Arizona
Arizona is a state in the southwestern region of the United States. It is part of the Western and the Mountain states, it is the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona shares the Four Corners region with Utah and New Mexico. Arizona is the 48th state and last of the contiguous states to be admitted to the Union, achieving statehood on February 14, 1912, coinciding with Valentine's Day. Part of the territory of Alta California in New Spain, it became part of independent Mexico in 1821. After being defeated in the Mexican–American War, Mexico ceded much of this territory to the United States in 1848; the southernmost portion of the state was acquired in 1853 through the Gadsden Purchase. Southern Arizona is known for its desert climate, with hot summers and mild winters. Northern Arizona features forests of pine, Douglas fir, spruce trees. There are ski resorts in the areas of Flagstaff and Tucson. In addition to the Grand Canyon National Park, there are several national forests, national parks, national monuments.
About one-quarter of the state is made up of Indian reservations that serve as the home of 27 federally recognized Native American tribes, including the Navajo Nation, the largest in the state and the United States, with more than 300,000 citizens. Although federal law gave all Native Americans the right to vote in 1924, Arizona excluded those living on reservations in the state from voting until the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of Native American plaintiffs in Trujillo v. Garley; the state's name appears to originate from an earlier Spanish name, derived from the O'odham name alĭ ṣonak, meaning "small spring", which applied only to an area near the silver mining camp of Planchas de Plata, Sonora. To the European settlers, their pronunciation sounded like "Arissona"; the area is still known as alĭ ṣonak in the O'odham language. Another possible origin is the Basque phrase haritz ona, as there were numerous Basque sheepherders in the area. A native Mexican of Basque heritage established the ranchería of Arizona between 1734 and 1736 in the current Mexican state of Sonora, which became notable after a significant discovery of silver there, c.
1737. There is a misconception. For thousands of years before the modern era, Arizona was home to numerous Native American tribes. Hohokam and Ancestral Puebloan cultures were among the many that flourished throughout the state. Many of their pueblos, cliffside dwellings, rock paintings and other prehistoric treasures have survived, attracting thousands of tourists each year; the first European contact by native peoples was with Marcos de Niza, a Spanish Franciscan, in 1539. He explored parts of the present state and made contact with native inhabitants the Sobaipuri; the expedition of Spanish explorer Coronado entered the area in 1540–1542 during its search for Cíbola. Few Spanish settlers migrated to Arizona. One of the first settlers in Arizona was José Romo de Vivar. Father Kino was the next European in the region. A member of the Society of Jesus, he led the development of a chain of missions in the region, he converted many of the Indians to Christianity in the Pimería Alta in the 1690s and early 18th century.
Spain founded presidios at Tubac in 1752 and Tucson in 1775. When Mexico achieved its independence from the Kingdom of Spain and its Spanish Empire in 1821, what is now Arizona became part of its Territory of Nueva California known as Alta California. Descendants of ethnic Spanish and mestizo settlers from the colonial years still lived in the area at the time of the arrival of European-American migrants from the United States. During the Mexican–American War, the U. S. Army occupied the national capital of Mexico City and pursued its claim to much of northern Mexico, including what became Arizona Territory in 1863 and the State of Arizona in 1912; the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo specified that, in addition to language and cultural rights of the existing inhabitants of former Mexican citizens being considered as inviolable, the sum of US$15 million dollars in compensation be paid to the Republic of Mexico. In 1853, the U. S. acquired the land south below the Gila River from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase along the southern border area as encompassing the best future southern route for a transcontinental railway.
What is now known as the state of Arizona was administered by the United States government as part of the Territory of New Mexico until the southern part of that region seceded from the Union to form the Territory of Arizona. This newly established territory was formally organized by the Confederate States government on Saturday, January 18, 1862, when President Jefferson Davis approved and signed An Act to Organize the Territory of Arizona, marking the first official use of the name "Territory of Arizona"; the Southern territory supplied the Confederate government with men and equipment. Formed in 1862, Arizona scout companies served with the Confederate States Army duri
Pork
Pork is the culinary name for meat from a domestic pig. It is the most consumed meat worldwide, with evidence of pig husbandry dating back to 5000 BC. Pork is eaten both freshly preserved. Curing extends the shelf life of the pork products. Ham, smoked pork, gammon and sausage are examples of preserved pork. Charcuterie is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products, many from pork. Pork is the most popular meat in Eastern and Southeastern Asia, is very common in the Western world in Central Europe, it is prized in Asian cuisines for its fat content and pleasant texture. Consumption of pork is forbidden by Jewish and Rastafarian dietary law, for religious reasons, with several suggested possible causes. Charcuterie is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products such as bacon, sausage, galantines, pâtés, confit from pig. Intended as a way to preserve meats before the advent of refrigeration, these preparations are prepared today for the flavors that are derived from the preservation processes.
In 15th century France, local guilds regulated tradesmen in the food production industry in each city. The guilds that produced charcuterie were those of the charcutiers; the members of this guild produced a traditional range of cooked or salted and dried meats, which varied, sometimes distinctively, from region to region. The only "raw" meat the charcutiers were allowed to sell was unrendered lard; the charcutier prepared numerous items, including pâtés, sausages, bacon and head cheese. Before the mass production and re-engineering of pigs in the 20th century, pork in Europe and North America was traditionally an autumn dish—pigs and other livestock coming to the slaughter in the autumn after growing in the spring and fattening during the summer. Due to the seasonal nature of the meat in Western culinary history, apples have been a staple pairing to fresh pork; the year-round availability of meat and fruits has not diminished the popularity of this combination on Western plates. Pigs are the most eaten animal in the world, accounting for about 38% of meat production worldwide.
Consumption varies from place to place. The meat is taboo to eat in the Middle East and most of the Muslim world because of Jewish kosher and Islamic Halal dietary restrictions. But, pork is consumed in East and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas and Oceania; as the result, large numbers of pork recipes are developed throughout the world. Jamón is the most famous Spanish inlay, made with the front legs of a pig. Feijoada for example, the national dish of Brazil, is traditionally prepared with pork trimmings: ears and feet. According to the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service, nearly 100 million metric tons of pork were consumed worldwide in 2006. Increasing urbanization and disposable income has led to a rapid rise in pork consumption in China, where 2006 consumption was 20% higher than in 2002, a further 5% increase projected in 2007. In 2015 recorded total 109.905 million metric tons of pork were consumed worldwide. By 2017, half the world's pork was consumed in China. Pork is popular throughout eastern Asia and the Pacific, where whole roast pig is a popular item in Pacific Island cuisine.
It is consumed in a great many ways and esteemed in Chinese cuisine. China is the world's largest pork consumer, with pork consumption expected to total 53 million tons in 2012, which accounts for more than half of global pork consumption. In China, pork is preferred over beef for aesthetic reasons. Domestic pigs feed on human waste, thus reducing cost of feeding and helping in recycling; the colours of the meat and the fat of pork are regarded as more appetizing, while the taste and smell are described as sweeter and cleaner. It is considered easier to digest. In rural tradition, pork is shared to form bonding. In China, pork is so important that the nation maintains a "strategic pork reserve". Red braised pork, a delicacy from Hunan Province, inspired Mao Zedong. Other popular Chinese pork dishes are sweet and sour pork and charsiu. In the Philippines, due to 300 years of Spanish colonization and influence, an entire roasted suckling pig, is the national delicacy. Pork may be cured over time. Cured meat products include bacon.
The carcass may be used in many different ways for fresh meat cuts, with the popularity of certain cuts and certain carcass proportions varying worldwide. Most of the carcass can be used to produce fresh meat and in the case of a suckling pig, the whole body of a young pig ranging in age from two to six weeks is roasted. Danish roast pork or flæskesteg, prepared with crispy crackling is a national favourite as the traditional Christmas dinner. Pork is common as an ingredient in sausages. Many traditional European sausages are made with pork, including chorizo, Cumberland sausage and salami. Many brands of American hot dogs and most breakfast sausages are made from pork. Processing of pork into sausages and other products in France is described as charcuterie. Ham and bacon are made from fresh pork by curing with smoking. Shoulders and legs are most cured in this manner for Picnic shoulder and ham, whereas streaky and round bacon come from the side. Ham and bacon are popular foods in the west, their consumption has increased with industrialisation.
Non-western cuisines use preserved meat produc
Mexican cuisine
Mexican cuisine began about 9,000 years ago, when agricultural communities such as the Maya formed, domesticating maize, creating the standard process of corn nixtamalization, establishing their foodways. Successive waves of other Mesoamerican groups brought with them their own cooking methods; these included the Olmec, Toltec, Zapotec, Otomi, Purépecha, Totonac and Mazahua. The Mexica establishment of the Aztec Empire created a multi-ethnic society where many different foodways became infused; the staples are native foods, such as corn, squash, chia, tomatoes, cacao, agave, spirulina, sweet potato and chili pepper. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in the 16th century, Europeans introduced a number of other foods, the most important of which were meats from domesticated animals, dairy products, rice. While the Spanish tried to impose their own diet on the country, this was not possible. African and Asian influences were introduced into the indigenous cuisine during this era as a result of African slavery in New Spain and the Manila-Acapulco Galleons.
Over the centuries, this resulted in regional cuisines based on local conditions, such as those in Oaxaca and the Yucatán Peninsula. Mexican cuisine is an important aspect of the culture, social structure and popular traditions of Mexico; the most important example of this connection is the use of mole for special occasions and holidays in the South and Central regions of the country. For this reason and others, traditional Mexican cuisine was inscribed in 2010 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Mexican cuisine is as complex as other ancient cuisines, such as those of Indian Cuisine and Japan, with techniques and skills developed over thousands of years of history, it is created with ingredients native to Mexico, as well as those brought over by the Spanish conquistadors, with some new influences since then. In addition to staples, such as corn and chile peppers, native ingredients include tomatoes, avocados and vanilla, as well as ingredients not used in other cuisines, such as edible flowers, vegetables like huauzontle and papaloquelite, or small criollo avocados, whose skin is edible.
Vegetables play an important role in Mexican cuisine. Common vegetables include zucchini, corn, spinach, Swiss chard, jitomate, green tomato, etc. Other traditional vegetable ingredients include chiles, huitlacoche and nopal to name a few. European contributions include pork, beef, cheese and spices, as well as some fruits. Tropical fruits, many of which are indigenous to Mexico and the Americas, such as guava, prickly pear, mangoes, bananas and cherimoya are popular in the center and south of the country. Despite the introduction of wheat and rice to Mexico, the basic starch remains corn in all areas of the country and is the base of many recipes. While it is eaten fresh, most corn is dried and ground into a dough called masa; this dough is used both fresh and fermented to make a wide variety of dishes from drinks to tamales and much more. However, the most common way to eat corn in Mexico is in the form of a tortilla, which accompanies every dish. Tortillas are made of corn in most of the country, but other versions exist, such as wheat in the north or plantain and wild greens in Oaxaca.
The other basic ingredient in all parts of Mexico is the chile pepper. Mexican food has a reputation for being spicy, but it has a wide range of flavors and while many spices are used for cooking, not all are spicy. Many dishes have subtle flavors. Chiles are indigenous to Mexico and their use dates back thousands of years, they are used with Mexico using the widest variety. If a savory dish or snack does not contain chile pepper, hot sauce is added, chile pepper is added to fresh fruit and sweets; the importance of the chile goes back to the Mesoamerican period, where it was considered to be as much of a staple as corn and beans. In the 16th century, Bartolomé de las Casas wrote that without chiles, the indigenous people did not think they were eating. Today, most Mexicans believe that their national identity would be at a loss without chiles and the many varieties of sauces and salsas created using chiles as their base. Many dishes in Mexico are defined by their sauces which are very spicy; these dishes include entomatada, adobo or adobados and moles.
A hominy soup called pozole is defined as white, green or red depending on the chile sauce used or omitted. Tamales are differentiated by the filling, again defined by the sauce. Dishes without a sauce are eaten without a salsa or without fresh or pickled chiles; this includes street foods, such as tacos, soup, tlacoyos, tlayudas and sincronizadas. For most dishes, it is the type of chile used; some of the main contributions of the Spanish were several kind of meat, dairy products and wheat to name few, as the Mesoamerican diet contained little meat besides domesticated turkey, dairy products were absent. The Spanish introduced the technique of frying in pork fat. Today, the main meats found in Mexico are pork, chicken
Bean
A bean is a seed of one of several genera of the flowering plant family Fabaceae, which are used for human or animal food. The word "bean" and its Germanic cognates have existed in common use in West Germanic languages since before the 12th century, referring to broad beans and other pod-borne seeds; this was long. After Columbian-era contact between Europe and the Americas, use of the word was extended to pod-borne seeds of Phaseolus, such as the common bean and the runner bean, the related genus Vigna; the term has long been applied to many other seeds of similar form, such as Old World soybeans, chickpeas, other vetches, lupins, to those with slighter resemblances, such as coffee beans, vanilla beans, castor beans, cocoa beans. Thus the term "bean" in general usage can mean a host of different species. Seeds called "beans" are included among the crops called "pulses", although a narrower prescribed sense of "pulses" reserves the word for leguminous crops harvested for their dry grain; the term bean excludes legumes with tiny seeds and which are used for forage and silage purposes.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization the term "BEANS, DRY" should include only species of Phaseolus. One is that in the past, several species, including Vigna angularis, mungo and aconitifolia, were classified as Phaseolus and reclassified. Another is that it is not surprising that the prescription on limiting the use of the word, because it tries to replace the word's older senses with a newer one, has never been followed in general usage. Unlike the related pea, beans are a summer crop that need warm temperatures to grow. Maturity is 55–60 days from planting to harvest; as the bean pods mature, they turn yellow and dry up, the beans inside change from green to their mature colour. As a vine, bean plants need external support, which may be provided in the form of special "bean cages" or poles. Native Americans customarily grew them along with corn and squash, with the tall cornstalks acting as support for the beans. In more recent times, the so-called "bush bean" has been developed which does not require support and has all its pods develop simultaneously.
This makes the bush bean more practical for commercial production. Beans are one of the longest-cultivated plants. Broad beans called fava beans, in their wild state the size of a small fingernail, were gathered in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills. In a form improved from occurring types, they were grown in Thailand since the early seventh millennium BCE, predating ceramics, they were deposited with the dead in ancient Egypt. Not until the second millennium BCE did cultivated, large-seeded broad beans appear in the Aegean and transalpine Europe. In the Iliad is a passing mention of beans and chickpeas cast on the threshing floor. Beans were an important source of protein throughout Old and New World history, still are today; the oldest-known domesticated beans in the Americas were found in Guitarrero Cave, an archaeological site in Peru, dated to around the second millennium BCE. However, genetic analyses of the common bean Phaseolus shows that it originated in Mesoamerica, subsequently spread southward, along with maize and squash, traditional companion crops.
Most of the kinds eaten fresh or dried, those of the genus Phaseolus, come from the Americas, being first seen by a European when Christopher Columbus, during his exploration of what may have been the Bahamas, found them growing in fields. Five kinds of Phaseolus beans were domesticated by pre-Columbian peoples: common beans grown from Chile to the northern part of what is now the United States, lima and sieva beans, as well as the less distributed teparies, scarlet runner beans and polyanthus beans One famous use of beans by pre-Columbian people as far north as the Atlantic seaboard is the "Three Sisters" method of companion plant cultivation: In the New World, many tribes would grow beans together with maize, squash; the corn would not be planted in rows as is done by European agriculture, but in a checkerboard/hex fashion across a field, in separate patches of one to six stalks each. Beans would be planted around the base of the developing stalks, would vine their way up as the stalks grew.
All American beans at that time were vine plants, "bush beans" having been bred only more recently. The cornstalks would work as a trellis for the beans, the beans would provide much-needed nitrogen for the corn. Squash would be planted in the spaces between the patches of corn in the field, they would be provided slight shelter from the sun by the corn, would shade the soil and reduce evaporation, would deter many animals from attacking the corn and beans because their coarse, hairy vines and broad, stiff leaves are difficult or uncomfortable for animals such as deer and raccoons to walk through, crows to land on, etc. Dry beans come from both Old World varieties of New World varieties. Beans are a heliotropic plant. At night, they go into a folded "sleep" position; the world genebanks hold about 40,000 bean varieties, although on
American cuisine
American cuisine reflects the history of the United States, blending the culinary contributions of various groups of people from around the world, including indigenous American Indians, African Americans, Europeans, Pacific Islanders, South Americans. Early Native Americans utilized a number of cooking methods in early American cuisine that have been blended with early European cooking methods to form the basis of what is now American cuisine; the European settlement of the Americas introduced a number of ingredients, spices and cooking styles to the continent. The various styles of cuisine continued expanding well into the 19th and 20th centuries, proportional to the influx of immigrants from many different nations; when the colonists came to the colonies, they farmed animals for clothing and meat in a similar fashion to what they had done in Europe. They had cuisine similar to their previous Dutch, Swedish and British cuisines; the American colonial diet varied depending on the region settled.
Hunted game included deer, bear and wild turkey. A number of fats and oils made from animals served to cook much of the colonial foods. Prior to the Revolution, New Englanders consumed large quantities of rum and beer, as maritime trade provided them easy access to the goods needed to produce these items: rum was the distilled spirit of choice, as the main ingredient, was available from trade with the West Indies. In comparison to the northern colonies, the southern colonies were quite diverse in their agricultural diet. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Americans developed many new foods. During the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, circa 1890s–1920s, food production and presentation became more industrialized. One characteristic of American cooking is the fusion of multiple ethnic or regional approaches into new cooking styles. A wave of celebrity chefs began with Julia Child and Graham Kerr in the 1970s, with many more following after the rise of cable channels such as the Food Network and Cooking Channel in the late 20th century.
Seafood in the United States originated with the American Indians in the United States, who ate cod, lemon sole, herring, sturgeon, drum on the East Coast, olachen and salmon on the West Coast. Whale was hunted by American Indians off the Northwest coast by the Makah, used for their meat and oil. Seal and walrus were eaten, in addition to eel from New York's Finger Lakes region. Catfish was popular among native people, including the Modocs. Crustaceans included shrimp, lobster and dungeness crabs in the Northwest and blue crabs in the East. Other shellfish include abalone and geoduck on the West Coast, while on the East Coast the surf clam and the soft-shell clam. Oysters were eaten on both shores, as were periwinkles. Early American Indians used a number of cooking methods in early American Cuisine that have been blended with early European cooking methods to form the basis of American Cuisine. Grilling meats was common. Spit roasting over a pit fire was common as well. Vegetables root vegetables were cooked directly in the ashes of the fire.
As early Native Americans lacked pottery that could be used directly over a fire, they developed a technique which has caused many anthropologists to call them "Stone Boilers". They would heat rocks directly in a fire and add the rocks to a pot filled with water until it came to a boil so that it would cook the meat or vegetables in the boiling water. In what is now the Southwestern United States, they created adobe ovens, dubbed hornos by the Spanish, to bake products such as cornmeal bread. Other parts of America dug pit ovens; when the colonists came to Virginia, Massachusetts, or any of the other English colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America, their initial attempts at survival included planting crops familiar to them from back home in England. In the same way, they farmed animals for meat in a similar fashion. Through hardships and eventual establishment of trade with Britain, the West Indies and other regions, the colonists were able to establish themselves in the American colonies with a cuisine similar to their previous British cuisine.
There were some exceptions to the diet, such as local vegetation and animals, but the colonists attempted to use these items in the same fashion as they had their equivalents or ignore them if they could. The manner of cooking for the American colonists followed along the line of British cookery up until the Revolution; the British sentiment followed in the cookbooks brought to the New World as well. In 1796, the first American cookbook was published, others followed. There was a general disdain for French cookery with the French Huguenots in South Carolina and French-Canadians. One of the cookbooks that proliferated in the colonies was The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse, who referred to "the blind folly of this age that would rather be imposed on by a French booby, than give encouragement to a good English cook!" Of the French recipes given in the text, she speaks out flagrantly against the dishes as she "… think it an odd jumble of trash." Reinforcing the anti-French sentiment was the French and Indian War from 1754 to 1764.
This created a large anxiety against th
Spice
A spice is a seed, root, bark, or other plant substance used for flavoring, coloring or preserving food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for flavoring or as a garnish. Many spices have antimicrobial properties; this may explain why spices are more used in warmer climates, which have more infectious diseases, why the use of spices is prominent in meat, susceptible to spoiling. Spices are sometimes used in religious rituals, cosmetics or perfume production; the spice trade developed throughout the Indian subcontinent and Middle East by at earliest 2000 BCE with cinnamon and black pepper, in East Asia with herbs and pepper. The Egyptians used herbs for mummification and their demand for exotic spices and herbs helped stimulate world trade; the word spice comes from the Old French word espice, which became epice, which came from the Latin root spec, the noun referring to "appearance, kind": species has the same root. By 1000 BCE, medical systems based upon herbs could be found in China and India.
Early uses were connected with magic, religion and preservation. Cloves were used in Mesopotamia by 1700 BCE; the ancient Indian epic Ramayana mentions cloves. The Romans had cloves in the 1st century CE; the earliest written records of spices come from ancient Egyptian and Indian cultures. The Ebers Papyrus from Early Egyptians that dates from 1550 B. C. E. Describes some eight hundred different medicinal remedies and numerous medicinal procedures. Historians believe that nutmeg, which originates from the Banda Islands in Southeast Asia, was introduced to Europe in the 6th century BCE. Indonesian merchants traveled around China, the Middle East, the east coast of Africa. Arab merchants facilitated the routes through India; this resulted in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria being the main trading center for spices. The most important discovery prior to the European spice trade were the monsoon winds. Sailing from Eastern spice cultivators to Western European consumers replaced the land-locked spice routes once facilitated by the Middle East Arab caravans.
In the story of Genesis, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers to spice merchants. In the biblical poem Song of Solomon, the male speaker compares his beloved to many forms of spices. Spices were among the most demanded and expensive products available in Europe in the Middle Ages, the most common being black pepper, cumin, nutmeg and cloves. Given medieval medicine's main theory of humorism and herbs were indispensable to balance "humors" in food, a daily basis for good health at a time of recurrent pandemics. In addition to being desired by those using medieval medicine, the European elite craved spices in the Middle Ages. An example of the European aristocracy's demand for spice comes from the King of Aragon, who invested substantial resources into bringing back spices to Spain in the 12th century, he was looking for spices to put in wine, was not alone among European monarchs at the time to have such a desire for spice. Spices were all imported from plantations in Africa, which made them expensive.
From the 8th until the 15th century, the Republic of Venice had the monopoly on spice trade with the Middle East, along with it the neighboring Italian maritime republics and city-states. The trade made the region rich, it has been estimated that around 1,000 tons of pepper and 1,000 tons of the other common spices were imported into Western Europe each year during the Late Middle Ages. The value of these goods was the equivalent of a yearly supply of grain for 1.5 million people. The most exclusive was saffron, used as much for its vivid yellow-red color as for its flavor. Spices that have now fallen into obscurity in European cuisine include grains of paradise, a relative of cardamom which replaced pepper in late medieval north French cooking, long pepper, spikenard and cubeb. Spain and Portugal were interested in seeking new routes to trade in spices and other valuable products from Asia; the control of trade routes and the spice-producing regions were the main reasons that Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama sailed to India in 1499.
When Gama discovered the pepper market in India, he was able to secure peppers for a much cheaper price than the ones demanded by Venice. At around the same time, Christopher Columbus returned from the New World, he described to investors new spices available there. Another source of competition in the spice trade during the 15th and 16th century was the Ragusans from the maritime republic of Dubrovnik in southern Croatia; the military prowess of Afonso de Albuquerque allowed the Portuguese to take control of the sea routes to India. In 1506, he took the island of Socotra in the mouth of the Red Sea and, in 1507, Ormuz in the Persian Gulf. Since becoming the viceroy of the Indies, he took Goa in India in 1510, Malacca on the Malay peninsula in 1511; the Portuguese could now trade directly with Siam and the Maluku Islands. With the discovery of the New World came new spices, including allspice, chili peppers and chocolate; this development kept the spice trade, with America as a late comer with its new seasonings, profitable well into the 19th century.
One issue with spices today is dilution, where spices are blended to make inferior quality powdered spices, by including roots and other admixture in production of spice powder. A spice may be available in several forms: pre-ground dried. Spices are dried. Spices may be ground into a powder for c
Cumin
Cumin is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae, native to a territory including the Middle East and stretching east to India. Its seeds – each one contained within a fruit, dried – are used in the cuisines of many cultures in both whole and ground form. Although cumin is thought to have uses in traditional medicine, there is no high-quality evidence that it is safe or effective as a therapeutic agent; the English "cumin" is derived from the Old English via Latin cuminum from the Greek κύμινον, related to Hebrew כמון and Arabic كمون. Cumin is the dried seed of a member of the parsley family; the cumin plant is harvested by hand. It is an annual herbaceous plant, with a slender, branched stem, 20–30 cm tall and has a diameter of 3–5 cm; each branch has two to three subbranches. All the branches attain the same height, so the plant has a uniform canopy; the stem is coloured grey or dark green. The leaves are 5 -- 10 cm pinnate or bipinnate, with thread-like leaflets; the flowers are small, white or pink, borne in umbels.
Each umbel has five to seven umbellets. The fruit is a lateral fusiform or ovoid achene 4–5 mm long, containing two mericarps with a single seed. Cumin seeds have eight ridges with oil canals, they resemble caraway seeds, being oblong in shape, longitudinally ridged, yellow-brown in colour, like other members of the Apiaceae family such as caraway and dill. Originating in a region of the Eastern Mediterranean called the Levant, cumin has been in use as a spice for thousands of years. Seeds excavated at the Syrian site Tell ed-Der were dated to the second millennium BC, they have been reported from several New Kingdom levels of ancient Egyptian archaeological sites. In the ancient Egyptian civilization, cumin was used as a spice and as a preservative in mummification; the ancient Greeks kept cumin at the dining table in its own container, this practice continues in Morocco. Cumin was used in ancient Roman cuisine. In India, it has been used for millennia as a traditional ingredient in innumerable recipes, forms the basis of many other spice blends.
Cumin was introduced to the Americas by Portuguese colonists. Several different types of cumin are known, but the most famous ones are black and green cumin, both of which are used in Persian cuisine. Today, the plant is grown in the Indian subcontinent, Northern Africa, Mexico and China. Since cumin is used as part of birdseed and exported to many countries, the plant can occur as an introduced species in many territories; the main producers of cumin are China and India, which produces 70% of the world supply and consumes 90% of that. Mexico is another major producer. In total, around 300,000 tons of cumin per year are produced worldwide. Cumin is tropical, or subtropical crop, it has a growth season of 100 to 120 days. The optimum growth temperature ranges are between 25 and 30 °C; the Mediterranean climate is most suitable for its growth. Cultivation of cumin requires a hot summer of three to four months. At low temperatures, leaf colour changes from green to purple. High temperature might induce early ripening.
In India, cumin is sown from October until the beginning of December, harvesting starts in February. In Syria and Iran, cumin is harvested in June/July; the three noteworthy sorts of cumin seed in the market vary in seed shading, amount of oil, flavor. Iranian Indian Middle Eastern Cumin is grown from seeds; the seeds need 2 to 5 °C for emergence, an optimum of 20–30 °C is suggested. Cumin is vulnerable to frost damage at flowering and early seed formation stages. Methods to reduce frost damage are spraying with sulfuric acid, irrigating the crop prior to frost incidence, setting up windbreaks, or creating an early-morning smoke cover; the seedlings of cumin are rather small and their vigor is low. Soaking the seeds for 8 hours before sowing enhances germination. For an optimal plant population, a sowing density of 12–15 kilograms per hectare is recommended. Fertile, loamy soils with good aeration, proper drainage, high oxygen availability are preferred; the pH optimum of the soil ranges from 6.8 to 8.3.
Cumin seedlings are sensitive to salinity and emergence from heavy soils is rather difficult. Therefore, a proper seedbed preparation is crucial for optimal establishment of cumin. Two sowing methods are used for cumin and line sowing. For broadcast sowing, the field is divided into beds and the seeds are uniformly broadcast in this bed. Afterwards, they are covered with soil using a rake. For line sowing, shallow furrows are prepared with hooks at a distance of 20 to 25 cm; the seeds are placed in these furrows and covered with soil. Line sowing offers advantages for intercultural operations such as hoeing, or spraying; the recommended sowing depth is 1–2 cm and the recommended sowing density is around 120 plants per m2. The water requirements of cumin are lower than those of many other species. Despite this, cumin is irrigated after sowing to be sure that enough moisture is available for seedling development; the amount and frequency of irrigation depends on the climate conditions. The relative humidity in the center of origin of cumin is rather low.
High relative humidity favours fungal diseases. Cumin is especially
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