. Typical blends:
- Rosemary Roasted Chicken: rosemary, garlic, paprika, and black pepper.
- Apple Sage Pork Chops: sage, garlic, thyme, allspice, and paprika.
- Caribbean grilled Steak: garlic, cumin, onion, oregano, and red pepper.
There’s a big need for products that enable the novice cook, or the single person, to make simple homemade meals. Recipe Inspirations isn’t a healthy answer, in my view, as the current offering is based on meat dishes. But isn’t there an opportunity for products that simplify cooking for one, that don't’t compromise the wholesomeness of the food? They should have these criteria: Based on whole foods, ease-to-use, and affordable.
Please comment: Share your favorite spice combinations, or spice tricks from your kitchen. Or tell about your favorite Christmas foods.