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    Spice

    I hate oregano. My mom puts it in one dish and where every single other food of hers is divine beyond glory, that one experimental is a clusterfuck. I don't have the heart to tell her.

    The best spice on earth is Lemon Balm.

    Hold on. I guess we have to distinguish between dry and fresh?
    Or, do we?

    Cheyenne Pepper is something I can't live without with.

    Now, you go figure out if fresh an dry spice can be measured on the same third sense scale. I'm to busy waiting for you do it for me.

    #2
    Spice

    I bid you goodnight. I think it's time.

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      #3
      Spice

      Funnily enough I just picked some oregano leaves for a caramelised onion and feta tart I've been left to make.

      Are herbs and spices considered the same thing e.g if oregano (a herb) is dried and ground, is it then a spice?

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        #4
        Spice

        Ever tried the legendary Chip Spice that they put on everything in Hull? Still not entirely sure what it is or what's so spectacular about it (don't tell my Hullensian partner!)

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          #5
          Spice

          More of a condiment really, but here we have a bizarre item known as "chicken salt". So if you buy a portion of chips (or should I say "hot chips") you get the choice of salt, or chicken salt. I suspect it's at least half MSG. I should look it up:

          Well, there you go: chicken salt and chip spice in the same wiki link.

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            #6
            Spice

            Do you mean Lemon Grass, PPV? I love the stuff. It's a non spicey spice that adds a distinctive contrasting taste to spicey food. They use it a lot in Thai food. It's great drunk as tea as well.

            You can't beat fresh herbs and spices. Cilantro, Basil and Mint does it for me. I like to buy potted Basil to keep around the house. The aroma is heaven, miles better than air freshener, and I can always tear off a leaf or two when I have the need. Rosemary, Sage and Thyme grows wild where I live so it's available any time and I don't have to buy it.

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              #7
              Spice

              Parsley saaaage, rosemary and thyyyme...

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                #8
                Spice

                Sits wrote: Funnily enough I just picked some oregano leaves for a caramelised onion and feta tart I've been left to make.

                Are herbs and spices considered the same thing e.g if oregano (a herb) is dried and ground, is it then a spice?
                The only herb that straddles the divide is coriander/cilantro, because both the leaves (herb) and its seeds (whole or ground as spice) are used.

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                  #9
                  Spice

                  linus is right. I don't know why we are discussing herbs at all but I coriander does seem to straddle the two.

                  Does pepper as in black and white pepper have any relation to the veg peppers?

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                    #10
                    Spice

                    black and white and green pepper come from Peppercorn which are come from a vine. The chemical that gives it the kick is different to things like chillis and bell peppers and the like.

                    is chicken salt like Aromat. Polish people love that shit. They even have it in chippers around here.

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                      #11
                      Spice

                      I don't see how you can begin to comprehend Italian food without oregano. So that rules PPV out of any future discussion about that.

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                        #12
                        Spice

                        The tart came out fine. More oregano would probably have made it better though.

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                          #13
                          Spice

                          The way to remember the difference is that spices caused the history of the world, and herbs didn't.

                          "Bring me back some herbs, from the fabled Herb Islands!" said no European ruler, ever.

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                            #14
                            Spice

                            tee rex wrote: "Bring me back some herbs, from the fabled Herb Islands!"
                            Excellent.

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                              #15
                              Spice

                              One thing we do need to have a proper OTF tear-up about is whether you should pronounce it "Or-egg-ARN-oh" or "Or-EGG-a-know".

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                                #16
                                Spice

                                If I'd ruled a small mediaeval kingdom, I would have so commanded that, I love herbs. I grow golden oregano at home as well as ordinary oregano: the golden one is a much more delicate flavour without the pungency of the regular one. I wouldn't be without rosemary, sage, thyme, basil, mint and chives, although I'm crap at growing basil. A particular favourite discovered in the last few years is a very hardy rosemary from Texas called 'Arp', which is reckoned to have a lemony flavour but to me tastes like stuffing, which is brilliant.

                                I'm coming round to savoury spices, having never been a fan of 'hot' food; smoked paprika is the one I absolutely love now. Small amounts of dried chilli can similarly lift a dish and I'm slowly discovering the occasional use for things like cumin to add an earthy note. The more 'sweet' spices as you might call them, i.e. ginger, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, I've always loved, and they can add a certain je ne sais quoi to savoury dishes too in combination with the above.

                                Bored wrote: Does pepper as in black and white pepper have any relation to the veg peppers?
                                I heard for the first time only quite recently why this confusing naming is so, which is because when peppers (i.e. bell peppers, capsicums) were first brought back from the New World in the 16th century or whatever, their heat and piquancy reminded people of pepper (i.e. peppercorns), which was already a prized spice as alluded to in tee rex's comment — and "no" is the answer, the latter comes from an unrelated family of plants from the Indian subcontinent.

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                                  #17
                                  Spice

                                  See, I am no great fan of 'smoked' foods unless they are fish.

                                  It's "Or-egg-ARN-oh", of course.

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                                    #18
                                    Spice

                                    One question that's always puzzled me is why, as the spice trade was so important for centuries, why does so much European cuisine remain so steadfastly, well, unspicy? Hungarians bung paprika in everything, and the Spanish use saffron in paella, but it doesn't seem like there's a lot in German, or even Italian, cooking, and apart from sticking cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves in Christmas puddings, the British only took to spicy food when the Bangladeshis came over and started opening restaurants. If we were fighting wars over ensuring the spices kept coming, what were we doing with it?

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                                      #19
                                      Spice

                                      Of course it's "Or-egg-ARN-oh". It's an Italian word. Do people say "SPAG-etty" or "LASS-an-ya"?

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                                        #20
                                        Spice

                                        well..... spices were really fucking expensive and as such weren't really part of widespread cuisine until quite late in the day. and you have to remember that while they were fighting wars over these spices, the amount that was being transported was relatively tiny.

                                        Secondly the food of the rich was relatively highly spiced. It's also worth remembering that different things were considered to be spices at different times. Sugar, salt, pepper, and garlic were considered spices, with the trade in sugar being the most lucrative.

                                        The british took to spices in a serious way when the east india company got going. The first curry house in london opened over two hundred years ago, and curries were a common enough dish in the nineteenth century (though they bear little resemblance to the curries of today) and it is a curiosity of history that it was the portuguese that introduced chillis to asia.

                                        The dutch for some reason eat a fuckmountain of spices. THe average dutch person consumes a kilo and a half a year, The Indians consume 2 kilos, and the english consume half a kilo. The worldwide average is a kilo.

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                                          #21
                                          Spice

                                          I don't grow lemon balm, but it certainly grows itself. Pops up in twenty different places around the garden if you let it run to seed. I've never ever cooked with it (nor lemongrass, come to that) but it reportedly makes a very nice infusion à la peppermint tea. Or for the same thing on a grand scale, best use for it would be to grab massive armfuls of the stuff, to keep it in check, and put it in the water when you run a bath.

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                                            #22
                                            Spice

                                            Or-egg-ARN-oh.

                                            Just as it's "herbs" not "'erbs".

                                            So there.

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                                              #23
                                              Spice

                                              Fenugreek straddles both the herb and spice

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                                                #24
                                                Spice

                                                Toro Toro wrote: Of course it's "Or-egg-ARN-oh". It's an Italian word. Do people say "SPAG-etty" or "LASS-an-ya"?
                                                Are you trying to suggest that all Italian words are stressed on the penultimate syllable?

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                                                  #25
                                                  Spice

                                                  Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: it doesn't seem like there's a lot [of spice] in German ... cooking
                                                  The fact that so many people in Germany are so scared of herbs and spices is still quite weird. The canteen menu occasionally throws up dishes called Indian-style curry or spicy rice with chicken or stuff along those lines, and colleagues here genuinely find them too spicy to eat. As far as I'm concerned, they've not even been within six feet of any spices at all, but (to generalise massively) the majority of Germans consider salt to be all the seasoning you need. They'll put that on anything. Salad? Fuck it, where's the salt. Soup? Don't taste that, just salt it.

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