When the veteran Indian food critic Marryam H. Reshii decided to write a book about spices, she hoped to encourage people to think a little more deeply about the contents of their spice rack or masala dabba. "Considering how all-important they are," Reshii says, she found that most people didn't know a lot about spices — "where they grow, how widespread their use is, what makes the spice in a particular region better (or not) than its counterparts."
But in researching 2017's "The Flavour of Spice," Reshii encountered some details even she wasn't expecting. Though the country is often cited as the largest spice producer in the world, "India was rather late to the party," Reshii says. "Black pepper, turmeric and green cardamom are almost definitely native to India," she explains — but go back far enough and many of the other household spices, which India both consumes and exports in huge volumes, are not.
