SPICES
In the culinary arts, the word spice refers to any dried part of a plant, other than the leaves, used for seasoning and flavouring a recipe, but not used as the main ingredient. Every other part of the plant, including dried bark, roots, berries, seeds, twigs, or anything else that isn’t the green leafy part, is considered a spice. Today, India is the world’s largest consumer, producer, and exporter of spices. Spices are the building blocks of flavour in food applications. Food developers who wish to use these building blocks effectively to create successful products must understand spices completely. The word “spice” came from the Latin word “species,” meaning specific kind. For people throughout the world, spices stimulate the appetite, add flavour and texture to food, and create visual appeal in meals. Spices have been savoured and sought around the world from the earliest times because of their diverse functions.
SEASONING
A zest or in common language, a seasoning, is an ingredient (such as a condiment, spice, or herb) added to food primarily for the savour that it imparts. it is generally felt that any substance that can be added to a recipe to provide the desired flavour, such as sweet, spicy, intensely hot, sour, tangy, or earthy, is added as a seasoning. It is basically used to bring out or intensify the natural flavour of the food without changing it. Seasonings are usually added near the end of the cooking period. When seasonings are used properly, they cannot be tasted; their job is to heighten the flavours of the original ingredients. In general terminology, fresh seasonings are added late in the cooking process while dry ones tend to be added earlier. It is good practice to under-season them, during the cooking process and then add more seasonings as per the requirements.
EDIBLE MUSHROOM
Edible mushrooms are macro fungi since they are visible with a naked eye. A toadstool or in simple term, an edible mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil, or on its food source. Mushrooms have fleshy fruit body with certain aroma and flavours as well as good nutritional properties and are used mostly as food. A few species of mushrooms have been cultivated but wild mushrooms are harvested as well. … These gills produce microscopic spores that help the fungus spread across the ground or its occupant surface. It is the most cultivated mushroom worldwide. This group of edible mushrooms is nowadays widely used and studied for its medicinal and therapeutic properties.
