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Pep up your taste buds and excite your imagination at Kew’s Full of Spice festival this summer. Throughout the Gardens and glasshouses you’ll discover exciting flavours, exotic aromas, intriguing plants and amazing stories from around the world. Christina Harrison offers a taste

KEW FESTIVALTHE SPICE OF LIFE Hot, smoky, sweet, aromatic, and full of exotic

flavour – there are many ways to describe the smell and taste of spices. The very word ‘spice’ conjures up vivid images of far-off

countries and warm, tropical climes, and indeed this is where most of our spice plants originate from. For centuries we’ve sought them out to add delicious extra dimensions to our food, and this desire shows no sign of waning. Many of us are familiar with a certain array of spices in the kitchen, but do you know where in the world the pungent powders in your cupboards come from, which plants they’re made from, or how they’re produced?

Today, the cost of most spices seems trivial – we pick them up in shops or food markets for just a pound or two and use them without much thought for their value or production. But in the past they were so highly prized that people risked their lives on the high seas, discovering islands and even continents in pursuit of them. Empires rose and fell around them, and there are plenty of tales of shipwreck, piracy, luck and loot. Their influence has not only spread to our food and drink, but to art, music and even cultural traditions. In fact, in many ways they’ve shaped our modern world.

This might seem like a bold claim, but Kew’s summer festival, Full of Spice, aims to open your eyes to the colourful world of spices – not just their distinctive flavours, but their diversity, weird chemistry, beneficial properties and dramatic, life-changing histories.

Nutmeg and mace both come from the same plant, Myristica fragrans – mace is the red lacy covering that surrounds the nutmeg seed kernel

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There are many plants, and different parts of those plants, that are used as spices. Traditionally a spice is defined as the seed, fruit, root, bark or other plant part used to flavour, colour or preserve food. Such a vague definition has led to herbs sometimes being classed as spices. Other plant parts used as spices include flower buds (cloves), bulbs (garlic) and flower stigmas (saffron).

Spices are sold and used in a variety of forms, including fresh, dried (whole or as seeds) and ground. Many spices are ground into powder before use, as this increases their surface area, allowing more of their essential oils to flavour the food.

The majority of spices come from tropical plants, but there are a few temperate exceptions, including

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caraway, black mustard, saffron and cumin, which originated around the Mediterranean Basin. There are also some more unusual spices that can easily be grown in the UK, including the fragrant black seeds of Nigella sativa, related to the familiar blue-flowered love-in-a-mist (N. damascena), and what’s known as wild fennel pollen – the dried yellow flowers of the herb fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), which are picked when the yellow pollen is showing. The flowers and pollen have a sweeter aniseed flavour than the leaves and seeds, and are used to intensify the taste of a wide range of foods.

This summer you can discover many of these spice plants at Kew, in outdoor displays as well as in the humid domes of the glasshouses. You’ll find ginger, black pepper and tamarind in the Palm House and a vibrant array of fiery chillies in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. So, if you have no idea what a nutmeg or vanilla plant looks like, now’s the time to start your journey of discovery at Kew. There are also plenty of opportunities to be enlightened about the fascinating origins of spices, and just why the desire for a few plants that pepped up our food changed the course of history and opened up the world to traders.

Because we’re so familiar with these products today, it can seem strange that countries, companies and individuals put such huge efforts and investment into finding and bringing back shiploads of these plant parts. Believe it or not, the spice trade really began with pepper (still the world’s most traded spice today – see p32). Now a staple condiment, black pepper was being traded as far back as 2000BC, along ancient routes between India and the Mediterranean. It and other spices changed hands many times on the way to the markets of Europe, by which time they had become expensive luxury products. Used to show off wealth and believed to have medicinal properties (nutmeg, for example, was said to ward off plague), many spices became highly desirable.

As trade and prices grew, Europeans began to want to cut out the middlemen and side step the complicated politics, so started to send out expeditions of their own to Asia. The Portuguese led the way in this quest in the 16th century, and established bases in India, Malaysia Ill

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Cinnamon and pecan breadMakes two loaves

You will need:

500g strong white bread flour7g sachet of quick-action yeast ½ teaspoon salt2 medium eggs50g buttermilk or beaten egg to glaze75g pecans (or walnuts)75g icing sugar for glazinglemon juice

For cinnamon butter:

175g butter, softened175g light or dark muscovado sugar3 tablespoons ground cinnamon

Method:

1 Put the flour, yeast and salt in a bowl and stir well. Pour in 225ml of warm water, then add the eggs and butter and mix well until the dough is smooth (up to ten minutes).

2 Cover and leave in a warm place for one hour, until the dough has doubled in size.

3 While the dough is proving, mix together the ingredients for the cinnamon butter.

4 Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead gently. Divide into two. Take one half, knead it again quickly, then create an oblong roughly 30cm x 38cm. Spread with half of the cinnamon butter and roll up from a long side of the dough to encase the butter into the dough. Stretch the dough

along its length then twist it into a coil. Either repeat this step with the second batch of dough or put it in the freezer for baking at a later date.

6 Press the dough into a deep buttered 20cm sandwich tin, cover and leave to rise until it has doubled in size.

7 Pre-heat the oven to 190°C, 375°F or Gas Mark 5. Brush the dough with milk or egg and sprinkle with pecans. Bake for 30 minutes until risen and golden and firm to touch. Cool on a wire rack.

8 Mix the icing sugar with sufficient water or lemon juice (about 2½ teaspoons) to make a thick, pourable icing. Drizzle it over the bread and leave to set.

and the Indonesian Maluku islands, to control sources of cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper and cloves. The Dutch and British followed, both founding East India Companies in the early 1600s. Their rivalries over who had the monopolies on different spices, and who controlled spice-producing areas, are now an integral part of history. It was not long before the profitable maritime trade routes set up for spices were being used for trading many other goods too.

These valuable plants were among many that Kew’s first unofficial director, Sir Joseph Banks, had on his wish list for the Gardens in the late 1700s. He sent out both plant hunters and letters across the world to gather important and useful plants, and tried with varying degrees of success to grow them in the new hothouses at Kew.

The early value placed on spices as medicines was not entirely without merit. Some spices, such as cinnamon and cloves, do have antimicrobial properties. Others, such as cumin and ginger, are known to have antioxidant properties and help us to absorb other nutrients from our food. Today, many people still use spices to try to improve their health, including taking ginger to stave off sore throats, or using clove oil for toothache. Kew continues to be a leader in the authentication of plants and plant products, including spices such as star anise as well as Chinese medicines. Kew is also involved

– Christina Harrison is editor of Kew magazine

» To see the latest details of all the Full of Spice displays, events, talks, botanical bar, and more, go to www.kew.org, where you’ll also find podcasts about spice plants. A wide selection of hot new spice products is available in Kew’s Victoria Plaza shop. You can read more about spices on p26 and p32

» To find out about Kew’s work with useful plants, go to www.kew.org/science-conservation. You can support this vital work in many ways – see www.kew.org/support

in the conservation of food plants through many diverse initiatives, including MGU – the Useful Plants Project. This important project helps communities in Africa and Mexico to protect native useful plants, such as baobab and tamarind, by growing them in community gardens. On these plots the plants can be harvested with ease and in safety, reducing the need to take them from the wild.

There’s a unique way to discover more fascinating facts about spices this summer, and that’s by taking a rickshaw spice ride. Simply pre-book a ride online, in one of the three beautifully decorated rickshaws, then relax as your driver regales you with exotic tales of far-off lands and spicy encounters. What better way to get a flavour of the festival and the importance of these plants?

Once your feet are back on the ground, you might like to join the lively dancers of Strictly Spice on the Orangery Lawn. Take a few spins and turns with them and you’ll learn some secrets about the science of spices. Between dance classes everyone is invited to the Judges’ Table, where Kew scientists are on hand with experiments to help you choose which spice is the hottest, what makes a plant spicy, and why some plants have evolved to be spicy. You’ll be able to put lots of plants through their paces and vote for your favourite.

After you’ve enjoyed a tamarind tango or fenugreek foxtrot, you can immerse yourself in the giant spice

inflatables near the Princess of Wales Conservatory. Look out for the mega-sized chilli, garlic, nutmeg and ginger inflatables and plunge yourself headlong into each one to see which parts of the plant give it its flavour. It will, at the very least, offer interesting photo opportunities!

Next, head for the centrepiece of the festival – The Spice Exchange pavilion on the Secluded Garden lawn. In this inspiring space made of spice jars, there will always be lots to see and do. Explore the spice plants exhibition, watch storytelling theatre, browse the delicious books in the pop-up library, and share your spice stories, memories, recipes and remedies on postcards for others to read as part of an ever-growing spice storywall.

You can also experiment with the high-tech approach to sampling spices at the Spice Mix Super Computer 2.0, where through the wonders of technology you can smell and sample a range of spices, then create your own unique mix to take home. With appetite suitably whetted, you can then cook up some spice-laden bread in the nearby Dough Kitchen. Join one of the regular cookery sessions and you can explore which spices go well together and make some deliciously aromatic bread.

In fact there’s a real banquet of exciting events, engaging talks, tours and workshops, as well as a Kew Lates programme of six evening openings for you to enjoy, so don’t hold back – spice up your life this summer and make the most of this fiery fiesta.

Far left: look for ginger (Zingiber officinale) in Kew’s Palm House – the spice is produced from the rhizome (underground stem) of this tropical herbaceous plant

Left: the flower of the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus) has three vivid red stigmas, which are harvested by hand and dried to make saffron, the world’s most expensive spice by weight

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Recipe from Kew’s Global Kitchen Cookbook, £10, available in all Kew’s shops and at www.kew.org/shop.