The other day we were watching an old episode of Jacques Pepin and Julia Child cooking together. What a delightful combination of personalities they were! On this day, they were cooking some dining classics, like Steak Diane and Steak Au Poivre.
When Jacques was preparing the ingredients for Steak Au Poivre, he had four kinds of peppercorns: black, green, red, and all spice. He said that allspice was also called Jamaican pepper. So it made me think, what exactly is allspice? Is it really a pepper?
Here's what my homework revealed. Allspice is the dried, unripe fruit of a tree called "Pimenta Dioica", which is native to Jamaica, Central America and Â鶹ÊÓƵern Mexico. Allspice is picked when the fruit is green, then dried. The tree is similar to a bay tree, although it can also grow to some height, and is classified as an evergreen. It lives in tropical climates, and here's an interesting factoid: the plants are either male or female, so they have to be growing near each other in order for fruits to be produced.
And here's one more interesting thing: back in the days of spice trade, allspice was a hot commodity, and great care was taken so that the plant was not exported from Jamaica. It seems that many tried (but had no success) to germinate the seeds elsewhere. It turns out that what made the seeds germinate was their journey through a bird's stomach, perhaps a combination of the heat and acidity. So now you know!
Our intrepid traveler Christopher Columbus learned about allspice on his second trip to the New World, and it was brought to Europe in the 16th century. Because the spice tasted like a mixture of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg, it was called "allspice". It's been used not only in baking but in all kinds of cooking, especially with meats in Middle Eastern cooking.
I myself associate allspice with Christmas baking, but obviously it has a much broader repertoire than that! I had a chuckle trying to picture those long ago gardeners struggling to get the allspice berries to germinate! They must have been quite frustrated at their lack of success. We know how it feels when we just can't get something to grow, no matter how we adjust the soil or the light or the watering! Very disappointing!
We're standing on the brink of a new year, fellow gardeners. 2010 was a very tough year, and it was just beyond our control. The weather was a real challenge. I've been thinking about our own garden; I think it might be time to concentrate on enriching the soil with compost . It needs some extra care in this coming year.
The Yorkton and District Horticultural Society had a project this past year, to compile a joint photo album of our gardens. The pictures that we selected to go into the album were not pretty, that's for sure! They showed our poor beaten apples, and the shredded hostas; but they were an accurate reflection of the year! Looking back at them now, just six months later, it's amazing how quickly we forget how devastating the storm of July 1 really was. That must be God's way of protecting us from disappointment and giving us hope to look ahead to the next gardening year!
The next time we talk, it will be 2011. Happy new year to you: may you have health, happiness, love and laughter in abundance!
