Product Description

The classic reference - expanded and in full color.

Professional chefs and home cooks use spices and herbs to enhance food flavors and to create new taste combinations and sensations. From vanilla beans to cinnamon, from cumin to tarragon, no kitchen is complete without spices and herbs.

The second edition of this classic reference is significantly expanded, with four new spices and herbs as well as 25 additional blends. The book is now printed in full color and features color photography throughout. Every herb and spice has a handsome and detailed color photograph to make identification and purchasing a breeze. The book includes fascinating and authoritative histories of a wide range of global herbs and spices such as angelica, basil, candle nut, chervil, elder, fennel, grains of paradise, licorice root, saffron, tamarind, Vietnamese mint and zedoary.

The Spice and Herb Bible, Second Edition, includes 100 spices and herbs and 50 spice-blend recipes. It is an essential resource for any well-equipped kitchen.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90383 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 607 pages

Shirley Reiss, Kliatt, July 1, 2002
This is a wonderful resource for both the novice and the experienced cook.

Review
[Review of First Edition:] Offers insight into the exotic scents and flavors of culinary herbs and spices. (Publishers Weekly 20020401)

[Review of First Edition:] Comprehensive information about all these natural ingredients that add flavor to food. (Healthy Cooking 200212)

Helps adventurous chefs sort out their seasonings. (Rachel Wharton New York Daily News 20061217)

[Review of First Edition:] Simply put, [Hemphill] knows his herbs and spices. (HortIdeas 20020201)

[Review of First Edition:] This is a wonderful resource for both the novice and the experienced cook. (Shirley Reiss Kliatt 20020701)

A great resource... along with full-color photographs, you'll find historical information as well as tips on buying, storage and usage. (Lincoln Journal Star 20040609)

[Review of First Edition:] Long overdue, essential kitchen tool... This is an indispensable addition to any kitchen library. (Byron Ayanoglu Books in Canada 20070117)

[Review of First Edition:] A terrific book. (Marty Meitus Rocky Mountain News 20070507)

Está escrito en un lenguaje comprehensible para la majoría de los lectores, además de ser muy infomativo. (Cristina Juri Arencibia El Nuevo Herald, Miami, FL 200702)

Co-winner in the [2006 International Association of Culinary Professionals] Food Reference/Technical Category ... Essential. (William R. Wood Kalamazoo Gazette )

A great source of spice information and recipes. (Karen Miltner Rochester Democrat and Chronicle )

Even non-cooks will enjoy a great read. (Susan Miller Hersam Acorn (Fairfield County, CT) )

A remarkable achievement... Highly recommended. (Dave DeWitt Fiery Foods and BBQ )

An excellent addition to culinary collections in academic and public libraries. Serious cooks will want it for personal collections. (Barbara M. Bibel American Reference Books Annual )

Publishers Weekly, April 1, 2002
Offers insight into the exotic scents and flavors of culinary herbs and spices.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic book to 'spice' up your life
I love this book! It is a great reference for herbs and spices and would be a valuable addition to any foodie, culinary enthusiast, herbalist, or kitchen alchemist's collection. The recipes provided for each spice are lovely and the book's organization is easy to use and logically presented. You can't go wrong with this amazing book.

Wonderful Book, I love it.
GReat, book very helpful, just what I had been searching for. I even sent one as a gift.

A Must Kitchen Reference
What a marvelous book Ian Hemphill has created. If you have any interest in spices - which is to say, if you have any interest in cooking, this is a must. There are some recipes by his wife, Kate Hemphill, but this is primarily a practical reference from a second-generation spice merchant and obvious expert. The volume starts with interesting history that applies a pragmatic eye. For example, he dismisses the notion that people used spices in the dark ages to mask tainted foods because anyone who could have afforded the then-astronomical prices of the spices would likely have had money for something fresh. Instead, he attributes the growth of spices to improve bland food and, interestingly, to help moderate the strong gamy taste of many meats and poultry at the time, which might explain the concept of covering over a taste or aroma.

Of course there are sections on growing and using spices, and I found interesting the section on the spices and herbs that specific cuisines use. An approach I hadn't seen before is using relational weights - for example, in Indonesian cooking if you used cloves, turmeric, and coriander seed, they would likely be in a ration of 1 to 5 to 8. My first impression was that there were supposed to be proportions of spice blends, but that didn't make sense when you had, say, 15 different ingredients and you know that the cuisine in question doesn't use all of them every time. And there are recipes for specific spice blends at the end of the book. No, this chapter was to give you a feel for how the given cuisine uses and combines spices - very good to know.

What really grabbed me, though, were the entries for individual spices and herbs. Each includes the following: origin and history, processing, buying and storage, use, other names for the item, names in other languages, suggested quantities for a given type of dish, and what other spices and herbs that work well with it.

You do need to keep in mind that the book is from Australia, because some terminology might throw you. For example, there was a recipe for a savory biscuit. I was thinking the flaky type you bake, and then I suddenly remembered that in Australia and the UK, biscuit can mean a cookie or cracker. You will also find a few spices that aren't readily found in this part of the world. That said, at $24.95, this is a bargain.