Day 63 - Spice

 SPICE

Prompt - Spice : Write about flavours and tastes of a favourite spice of yours.

'A' favourite spice?? just one?  That makes this one of the toughest challenges yet!  I love my spices and what they bring to our meals.  Spices and I go way back.

One of the best decisions of my life was to take an Indian Cookery course at night school.  That was in 1991, or maybe '92.  Once a week I'd drive to Ainsdale High School with the ingredients specified the week before and come back with a new dish I'd learned.  (I didn't always return home with it, for this was during the period leading up to my divorce, so I'd often take it to friends to sample.)  The course was just 'Indian' so it didn't specify which regional style we were learning, but it was a good starting point for my journey.

That course gave me two lasting benefits.  It introduced me to Mattas in Liverpool's Bold Street a wonderful Asian grocer which had an array of spices I'd never seen before.  And it gave me the confidence to experiment with spices in my own more mundane recipes.  It was also a gateway into a wider range of spicy dishes, mostly Indian but from other places too.  I started to build a collection of cookery books, notably from The Curry Club, which broadened my repertoire, improved my skills and increased my confidence.  Now I've been cooking curries for near enough three decades and feel at home doing so, with some of my favourites being dishes I've invented for myself.  My creamy mixed fish curry is always popular.  

Funnily enough it's one that doesn't use what I think might be my favourite spice.  Although cumin (and chilli of course) is probably the one I use most often, for it works in all sorts of styles of cuisine, I love finding uses for fennel seeds.  That aniseed undertone is a sensation in so many dishes, not just the Indian recipes that call for it.  There's a sweetness and fragrance to this spice, but without the sometimes overpowering taste of star anise.  I like to toss a spoonful into the water I'm boiling to cook rice.  Delicious with a chilli, introducing little taste bubbles into the overall dish.  Great with fish.  Indeed I have ground the seeds and sprinkled it on cod to be baked in the oven.  Just that and lemon juice and some black pepper.  I'm making myself hungry now.

Of course if you are no fan of aniseed this will not be for you.  I recall the small brown sweets known as aniseed balls from my childhood, and I loved them then, so it's always been one of 'my' flavours.  Those small pale green pods will be a part of my culinary repertoire until I finally have to give up the spatula.