Spice garden - Thekaddy

Nov 2014....Thekaddy

Kerala is famous for a lot of things, a wide variety of spices is one of them. A visit to the spice garden brought us close to the very familiar culinary aromas that waft in our homes from time to time. As you enter the spice garden you don't know what hits you first - the verdant green foliage or the cocktail of aromas that are in the air.

You can't miss the ubiquitous bananas though ;-)

And then begins, a fun enquiry by Taj (our guide) who quizzes us on our knowledge, we learn to look high & low, the brain cogs get a whirl and a whoop sounds when someone cracks the question. The pepper pods are green - they are dried to get the famous black pepper. The plant is a climber and it relies on the thorns of the host tree which is planted only so that the pepper can climb upwards & onwards! Spot the pods in picture below :-)

 

If pepper is there can cardamom be far behind in God's own country? We were really surprised to see that the green gold actually grows very close to the ground level where the stalk meets the soil. The taste and aroma of a fresh sweet freshly picked cardamom is hard to beat.

 

 

 

Meet the treasure from under ground - yellow gold. Meet the wonder spice that is turmeric.

 

 



Sweet cinnamon bark & curry patta :)

The cocoa tree which gives us the Theobroma - Gift of the gods, aka -chocolate. The pods are collected , cut and beans extracted, dried & roasted.

 

 

Coffee beans freshly picked up by the two ladies smiling shyly below. For the dainty damsels the gum boots are a must to protect the feet from the mushy ground and leeches.

So after a round of hot latte- what next? Well there was lemon grass (herbal tea anyone?), chilli & clove (fresh buds) & not the dried hard black version. Interestingly the leaves of the clove tree are equally aromatic and if rubbed you do get the familiar aroma of clove. The flower dries up to result in the dried bud which is used commercially.

You can pick up spices from Thekkady (at a more reasonable price than anywhere else in India) and they spices are really potent  & are very smoothly shipped off overseas. We also shopped for allspice (alternate for our garam masala), dried preserved ginger (sooths throat), and concentrated extracts of essences. All in all a great half day getting to know where our spices come from.