Spices and herbs

Read Anne Holzman's tips and recommendations on shopping for herbs and spices at the Co-op.

Star anise is one of the ingredients in the traditional Chinese five-spice powder. It is often confused with anise (aniseed). They’re not closely related, although both have a licorice-like flavor. Whole star anise often is one of the ingredients in teas or tisanes used to soothe congested lungs and nasal passages. I’ve used star anise to add depth of flavor to split pea or lentil soups. You’ll find star anise in both whole and powdered forms with the rest of the Frontier bulk spices.

—by Katharine Holden

Instead of buying a whole container of a spice for one particular recipe (and then putting the container into the cupboard to get dry and old), stop by the bulk spice area and buy just enough of the spice for your needs. Use your own container. If it’s a jar or canister, remember to weigh it first so you’re only charged for the spice and not the weight of the container. If you don’t have your own container, little plastic bags are available (cost: a few pennies) or darling little jars of blue or green glass (cost: more than a few pennies).

—by Katharine Holden

Cardamom is an aromatic spice used to flavor curries and other recipes, drinks, and candy. It’s one of the spices in chai tea. Cardamom also has medicinal qualities. Once the seed pods are ground, cardamom quickly loses its flavor, so to enjoy the best flavor, avoid buying the pre-ground little jars at the supermarket. HPC offers bulk decorticated cardamom from Frontier Spices, and it’s simple to whiz a teaspoonful in your coffee grinder.

I had my first taste of cardamom in a delectable rice pudding served at the Khyber Pass, back in the days when the St. Paul restaurant was on St. Clair Avenue and run by an old Afghani man and his son. Like most Westerners, my experience of cardamom was having it mixed in with something sweet, in this case milk and sugar. In Scandinavia the seeds are used in breads and desserts, but in the parts of south Asia where cardamom originated, it has been used for centuries as a flavoring for savory dishes as well as for traditional medicine and food preservation.

The Queen of Spices

Cardamom is native to India and Sri Lanka, where it grows wild in parts of the monsoon forests of the Western Ghats. Until just 200 years ago, most of the world’s supply of cardamom came from this area, known as the Cardamom Hills. It has now been introduced all over tropical Asia, where it is currently cultivated.

The cardamom plant, which is a member of the ginger family, grows in a thick clump of up to 20 leafy shoots, and can reach a height of between 6 and almost 18 feet. The fruits have been traded in India for at least 1000 years. It was known as the Queen of Spices, with black pepper being the King. Cardamom is now the third most expensive spice in the world, after saffron and vanilla. It is traded mostly in whole fruit form.