My kitchen glows with warm bak­ing smells, pun­gent spices and exotic fra­grances from many lands.  What is it about the hol­i­days that causes bak­ers like me to indulge in spices and fla­vor com­bi­na­tions that we use at no other time of year? In our home car­da­mon, freshly ground nut­meg, crys­tal­lized gin­ger and other spe­cialty items grace our kitchen, but espe­cially at the hol­i­day sea­son…

Today’s bak­ing treats go beyond my nor­mal hol­i­day spice palette. These “triple gin­ger cook­ies” are densely nuanced with lay­ers of fla­vors and spicy aro­mas, sourced from plants that grow in places once roman­ti­cally named the East or West Indies — fan­tas­ti­cal des­ti­na­tions that required multi-year sail­ing voy­ages from which not all sailors returned.

Ingre­di­ents for today’s cook­ies (full recipe) were once unusual, exotic lux­ury items reserved only for the wealthy or pow­er­ful. Today they’re eas­ily come by if you live near nat­ural food stores or high-end gourmet mar­kets for food­ies. The com­bi­na­tion is amaz­ingly fra­grant:

• Star anise, ground by hand with a mor­tar and pes­tle
  
• The zest of two lemons
• Three types of gin­ger: freshly grated, pow­dered, and crys­tal­lized — the pow­er­ful base notes to these cook­ies
• Molasses as well as “nat­ural cane” or turbinado sugar

Through­out the bak­ing process the mélange of these ingre­di­ents fills our kitchen with aro­mas you can almost see and taste. They trig­ger sense mem­o­ries, reminders of Christ­mases past.

As I put the cookie sheets in the oven, I find myself rem­i­nisc­ing about child­hood Christ­mas rit­u­als and fam­ily vis­its. On the Sun­day before Christ­mas, no mat­ter the weather, my par­ents would drive an hour or so each way, on snowy New Eng­land back roads, to visit and exchange gifts with my pater­nal grand­par­ents and aunts, uncles and cousins. We chil­dren would be packed like sar­dines in the sta­tion wagon (pre-SUV days). Instead of our usual sotto voce bick­er­ing, we’d sing Christ­mas car­ols en route; snooz­ing on the way back, bel­lies full, dream­ing of Grandma Wilson’s steamed plum pud­ding with hard sauce.

Today’s spice com­bi­na­tion for the triple gin­ger cook­ies is much more pun­gent and sophis­ti­cated than any­thing my grand­mother would have served to New Eng­land chil­dren. I can’t imag­ine she’d com­bine star anise with almost a cup and a half of gin­ger in var­i­ous forms…

Exotic Spices, Ocean Voyages

The aro­mas from these cook­ies are so cap­ti­vat­ing it’s easy to imag­ine why the quest for exotic spices per­suaded mer­chant mariners to invest in long, high-risk ocean voy­ages into uncharted waters, hop­ing to con­nect with traders who could offer spices like these. The quest for spices (and streets paved with gold) per­suaded mon­archs to invest in adven­tur­ers like Christo­pher Colum­bus who was look­ing for a shorter route to the Spice Islands.

Maps and celes­tial nav­i­ga­tion emerged in response to man’s need to return, pre­dictably, to the sources of exotic trad­ing goods, like silks or the spices that pre­served meats or masked ran­cid fla­vors before peo­ple had access to refrig­er­a­tion. For­tunes were made for a mil­len­nium through com­merce in spices. Gen­er­a­tions of men adven­tured to for­eign lands to bring spices like these back to their home­lands. Lives were lost…

No won­der these pow­er­ful hol­i­day spices cap­ti­vate us, spark our imag­i­na­tions or trig­ger mem­o­ries and sto­ries of fam­ily feasts and hol­i­day reunions.

What I learn from shar­ing hol­i­day meals with friends is that we all have favorite hol­i­day spices and fla­vors, pref­er­ences that reflect our dif­fer­ing regional, eth­nic or reli­gious back­grounds.

So many rea­sons to be thank­ful for spices and won­der­ful tastes and tex­tures at the hol­i­days!