#C3 Indochine Eight Spice

ELEMENT SPICE COMPOUND #C3
Indochine Eight Spice
Inspiration: SE Asia

Chinese/Vietnamese Spice is a canonical spice mix. The "five" in five spice supposedly does not refer to five spices but to five tastes, sweet, sour, savory and salty, or five elements, earth, fire, water, air, and metal (see, for example,
Chez Pim. Most five spices mixes do indeed contain five spices however: star anise, cassia cinnamon, fennel, cloves and szechuan peppercorn. Szechuan peppercorn is not a peppercorn at all but a flower bud with a mild numbing/analgesic property. Our modern update, Indochine Eight Spice, also includes ginger, black peppercorn and citrus rind.

The simplest way to use Indochine Eight Spice is to put in a broth. Add 1 tablespoon (5 ml) per liter of broth, then salt/pepper to taste. Indochine Eight Spice also works as a great base for pho (we like this vegetarian pho recipe). You can try it as a beef rub as well.

INGREDIENTS: Cassia cinnamon, cloves, star anise, fennel, szechuan peppercorn, black peppercorn, citrus rind, ginger.

Chinatown, Oakland, California

This past weekend I spent some time in Oakland Chinatown. The Berkeley culinary school Kitchen on Fire was doing a food tour there, so I tagged along with them for a few minutes. I was able to procure some Szechuan peppercorns at the Silver View market on 10th Street for $7.50 a pound. If you want to know why Szechuan peppercorns (they're not related to real peppercorns, piper nigrum, at all), read this.

A great place for cheap Dungeness crab, in season, is Lucky Seafood Market #2 on 8th Street. I'm certainly wary of buying processed seafood in Chinatown, since it might have come from some toxic fish farm in China, but live dungies and ling cod should be fine.

The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is have a Taste of Asia culinary event Fri/Sat April 25.