This Christmas, I wanted a unique gift to send back to our family in the U.S.
One day, I was making one of my yummy curry dishes (a staple for healthy cooking in Southeast Asia), and realized that some of the ingredients I had gotten used to were 1. way more expensive in the West and 2. holiday themed. My mind instantly went to my mom’s Apple Cider. She would always make it when we celebrated Advent.
I spent some time experimenting and designing a recipe that maximized the flavors of Southeast Asian spices. My mom helped me package them up with some cute fabric (which matched everyone’s Christmas cards), we printed some labels, and we had an easy but memorable gift for the extended family! Something interactive and edible is always a good gift.
For a free PDF of the recipe, click here:
I told one of my local friends that in America, we use spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in sweet dishes and that those smells remind us of Fall and Winter. She couldn’t believe it! In her world, those ingredients are used exclusively for savory dishes. Lucky for us, we get to enjoy the best of both worlds.
If you want to see the Christmas cards everyone got that matched their cider jars, click here.
Any other nerds out there?
In the Ancient world, spices were traded to the West from the Spice Islands of Southeast Asia. We get the English word “spices” from the Latin “species,” meaning veriaty. (These “spices” included anything exotic, including tigers.) To justify their prices, merchants made up fantastical stories about harvesting these foods from mythical creatures.
When Columbus landed in the Americas, he was not looking for India. He was looking for the East Indies (ie, modern Indonesia) to find a quicker trade rout to sell these exotic spices.
Have you ever wondered why Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, so far away from the Arab world? It’s because of the influence of Arab spice traders.
If you’re interested in this kind of thing, I recommend:
- what may possibly be my favorite book, An Edible History of Humanity
- or for a quick read, this BBC article, “The flavors that shaped the world.”
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