Spice Grrl

Although I more frequently eschew organised group activities in favour of low rent Garbo posturing, there was no way I was going to miss out on a spice tour of Zanzibar. Having previously had no idea where most spices come from, I am now a walking repository of superficial knowledge on the cultivation of kitchen spices. On encountering clove trees and such like for the first time, I got over-excited and took it upon myself to taste all these spices in their fresh, unripe, unprocessed and unwashed state. I am pleased to announce that I am suffering no ill effects from such foolhardy spontaneity. Following is an extremely abridged field report.

Cinnamon
I had inferred that the term cinnamon bark wasn’t a figurative one; Michael Ondaatje’s beautiful poem, ‘The Cinnamon Peeler’ had prodded this inference along and added to my arsenal of cinnamon related fact that the bark was procured by means of peeling. This unprepossessing tree is a cinnamon tree. Peel away some bark, and voilà: cinnamon. The bark just regenerates on each peeling. Presumably a skilled peeler can coax fragrant quills from the trees with facility.

Cardamom
Cardamom pods and seeds and powders aren’t just vital spices, they are orchid by-products! Apparently too they are a cure for seasickness. My voyage to Zanzibar from Dar Es Salaam, aboard the dubiously named Flying Horse, was calm enough but I am pocketing a handful of pods for the return trip.

Vanilla
Vanilla pods, vanilla beans, vanilla, vanilla, vanilla, another noble orchidaceous by-product. The pods in the photo are not yet fully grown, ripe only with possibility. The half dried beans for sale elsewhere fairly oozed a sticky mass of seeds and a tremendous thick perfume like no version of vanilla I’ve previously encountered. My hands and head plump with vanilla, I swooned and entertained visions of vanilla quinces and crème anglaise and a bottle of Absolut infested with vanilla beans and all sorts of custard until pragmatism, of course, intervened and I realised the pointlessness of trailing a stash of vanilla pods across the continent with me. It’s not like I’m travelling with a whisk or anything. I note that I did not dally long with the notion of vanilla essence.

Clove
Where do cloves come from? Clove trees! The clove tree! Thrilled am I to discover that such a species exists.
Unripe cloves look just like ripe, undried cloves and taste not dissimilar either.

Nutmeg
Without nutmeg, where would spinach, and, for that matter, scrambled eggs, be?

Once upon a time the Anarchist’s Cookbook instructed the hopeful to smoke nutmeg for fun. This was possibly irresponsible information but no more so than the bomb-making instructions. My Zanzibar sources tell me that high-octane nutmeg tea is effective an aphrodisiac when served to women and as a sedative when served to men. So there you go.

Good old multipurpose nutmeg is the pip of a fruit which looks like a pale plum and hangs abundantly from enormous trees like these. The pips only take five days to dry! If my sample dries as it should, I am sure it will bring me great luck to carry a nutmeg with me, along with my first of spring chestnut charm, collected in Milan.

I am chuffed almost beyond measure to have peered at these spices in situ. Without vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, and cloves, my quality of life would be markedly lower.

Park life

Kyiv is a fantastically green city, full of huge tree-lined avenues and parks in which there are currently groups of people camping waiting for a pretext to protest the results of the elections just past. Even the industrial areas are a bit bosky.

Appearances can be deceptive. Whilst Kyiv might look like a greenie’s dream, Soviet-era cars and tractors and trucks sputter through the streets of the city spewing out clouds of black smoke at swallowing height. I’m not convinced the proliferation of trees quite balances things out, she writes, coughing and rubbing her eyes...


There are plenty of parks in Odessa too, and they are all full of people. Very nice, very nice.

A Piece of Truth

Fact:

Wormwood, Artemisia absinthium, contributes not only to absinthe, but to vermouth and Campari. Once more, I lament not brewing the wormword roots I dug up near Aurillac.

Fraise – Fresa – Fragola – Erdbeere

I have little idea of the etymology of any of the words for strawberry in the title to this post, although I have long admired the pragmatic poetry of the German Erdbeere (literally, earth-berry) which has always sounded far more mammalian than vegetal to me. What I do know, however, is that the English word ‘strawberry’ has nothing to do with straw. The straw of the berry has instead to do with the straying, self-strewing behaviour of the plants along the ground. The referential wheel spins strangely in Corsica: the strawberry plants are tucked into beds of straw and called fraises.

Strawberries might be ruined for me. Firstly, I recently spent ten days doing little but care for strawberries on an organic farm in Corsica. I’ve weeded strawberries, I’ve scattered woodchips and straw over beds of strawberries to keep weeds away, I’ve aerated the roots of strawberries, I’ve pruned runners and dead leaves and under-achieving leaves and any unsightliness away from millions of strawberry plants and I’ve picked more kilos of strawberries than I care to count. I have implanted a visual guide to the strawberry in my brain and I expect fraise related imagery to punctuate my dreams for many decades hence. What it will mean for me to dream of strawberries in twenty years, I do not know. Nostalgia, perhaps, for my irresponsible tridecennial berry fling on the hills of Corsica where the plants are as tough as barbed wire?Or maybe strawberry dreams will draw to mind a place where the sun beats down like anything but honey on our ladies of the garden? Was it in one of Roald Dahl’s memoirs that the story was told about the boy who worked in a chocolate factory and got sick of the taste of chocolate? Was it my friend Skye’s grandfather? Was it family apocrypha? I’m not sure I will find myself sick of the taste of strawberries for a long, long time. What worries me is that I might never find strawberries to match those of le Jardin de Niolu, delicious, warmed by the sun, impeccables.I’m also worried that I might turn into one of those insufferable food types who points out all the flaws in the produce before them. ‘If your strawberry isn’t bright red and glossy right up to the stem, forget it, just forget it.’ Worse, I could become the tedious globe-trotting food nostalgists whose every bite is a pretext for a yarn. ‘Yes, these are nice strawberries that you are serving me, kind host, but not a patch on those wonderful, wonderful organic berries from Corsica, I ate them when I was young and the sun was warm… [Insert dull and self-focussed travel anecdote here].’

Mindful of these dangers, I register only the following. Recently, I have eaten the best strawberries that have ever come my way. They resemble only marginally the hard red pyramids which taste of wood and water often sold under the label ‘strawberry’ in Australia. This is an outrage.

Since leaving the rocky and mountainous terrain of Lozzi, I have been weeding the internet for useful information, a far less satisfying project than digging into the earth, albeit kinder to the knees, hands, and back. Had I been foraging through the internet and not hacking into Corsican soil, I might have come across this reference to the Strawberry Project earlier and tucked a few runners into my pocket; so equipped I would have strewn the strays all over Genoa and thus propagated the guerrilla gardening meme, one of my long-term (almost non-ironic) favourites.

Cynorhodons

Wild rosebushes sprawl unexpectedly over the harsh Corsican mountainsides. They flower in early summer and so now, in August, they are covered with hips, one of my favourite botanical phenomena.
It’s not often that English utterly trumps French for poetic expression. In English, we have rosehips; en français, on a les cynorhodons, a far less attractive term, I think, entirely arbitrarily; or course. Were I staying here longer, I’d insist on picking basketfuls to make jam and dry for tea. I’d also experiment with rosehip liqueurs, both to stay on the right side of wholesome and because, although I’ve never encountered them, I’ve long been convinced that they would be spectacular.
On flora, I post this photo not just because the onion flower is so impressive but because the backdrop – bright blue cloudless sky and dry stony terrain – encapsulates conditions here nicely. I have no plans for onion flower teas or liqueurs.

Dipso du Jardin

Who can identify this plant? I’m restraining myself from issuing a roll-call of those who might (or should) be able to do so.

Give up? Les français call this l’absente. Les anglais call it wormwood. The world calls the drink brewed from its root – yes! – Absinthe! – and shudders with an odd mixture of apprehension and maniacal excitement at the very thought of the green fairy’s tipple extraordinaire. Had I been born a wench in Rouen in 1875, there is no doubt that I would have turned to absinthe just after running away from the evil Marquis’ scullery, hotfooting it to Paris and starting modelling for Renoir or Toulouse-Lautrec. Had I been born a wordy, rebellious, precocious bourgeoise in Paris in 1845, I would have, to the distress of maman et papa, become hooked on the stuff as I tried to emulate young Rimbaud. God knows, I probably would have had to smoke hashish to keep up that act. And then? Downhill. Thank heavens for 1977.

In the vegetable garden which occupied my attention for such a prolonged period, l’absente grows wild. Myriam allows it to grow because the silvery leaves are so very beautiful in a flower arrangement. So wild was the path of the wormwood this summer that I was charged with digging up many stands of the silvery stuff. I made a feeble comment about cooking up some absinthe sauvage but the mirth which greeted my proposal was of the sort which made it very clear that there was not going to be any homebrewed absinthe. What did I do? Some will be shocked and disappointed to learn that with a heavy heart, I dug up the wormwood.

Here are some wormwood roots, which are what you need to make absinthe. If memory serves me correctly, the internet is a great source of guidance to those who wish to make absinthe de la maison. Vodka is required.

I have greatly enjoyed the gentle absinthe available in Australia, purged as it is of psychotic and hallucinogenic ingredients. The Symboliste poet lurking in the lower cerebellum is coaxed out hiding – one blusters with dreamy Baudelairean eloquence and yet one’s inner psychopath stays under lock and key. My one experience drinking the real deal absinthe in the Czech Republic, on the other hand, had somewhat dire consequences: a lengthy argument of the blazing variety devoted to the relative merits of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, conducted over several hours in a public square, several lost hours, mysterious bruises, a sore throat, and, of course, an almighty hangover dredged from one of the more fetid levels of hell. Just in case my dear grandfather is shaking his head in concern and wonder at such depravity in one just past the heyday of her youth, I note that I do not know anyone who has consumed absinthe in the Czech Republic. without such dire consequences. I will hopefully be happily in the C. R. in the next few months and this will give me the opportunity to consider whether I want to sample the fearsome genuine article once more, albeit with care. As a dilettante scholar of literary Modernism, I do consider it my professional duty to investigate such matters. Fear not, I shall treat the green fairy with extreme prejudice.

Le grog sauvage

Juniper, the berries of which are vital ingredient of that most vital spirit, the gin of my heart and dreams, grows wild on the hills and plains of the Cantal. I have been avidly reading through a library of books on wild foods and la cuisine sauvage and so am overburdened with botanical lore. The remarkable powers of the juniper tree (ahem, Juniperus communis) are lauded by folklorists, particularly those averse to the supernatural. Juniper branches hung over doors and windows on May Eve repel witches; smoke from a juniper fire keeps demons at bay. An infusion made from juniper berries apparently restores lost youth. To dream of a juniper tree is bad luck but, oddly, to dream of juniper berries signifies coming success. The herbals proffered no information as to the significance of dreams of gin.
After lunch chez Roselyne, a hoary organic old chestnut who deserves but probably won’t get a post of her own, I decided to walk home to la Bastide and was duly charged with the collection of juniper berries. Life would truly have exceeded art had the juniper berries been solicited in order to produce organic gin du maison. They were in fact picked for the enhancement of the pâté and terrines du maison made later in the week.

To access the bright blue berries of the juniper (which ripen only in their second year on the bush), one must negotiate some tough and spiky leaves. Picking juniper berries is more taxing than drinking a gin and tonic in the late afternoon, to this I can attest. Berried picked, fingers pricked, I found myself terribly lost in the forest. My orienteering skills never were that crash-hot. I was charmed by the deer I saw leaping through the trees – such charm! – until I stumbled over a sign which designated the area a hunting reserve and had a strong and unpleasant sense of myself as a moving target. Oh là là… Clambering, trampling, muttering, sliding, swearing, deep-breathing, back-tracking and clear-headed focus were required to get me home. In spite of the trying circumstances, not one juniper berry was lost.

Woofing like a blog

So I wrote the below labouring under the expectation that Myriam’s computer and mine might be able to collaborate in such a way that I could post live and direct from organic bliss-ville. Alas, not only could my memory stick find no safe haven in Myriam’s computer, almost as ancient as the farmhouse, but much less charming, the internet connection moved so slowly as to thwart any alternatives. So that was that. I post it nonetheless as an eccentric historical piece. Like a newly trained forager, I have gathered much trivia, many photographs, and too few pieces of genuine wisdom on topics like la vie auvergnate, flora of the Massif central, botanical history, la cuisine sauvage, quirks of pronunciation in the South, potatoes, cheese-making, and so on. I shall post my gleanings in due course. I have nought to lose. I am, after all, now in Toulouse, if only for a night.

Ahem.

Yes, I’ve left the fleshpots of Paris far behind. There and then, I was trawling the Place de Clichy after midnight; here and now, I am collecting wildflowers from fields unadulterated by pollutants. I’m two days into the first of two woofing stints, this one in the Auvergne and the next in Corsica, and la vie is looking pretty belle. Woofing, I will remind you, is a scheme whereby likely types, like myself, work for four to six hours a day on an organic farm in exchange for food and board. I seem to have fallen into rather the right situation here in the Auvergne. Auvergne is the region, Cantal the département, Thiezac the nearest Holbrook-sized village and Aurillac the nearest Albury-sized town. I’m staying with a lovely woman named Myriam who lives in a big sixteenth century farmhouse, la Bastide Haute, perched on the side of a hill nicely plonked in the middle of the Massif central. It is a most ridiculously scenic place. There are po-faced sheep wearing bells bleating around the place and at least four dormice resident in the beams above my bed. There is a rooster, an orchard and a big stand of wormwood. There are fruit trees, raspberry and blackcurrant canes, beehives, nettles, and many varieties of potato, zucchini, carrot, turnip and beans. I’m tasked with pottering in the vegetable garden, picking wildflowers and herbs for dinner and tisanes, chatting to the chickens, and learning to cook a few new dishes. I’ve got a huge stone barn cum studio to myself (plus the local dormouse population), the dog, Gigi, seems to like me, and if it rains tonight, we’ll go on a trip into the pine forest to pick mushrooms tomorrow. It’s all rather nice.

As proof that I’m not fabricating this substitution of good, wholesome, hearty, living for fast, bad, and loose life, I tender the following.

Some valerian picked by mine own hands.

Chickens cavorting beneath the washing line. Cavorting, I might note, before the revival of my long-buried lawn-mowing skills and the subsequent transformation of the lawns.

As a consequence of this new phase of healthy living, I won’t be as proximate to the toxic fumes of the internet as usual. This is one reason why this may be an ephemeral – if entirely delightful – phase. If you have urgent questions about matters dilettantish, note that I’ll be following a slow-dripping herbal clock for the next few weeks.