Spices of Kerala

 Spices of Kerala

Nutmeg

Nutmeg is a yellow color fruit vastly found in river deltas and banks, mostly in the tropical belt, native to the Moluccas Islands of Indonesia, the same place from where cloves trees were discovered during the early Colonial era.
Nutmeg is an evergreen tree and relatively requires a lot of water. The Tree produces yellow round fruits, most of them fall down when ripe. The fruit encapsules a single seed which is covered with a natural web called the Mace. The seed has a natural shell which is often broken before use.

Black pepper

Once upon a time Pepper was so precious and it was Arab maritime merchants who sourced pepper from the Malabar coast of India and took it to the traders of Alexandria and the mediterranean. During medieval times, from where did these black granules came was a highly disclosed secret. There were stories that these peppercorns were guarded by demons and dragons and one would need to evade these obstacles to procure these high value commodities.
There are many forms of pepper that is available in the market, the point is that all of these peppercorns come from the same vine. These ripe pepper berries are harvested, they are handled vigorously by feet to remove the peppercorns from its strip. These peppercorns are packed into large sacks and it is from this stage that different processes are applied to achieve different forms of pepper for various requirements. Black Pepper requires berries that are just about to ripen, the tip of the strip starts to ripen, that is when the berries are ready to be harvested. However for White Pepper, the berries have to be entirely ripen, the whole pepper strip should almost look red in colour.

                        Cardamom                      

Cardamom is locally called as "Elam" (Malayalam) or "Ellakka," (Ela Seed), it dates back to the Dravidian roots where it was called "El" later due to the influence of the Sanskrit language, over the years it became "Ela" (Ae-la). The word Ela was absorbed into other South Indian languages as "Yela Kulu" in Telugu, "Ellaki" in Kanada and "Ellakkai" in Tamil. The scientific name of green cardamom - "Elettaria Cardamom" was derived with a combination of "Ela" and "Kardamum" - the Greek word. Green Cardamom was considered to be a precious green gem for many civilizations, primarily due to its scarcity and its original medicinal and aromatic values which were found since ancient times. The difficulties to reach it far and vast lands made it more precious.

@Indian Spices