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The real purpose of herbs and spices is not to rescue, remedy, flavor, or season, but to build. Spices and herbs are basically flavor builders. You have seen some of them in action in this role in making stocks. This is their proper use in cooking; they should be cooked with the dish as it is being made so that their flavors blend smoothly with the others in the dish. With rare exceptions they should never be added raw to a food at the moment of completion.
A closer look at spices and herbs will help you to understand and use them effectively. Spices and herbs come from various parts of plants—bud, bark, bulb, fruit, root, seed, and flower. Spices are the dried roots, bark, and seeds of tropical plants. Herbs are the leafy parts of plants. In medieval Europe spices were among the most important ingredients in cookery. In a large household the grinding of spices was a full-time job performed by a person known as a powder beater. Pepper, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves were imported at great cost from the Far East and used to mask the taste of rancid or salty meats. Garden herbs like parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (pronounced time) were used for flavoring and also for the medicinal properties they were believed to have. In today's kitchen spices and herbs are usually flavor builders. A few can be flavorings, and a few can also play the part of a major flavor, as hot peppers do in Mexican cuisine and curry powders do in many oriental dishes. When properly used they can help the cautious cook, and when misused they can hurt the careless cook. They must be used in small amounts and carefully coordinated with other ingredients, or their flavor will take over. Spices and herbs usually arrive in the kitchen in the form of dried powders, seeds, or leaves. They come in tins of 1, 2 or 5 pounds (500 g, I kg, and 2.25 kg). As long as they are kept dry in tightly closed containers and stored in a cool, dry place, spoilage is not a problem. One factor limits their shelf life: over a period of time they lose strength and thus their power to do the job. Most spices and herbs, once opened, hold well up to six months; they then lose flavor rapidly and by the time they have been open a year the loss is appreciable. As a rule of thumb, discard an opened tin more than a year old. It is a good idea to date the tin when you open it. It is also wise to buy a tin size you will empty within six months. |
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