Anise
Anise: also anís (stressed on the second syllable) and aniseed. It is known for its flavor, which resembles liquorice, fennel and tarragon. Western cuisines have long used Anise as a moderately-popular herb to flavor some dishes, drinks, and candies, and so the word has come to connote both the species of herb and the licorice-like flavor. The most powerful flavor component of the essential oil of anise, anethole, is found in both Anise and an unrelated spice called Star Anise. Featured prominently in South Asian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian dishes, Star Anise is considerably less expensive to produce, and has gradually displaced the ‘original’ Anise in Western markets. While formerly produced in larger quantities, by 1999 world production of the essential oil of Anise was only 8 tonnes, compared to 400 tonnes from star anise. Anise is sweet and very aromatic, distinguished by its licorice-like flavor. It is used in a wide variety of regional and ethnic confectioneries, including Greek stuffed vine leaves (Dolma), British Aniseed balls, Australian Humbugs, New Zealand Aniseed wheels, Italian pizzelle, German pfeffernusse and springerle, Netherland Muisjes, Norwegian knotts, and Peruvian Picarones. It is a key ingredient in Mexican “atole de anís” or champurrado, which is similar to hot chocolate, and taken as a digestive after meals in India. Anise is used to flavor the Arab Arak, the Colombian Aguardiente, the French spirits Absinthe, Anisette, and Pastis, the Greek Ouzo and Eastern European Mastika, the German Jägermeister, the Italian Sambuca, the Peruvian Anís (liqueur), and the Turkish Raki. It’s believed to be one of the secret ingredients in the French liqueur Chartreuse. It is also used in some root beer such as Virgil’s in the United States. Anise, like fennel, contains anethole, a phytoestrogen.# Anise is a mild antiparasitic and its leaves can be used to treat digestive problems, relieve toothache, and its essential oil to treat lice and scabies. Anise can be used to relieve menstrual cramps. In aromatherapy, aniseed essential oil is used to treat colds and flu. According to Pliny the Elder, anise was used as a cure for sleeplessness, chewed with alexanders and a little honey in the morning to freshen the breath, and when mixed with wine as a remedy for scorpion stings.
Above from Wikipedia
Anise bears a strong family resemblance to the members of the carrot family, that includes dill, fennel, coriander, cumin and caraway. Many of these relatives have been described as having a licorice flavour, to some extent, but anise is the true taste of licorice— its oils are distilled into the flavouring for licorice candy (not from the herb licorice, which has a different taste). Anise is native to the eastern Mediterranean region, the Levant, and Egypt. The early Arabic name was anysum from which was derived the Greek anison and the Latin anisun. It is one of the oldest known spice plants used both for culinary and medicinal purposes since ancient times. There is evidence that anise was used in Egypt as early as 1500 B.C. To aid digestion the Romans enjoyed anise-spiced cakes after heavy meals and it was spread throughout Europe by Roman legions. In the Bible there is mention of paying tithe with anise in the book of Matthew. In 1305, anise was listed by King Edward I as a taxable drug and merchants bringing it into London paid a toll to help raise moneys to maintain and repair London bridge. Of the any of the qualities attributed to anise we like what one writer warned: “it stirreth up bodily lust”. This accredited to the same spice that could ward off the Evil Eye or keep away nightmares if placed under one’s pillow. Anise is used in the manufacture of many commercial cough syrups and sore throat medications, used to flavour other medicines and to scent soaps and perfumes. It is also claimed that anise is an effective bait for rats and mice and the distilled oil dabbed onto a fishing lure will improve a fisherman’s chances. Dogs are also attracted by anise — it is often an ingredient in dog food and the seeds may be used to lay drag hunt trails and also by anti-blood sport movements to put hounds off the scent.
Spice Description
Though the roots and leaves are also edible, it is the seeds that we will concern ourselves her. The seeds are grey-green to brownish, ribbed and ovate, measuring 2 -4 mm (.08 -.16 in) long. Some seeds retain the fine stalk that passes through the centre of the fruit.
Bouquet: sweet and fragrant
Flavour: similar to fennel with a mild licorice taste
Hotness Scale: 1
Preparation and Storage
The seeds quickly lose flavour, so buy seeds whole and grind as required, and keep out of light in an airtight container. If to be used as a breath sweetener, roast lightly before chewing the seeds.
Culinary Uses
Not to be confused with star anise, which is generally used in Chinese dishes, anise is primarily associated with cakes, biscuits and confectionery, as well as rye breads. It is used in much the same way as fennel to flavour fish, poultry, soups and root vegetable dishes. Numerous alcoholic drinks and cordials are flavoured with aniseed, particularly French pastis, Pernod and Ricard, Greek ouzo, Spanish ojen, Turkish raki, Italian anesone, Arab arrak and Egyptian kibib.
Attributed Medicinal Properties
Called “Tut-te See-Hau” by American Indians, meaning “it expels the wind”, anise’s carminative properties have been known since antiquity. It helps with digestion and sweetens the breath, so it is chewed after meals in parts of Europe, the Middle East and India. It is a mild expectorant, anise often being used in cough mixtures and lozenges. It is also antiseptic, antispasmodic, soporific and a few seeds taken with water will often cure hiccups.
Plant Description and Cultivation
An erect, tender annual on thin roots, growing up to 60 cm (2 ft) tall. The lower leaves are broad, toothed and triangular with upper leaves that are smaller, divided and narrow. The flowers are small and whitish, numerous in open thin, compound umbrels, followed by the fruit, the anise seed. It is propagated by seed in early spring in a sunny, sheltered area in light , dry loam. It should does not like pot growing or to be transplanted. It will not produce ripe seeds in northern climates without a long, hot summer. Anise is harvested as the seeds change colour to grey-green. Flower stems are cut and hung upside down in a dry place and seeds are collected as they fall onto paper below.
Other Names
Aniseed, Sweet Cumin
French: anis
German: Anis
Italian: anice
Spanish: anis
Greek: anis
Indian: saunf, sompf, souf
In addition:
Anise Liqueurs – Sambuca, Ouzo, Absinthe, Arak, Raki & Pastis
A member of the parsley family, anise dates from at least 1500 B.C. and is indigenous to Greece, Asia and the Middle East. Today, however, the aromatic seed of the herb Pimpinella anisum is found throughout the nations that rim the Mediterranean Sea, in the fields, in local foods and, perhaps most ot all, in the drinks that form so important a part of Mediterranean life.
In southern France sunny afternoons are spent languishing on the terrace at the local café, lazily watering down a half-emptied glass of pastis with more water, diluting the spirit but extending the experience. Italian feast days are begun as less formal dinners are ended, with short glasses of sweet sambuca liqueur, inevitably accented with a few coffee beans. In Greece, family and friends gather at the ouzeri, or ouzo bar, for meals composed entirely of mezes, the Greek version of tapas, always accompanied by cool ouzo. And the Lebanese have even built a mythology around their ubiquitous arak, making the outrageous claim that one drink will double the alcoholic potency of anything drunk after it, but only if the arak is taken without food.
Spain has its chinchon; Turkey its raki; and a multitude of Middle Eastern countries have their own interpretations of arak, sometimes spelled arrack. If it touches the sea and the culture permits consumption of alcohol, each Mediterranean nation boasts an anise spirit all its own.
When you look at the culinary proficiency of these same countries, and the way in which their citizens universally love to eat, the appearance of anise in their regional drinks begins to make sense. Praised for years as a stomach-settling herb, anise is suspected to have been used to flavor alcohols for longer than history has been recorded. That it so perfectly complements the olive oils, cheeses, garlic and other pungent tastes of the Mediterranean is an added bonus.
The anise spirit that is probably most familiar to North Americans is also the one most dissmilar to its Mediterranean brethren, Italian sambuca. What makes sambuca unusual is that following distillation (from anise and various botanicals), it is heavily sweetened. This suits the liqueur well for its typical role, enjoyed in or alongside an after-dinner espresso. On special occasions, though, sambuca assumes a special role — in Italy, momentous gatherings such as weddings and Christmas celebrations always start with a welcoming drink, normally sambuca. This tradition provides one explanation for the coffee connection. In the old, agrarian days coffee was a precious commodity and so the number of beans your host put in your glass reflected the esteem in which you were held.
Greece has its own tradition for its anise-flavored eau-devie, ouzo. Like arak in nearby Lebanon, the appearance of a bottle of ouzo at a Greek table is a sure indicator that food cannot be far behind, as on inevitably accompanies the other. And unlike the undiluted sambuca, both ouzo and arak are usually served with water, thereby creating a gently refreshing, food friendly drink that is quite at odds with the ouzo shooters so common in North America.
All three of ouzo, arak and the Turkish raki are distilled from the leftovers of vinication — grape seeds, stems, skins and the like. Ouzo is said to have originated some time around 1889 in Tirnavos, a northeastern Greek town renowned for its spirits and its silks. Ouzos’s life began when one particularly smooth, anise-scented version of the spirit was decreed to be “as good as USO Massalias,” the high-end silk sold at market in Marseilles. USO was soon corrupted to ouzo and a new drink was born.
The connection is apt. Those Marseilles-bound silk merchants may well have been themselves inspired by their own anise spirit, absinthe, the famous green Muse of France and precursor to the popular Provençal pastis. But while pastis can truthfully be said to be of the same family tree as the wormwood flavoured absinthe, the trail connecting the two drinks is a winding one. Outlawed in France in 1915, the direct descendant of absinthe was the northern drink, Pernod, which debuted six years before pastis in 1926. Although the northern and the southern spirits are frequently misclassified in the same category, they are actually quite different beverages.
More intensely aromatic than Pernod, ouzo or arak, pastis is commonly flavoured with not only anise, but a host of other herbs and spices. These can include everything from nutmeg to cardamom, white pepper to the South American tonka bean. Some brands even eschew ordinary anise in favour of the more exotic star anise from Asia. Regardless of ingredients or brand, though, there is only one way to drink pastis: diluted at least five to one with cold water and savoured over a long, long time.
Such is the popularity of pastis that it is possible to step into a café in France and be immediately engulfed in the aroma of spice licorice and anise. And for the aficionado, that is all it takes to know that you have arrived.
SAMBUCA
Sambuca comes in two hues,: clear and black. (The Original is clear; the popular ebony versions are more recent arrivals.) Contrary to the mythology surrounding the drink, the coffee beans are optional and the flaming of the spirit purely on affectation.
Ramozzotti Sambuca and Luxardo Sambuca dei Cesari are both clear and forcefully anise-scented and -flavoured, with luxardo being the rounder and slightly sweeter of the two. In the black category, Opal Nero carries an alluring elegance, while the Luxardo Possione Nera is similar to its clear cousin but more herbal. Ramazzotti Black, with its exotic, turquoise-tinted colour has a drier, slightly spicy body.
OUZO
Diluted with water at a ratio of about four to one, as it should be, Ouzo Tirnavou displays an intriguingly peanutty aroma and a complex, dryish flavour with nutty, herbal, anise notes. Ouzo 12, a best-selling brand in Greece, has a more floral bouquet and flavour and a slight sweetness on the finish.
ARAK
At 50% alcohol, arak is the most potent of the anise spirits and its taste reflects its strength. Best enjoyed diluted, as ouzo or pastis, the Gantous & Abou Road Arak of Lebanon is herbal and grassy with anise on the nose and pepper in the body. The softer Kazan Arak is also much fruitier, with on aroma and flavour that speak of anise and whisper of grappa.
PASTIS
The most popular pastis in the world, Ricard has a sweetish aroma and an upfront anise flavour. Slightly drier and more mellow are Janot and Bellanis 45, with the former carrying a greater essence of herbs and various botanicols and the latter being more spicy in nature, even boasting a lightly peppery heat. Most complex of all is the Henri Bardouin, with its stated mix of a dozen spices yielding of soft yet complicated character accented by the sweet spice of star anise.
ABSINTHE
Absinthe is a high-proof, anise-flavored liquor made by distilling herbs, including anise, fennel and grand wormwood. It should be noted that absinthe is not a liqueur but a spirit, as it does not contain sugar. It is included here as it is relates to several anise-flavored liqueurs such as Herbsaint and pastis. The distillate is either colored with additional herbs, giving it its famous green color, artificially colored, or left clear. Originally created in Switzerland, it’s most known as a popular drink in France. Absinthe is typically served by slowly adding three to five parts ice-cold water to one part absinthe. This causes the drink to “louche” and turn a cloudy white. Often a specially designed slotted spoon is placed over the glass and a sugar cube set on top. The water is poured over the cube, dissolving it and sweetening the drink.
Absinthe was banned in a number of countries during the early twentieth century because of supposed dangerous and hallucinogenic effects, believed to be caused by the presence of the toxic compound thujone. The ban was recently lifted in most countries including the US, allowing its production and sale once again, but manufacturers in Europe are required to comply with European Union laws on thujone levels.
Above from TheEpicentre.com
