SC - Spice names - oh, and hi.

[Jessica Tiffin]

Greetings, gentle cooks.

I hail you as Melesine de Huguenin, a rather inexperienced Mistress of 
Arts to the Shire Incipient of Adamastor, in the Cape region of South 
Africa.  We're starting pretty much from cold in Adamastor (part of 
Drachenwald, albeit in the furthest stretches of a continent hitherto 
associated only with Monstres and shipwreck), as only two of our 
members have any previous SCA experience at all.  Pray forgive me if 
any of my queries to this list sound obvious or have been answered 
millions of times before. We're pretty new to this.  I'll try to be 
intelligent.

I'm co-ordinating food for monthly Events, and have a reasonable 
selection of recipes from various sources (including Cariadoc's 
wonderful Web site collection).  The major headache just at the 
moment is spices.  South Africa badly lacks the specialist spice 
shops apparently rife in the USA and Europe; any spice shops down 
here are Indian in flavour.  I'm having huge problems laying my hands 
on cubebs, grains of paradise and the like.  Would anyone happen to 
know alternative, preferably Indian, but at a pinch Latin names for 
these spices?  I found galingale lurking in an Indian shop disguised 
as something called galangal, and am hoping others may exist.

Thank you,

Melesine


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We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked.
                            - James Thurber

Jessica Tiffin                     jessica at beattie.uct.ac.za
Department of English, University of Cape Town, South Africa
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